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What, precisely, is the role of the U.S. Congress? During another presidency of Donald Trump, it is difficult to tell. The power to initiate armed conflict, traditionally viewed as a crucial legislative power, has become a murky prerogative of the executive branch in the time since September 11; Trump, in the past few months, has claimed even more of that control for himself, conducting military actions on boats in the Caribbean.

The authority over spending seems to have mostly been stripped from the legislative branch as well; currently, under the leadership of management and budget director, the OMB director, much of the ability to allocate federal funds has likewise shifted to the executive, with the administration claiming the authority to abort congressionally authorized expenditures and attempting to move the money elsewhere. It’s not like they’re passing any legislation, anyway; virtually all bills must currently be packed into budget reconciliation bills, huge perennial essential comprehensive bills that can bypass the filibuster. But when these don’t pass – and more and more, they do not – the government just ceases operations. At least, big parts of the government do – and it’s uncertain how many people are aware. At present, the government has been shut down all month; there are no signs of it reopening anytime soon. But the executive branch continues operating smoothly.

And so the issue of control of Congress can appear somewhat moot. Why should Americans be concerned who holds a majority in a body that has mostly abolished itself?

How ‘oppose the president’ messaging may help California’s Prop 50 succeed

And yet Proposition 50, California’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could deliver five more House seats to the Democrats if it is approved by voters in a upcoming vote next month, has captured the political imagination of liberals across the country. Partly, it is a belated response to trends happening in other states: GOP-led states have long embraced dramatic biased redistricting while big Democratic-controlled such as the Golden State, New York and Washington draw their district lines via nonpartisan independent commissions, an imbalance that has resulted in narrowly split House control and a longstanding feeling, by the left, that their party is at a disadvantage. The California proposal is clearly intended as a countermove to a mid-decade redistricting that was recently approved in the Lone Star State, which installed boundaries that will provide the GOP an additional five positions in the state House representation in the upcoming term; comparable boundary changes are in progress in states such as Missouri and the Hoosier State. (Democrats in the Old Dominion are likewise following California’s example in attempting to redistrict.)

The California measure seems probable to be approved, as Democratic and liberal voters respond with concern and anger to the president’s authoritarian consolidation of power and seek methods to restrain his most extreme impulses. But the proposition is not without debate. Some critics warn that the action could have unintended consequences, with blue states’ efforts to redistrict triggering a revenge cycle in which Republican-controlled states do even more to draw their maps so as to eliminate any chance of opposition party success. Different critics have questioned the proposal on strictly principled democratic bases: a district that is drawn in such a manner that the result of the election is not in doubt, they say, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely representative: it implies, inevitably, that the power of dissenting voices is suppressed, and that the process of deliberation, argument and persuasion that is meant to define a functioning political system will be limited only to primary elections, if it happens at all.

It is worth considering each of these criticisms on their merits. The initial argument, that the measure will provoke conservatives to alter their respective districts in retaliation, fails as a logical argument: it is illogical to say that Republicans will be made to act in antidemocratic ways by Democrats’ measures when they are already engaging in such behavior in the absence of those actions. The GOP, I would observe, has required no any incentive of revenge to redraw maps that guarantee permanent positions for themselves: 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 second critique, I think, is more significant, expressing not just a strategic disagreement about how to address the Republicans’ undemocratic turn, but a kind of melancholic wish for a different country than the one that the United States has become. It is true that in a more ideal world – in the reality that most Democrats, it is believed, yearn for and aspire to – Prop 50 would be unappealing to our values, and not mandated by our situation. It is undesirable to pack and crack targeted population groups; it is harmful for elected officials to choose their voters, rather than the other way around; it is negative that votes are made noncompetitive. That these actions have become essential in order to slow the autocratic creep of the president’s control and reduce the amount of harm he is capable to inflict is sad; it is a sign of how much we have fallen from something more like a representative government. But they are necessary. It is only once the battle against the current administration’s ideology has been successfully concluded that we can mourn what opposing it has made us.

If Congress does not in reality have lawmaking, military or appropriations authority, what is it, exactly, that Prop 50’s additional five Democratic house members will be sent to Washington to do? One thing that Congress still holds is the authority to compel testimony, and the ability to investigate. Even in our era of sclerotic government and congressional atrophy, it has utilized of that power to great effect. In the coming years, if the measure passes and the state’s additional Democrats are sworn in, they will become a part of a institution with the power to probe the president, to televise their investigations into his conduct and to compel associates of his close advisors to testify. It’s significant, and more importantly, it’s not something that any Republican would do.

• Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist