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What, exactly, is the role of Congress? In the second presidency of Donald Trump, it can be hard to tell. The power to initiate armed conflict, long considered a crucial legislative power, has become a murky prerogative of the executive branch in the time since September 11; Trump, in recent months, has asserted even more of that control for himself, authorizing military actions on boats in the Caribbean Sea.

The power of the purse appears to be largely been stripped from the legislative branch too; currently, under the leadership of budget chief, the OMB director, much of the ability to allocate federal funds has likewise defaulted to the executive, with the White House asserting the authority to abort congressionally authorized spending and seeking to move the money to other uses. It’s not like they’re passing any laws, either; virtually all bills must now be crammed into spending packages, huge perennial must-spend omnibus legislation that can circumvent the senate obstruction. But when those fail to be approved – and increasingly, they do not – the federal government simply ceases operations. That is, large sections of the government do – and it’s not clear how many citizens are aware. Currently, the federal government has been closed for the entire month; there are little indication of it resuming operations anytime soon. But the presidency continues humming along.

And so the issue of dominance of Congress can appear rather moot. Why should U.S. citizens care who has a majority in a body that has largely abolished itself?

How ‘screw Trump’ messaging could assist the state of California’s Prop 50 succeed

And yet Proposition 50, California’s redistricting referendum that could deliver five additional congressional positions to the Democratic Party if it is embraced by voters in a special election in the coming weeks, has captured the political imagination of liberals across the country. In part, it is a belated response to developments happening elsewhere: Republican-controlled states have long adopted extreme partisan gerrymandering while large Democratic-controlled such as the Golden State, New York and Washington draw their maps via impartial independent commissions, an asymmetry that has led to closely divided House control and a long-term feeling, by Democrats, that their political group is at a disadvantage. The California measure is explicitly intended as a countermove to a mid-term redistricting that recently passed in the Lone Star State, which installed boundaries that will provide Republicans an additional five seats in the state’s congressional delegation next year; comparable boundary changes are in progress in states such as the Show-Me State and the Hoosier State. (The left in the Old Dominion are likewise following the state’s example in seeking to redistrict.)

The California measure seems likely to pass, as progressive voters react with concern and anger to the president’s autocratic consolidation of authority and look for methods to check his worst tendencies. But the proposition is not without controversy. Some opponents warn that the move could backfire, with blue states’ attempts to redistrict triggering a revenge pattern in which red states do additional to draw their maps so as to foreclose any chance of Democratic competitiveness. Different critics have questioned the measure on more purely ideological democratic bases: a district that is created in such a manner that the result of the election is never really in doubt, they say, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely representative: it means, necessarily, that the influence of opposing voices is suppressed, and that the procedure of debate, argument and persuasion that is meant to characterize a functioning democratic process will be limited only to party primaries, if it occurs at all.

It is valuable taking each of these objections on their own terms. The initial argument, that Prop 50 will spur conservatives to alter their own districts in response, fails as a causal argument: it is illogical to claim that Republicans will be compelled to behave in antidemocratic ways by the left’s measures when they are already doing so without those actions. The Republican party, I would observe, has not needed any motivation of revenge to redraw maps that secure permanent positions for their party: they have been ready to do this for their own benefit, in the complete lack of similar actions by the left, for a long time.

The other critique, I think, is more significant, expressing not just a tactical disagreement about how to confront the Republicans’ anti-democracy shift, but a sort of melancholic desire for a distinct country than the one that the United States has become. It is true that in a better situation – in the reality that most Democrats, it is believed, desire and hope for – the proposition would be unappealing to our values, and not mandated by our circumstances. It is not good to manipulate targeted population groups; it is harmful for politicians to select their voters, rather than the other way around; it is negative that elections are rendered noncompetitive. That these measures have grown necessary in order to impede the authoritarian advance of the president’s control and reduce the amount of suffering he is capable to inflict is sad; it is a indication of how much we have declined from something more like a democracy. But they are required. Only after the fight against the current administration’s ideology has been won that we can mourn what opposing it has made us.

If the legislative branch fails to in practice have lawmaking, military or budgetary power, what is it, exactly, that the proposition’s five new Democratic house members will be sent to Washington to do? One thing that Congress continues to holds is the authority to compel testimony, and the power to investigate. Even in our era of sclerotic government and legislative decline, it has utilized of that power to significant impact. In 2027, if the measure is approved and California’s new representatives are take office, they will find themselves a member of a institution with the power to investigate Trump, to broadcast their hearings into his conduct and to force associates of his inner circle to give evidence. It’s not nothing, and crucially, it’s not anything that any Republican would do.

• Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist