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What, precisely, is the role of Congress? In the second presidency of Donald Trump, it can be hard to tell. The power to declare war, long considered a crucial congressional authority, has become a murky prerogative of the presidential office in the years since the 9/11 attacks; Trump, in the past few months, has asserted additional of that power for himself, conducting military actions on boats in the Caribbean Sea.

The power of the purse seems to have mostly been taken away from the legislative branch as well; currently, under the office of management and budget director, Russell Vought, a great deal of the ability to allocate government money has likewise defaulted to the executive, with the administration asserting the authority to abort legislatively approved spending and seeking to redirect the funds elsewhere. It’s not like they’re enacting any legislation, anyway; almost all bills must currently be crammed into budget reconciliation bills, massive recurring essential omnibus legislation that can bypass the filibuster. But when those fail to be approved – and more and more, they don’t – the federal government just shuts down. That is, large sections of the government shut down – and it’s uncertain how many people are aware. At present, the federal government has been shut down for the entire month; there are no signs of it resuming operations anytime soon. But the executive branch continues operating smoothly.

And so the question of dominance of Congress can appear rather irrelevant. Why should U.S. citizens be concerned who has a controlling share in a body that has mostly abolished itself?

In what way ‘screw Trump’ rhetoric may assist California’s Proposition 50 succeed

And yet Proposition 50, California’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could deliver five more congressional positions to the Democratic Party if it is embraced by voters in a special election next month, has captured the attention of progressives nationwide. In part, it is a delayed reaction to trends occurring in other states: GOP-led states have for a long time embraced extreme biased redistricting while large blue states such as the Golden State, New York and Washington draw their district lines via impartial redistricting panels, an asymmetry that has resulted in closely divided House control and a longstanding sense, by the left, that their party is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The state measure is clearly designed as a response to a mid-decade redrawing of maps that recently passed in Texas, which installed boundaries that will provide the GOP an additional five positions in the state’s House representation next year; comparable boundary changes are in progress in states such as the Show-Me State and the Hoosier State. (The left in Virginia are likewise emulating California’s example in attempting to redistrict.)

The state initiative seems likely to be approved, as Democratic and liberal voters react with fear and frustration to Trump’s authoritarian consolidation of power and look for methods to check his most extreme tendencies. But Prop 50 is not without debate. Some opponents warn that the move could backfire, with Democratic-controlled states’ attempts to redistrict triggering a revenge cycle in which red states do additional to design their districts so as to foreclose any possibility of Democratic competitiveness. Others have questioned the measure on more purely principled pro-democracy bases: a district that is drawn in such a way that the outcome of the vote is not in question, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be truly democratic: it means, necessarily, that the influence of opposing voices is muted, and that the procedure of deliberation, argument and persuasion that is meant to define a healthy political system will be limited only to party primaries, if it happens at all.

It is valuable considering each of these objections on their merits. The first argument, that Prop 50 will spur conservatives to alter their own maps in retaliation, does not hold up as a causal point: it is illogical to claim that the GOP will be made to act in antidemocratic ways by the left’s actions when they are already engaging in such behavior in the absence of those actions. The GOP, I would observe, has not needed any incentive of retaliation to redraw boundaries that secure long-term seats for their party: they have been ready to do this for its own sake, in the complete lack of similar actions by the left, for a long time.

The second objection, in my view, is more significant, expressing not just a strategic disagreement about how to address the Republicans’ anti-democracy shift, but a sort of sad wish for a distinct country than the one that the United States has turned into. It is accurate that in a better world – in the reality that the majority of the left, it is believed, yearn for and aspire to – Prop 50 would be distasteful to our principles, and not mandated by our circumstances. It is not good to manipulate targeted demographics; it is not good for elected officials to choose their voters, rather than the reverse; it is negative that elections are rendered uncontested. That these actions have become essential in order to impede the authoritarian advance of Trump’s control and lessen the amount of harm he is able to cause is unfortunate; it is a indication of how much we have fallen from a state more like a democracy. But they are necessary. Only once the fight against Trumpism has been successfully concluded that we can mourn what opposing it has transformed us into.

If the legislative branch does not in reality have lawmaking, military or budgetary power, what is it, precisely, that Prop 50’s five new Democratic house members will be dispatched to the capital to do? One thing that the House and Senate still holds is the authority to compel testimony, and the ability to investigate. Even in our time of sclerotic politics and legislative decline, it has utilized of that power to significant impact. In 2027, if the measure passes and the state’s new representatives are sworn in, they will become a part of a body with the authority to investigate Trump, to televise their investigations into his conduct and to force associates of his inner circle to give evidence. It’s not nothing, and more importantly, it’s not something that any Republican would do.

• Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist