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What, exactly, is the role of Congress? In the second Trump administration, it can be hard to determine. The power to declare war, long considered a vital congressional authority, has turned into a murky prerogative of the presidential office in the time since the 9/11 attacks; Trump, in the past few months, has asserted even more of that control for his administration, authorizing military actions on boats in the Caribbean.

The power of the purse appears to be largely been taken away from the legislative branch too; currently, under the leadership of budget chief, Russell Vought, a great deal of the ability to allocate federal funds has also defaulted to the executive, with the administration asserting the ability to cancel congressionally authorized spending and seeking to move the funds elsewhere. It’s as if they’re enacting any legislation, either; almost all legislation must now be packed into budget reconciliation bills, huge recurring essential omnibus legislation that can bypass the senate obstruction. But when these don’t pass – and increasingly, they don’t – the government just shuts down. At least, big parts of the administration do – and it’s uncertain how many people are aware. Currently, the federal government has been shut down all month; there are little indication of it reopening anytime soon. But the executive branch continues operating smoothly.

And so the issue of control of Congress can appear rather irrelevant. Why should Americans care who holds a majority in a institution that has mostly rendered itself powerless?

In what way ‘screw Trump’ messaging may help the state of California’s Prop 50 prevail

And yet Prop 50, the Golden State’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could provide five additional House seats to the Democratic Party if it is approved by the electorate in a upcoming vote in the coming weeks, has captured the political imagination of liberals across the country. In part, it is a belated reaction to trends occurring elsewhere: GOP-led states have long embraced dramatic partisan gerrymandering while large blue states such as the Golden State, the Empire State and the Evergreen State draw their maps via impartial independent commissions, an imbalance that has resulted in closely divided control of the House and a long-term feeling, by Democrats, that their party is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The state proposal is explicitly intended as a countermove to a mid-decade redistricting that recently passed in Texas, which installed boundaries that will give the GOP an additional five positions in the state’s congressional delegation in the upcoming term; similar boundary changes are in progress in states such as the Show-Me State and Indiana. (Democrats in Virginia are likewise emulating the state’s lead in seeking to alter districts.)

The state measure seems probable to pass, as progressive voters respond with fear and anger to Trump’s autocratic centralization of power and seek methods to check his most extreme impulses. But Prop 50 is not without debate. Some opponents caution that the move could have unintended consequences, with Democratic-controlled states’ efforts to redistrict setting off a revenge pattern in which red states do even more to design their districts so as to eliminate any possibility of Democratic competitiveness. Others have questioned the measure on more purely principled pro-democracy bases: a district that is created in such a way that the outcome of the vote is not in question, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely democratic: it implies, necessarily, that the power of opposing views is suppressed, and that the procedure of deliberation, argument and convincing that is meant to define a healthy democratic process will be limited only to primary elections, if it happens at all.

It is worth taking each of these objections on their merits. The initial critique, that the measure will spur the right to redraw their respective maps in retaliation, fails as a logical argument: it is illogical to say that the GOP will be compelled to behave in undemocratic ways by the left’s measures when they are already engaging in such behavior without those steps. The GOP, it can be noted, has not needed any incentive of retaliation to redraw maps that secure permanent seats for themselves: they have been willing to do this for its own sake, in the total absence of similar actions by the left, for years.

The second critique, in my view, is more substantive, expressing not just a strategic disagreement about how to address the Republicans’ undemocratic shift, but a kind of sad desire for a distinct country than the one that the United States has become. It is true that in a more ideal world – in the reality that most the left, I think, yearn for and hope for – Prop 50 would be distasteful to our principles, and not mandated by our circumstances. It is undesirable to manipulate targeted demographics; it is harmful for elected officials to select their constituents, instead of the other way around; it is negative that elections are made uncontested. That these measures have become essential in order to impede the authoritarian creep of Trump’s power and reduce the amount of harm he is able to inflict is sad; it is a sign of how far we have declined from a state more like a democracy. But they are necessary. It is only after the fight against the current administration’s ideology has been successfully concluded that we can lament what fighting it has transformed us into.

If Congress fails to in practice have lawmaking, military or appropriations power, what is it, precisely, that Prop 50’s five new blue house members will be dispatched to the capital to do? One aspect that Congress still retains is the authority to compel testimony, and the ability to investigate. Even in our era of sclerotic politics and legislative decline, it has utilized of that power to significant impact. In 2027, if the measure passes and California’s new representatives are sworn in, they will find themselves a part of a institution with the authority to investigate the president, to televise their investigations into his actions and to force associates of his close advisors to give evidence. It’s significant, and more importantly, it’s not something that any conservative would do.

• Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist