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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 declare war, long considered a vital legislative power, has become a murky prerogative of the executive branch in the years since the 9/11 attacks; Trump, in the past few months, has claimed additional of that power for his administration, conducting strikes on boats in the Caribbean Sea.

The authority over spending appears to be largely been stripped from the legislative branch too; now, under the office of management and budget director, the OMB director, a great deal of the power to allocate federal funds has likewise shifted to the presidency, with the administration claiming the authority to abort congressionally authorized spending and attempting to redirect the money to other uses. It’s not like they’re enacting any laws, anyway; almost all bills must now be packed into budget reconciliation bills, huge perennial must-spend comprehensive bills that can bypass the senate obstruction. But when those fail to be approved – and increasingly, they don’t – the government simply ceases operations. At least, big parts of the administration shut down – and it’s not clear how many people are aware. At present, the government has been shut down for the entire month; there are no signs of it resuming operations in the near future. But the executive branch continues humming along.

And so the issue of dominance of the House and Senate can appear somewhat irrelevant. Why should Americans be concerned who holds a controlling share in a institution that has mostly abolished itself?

How ‘oppose the president’ rhetoric may assist the state of California’s Prop 50 succeed

And yet Proposition 50, the Golden State’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could deliver five more House seats to the Democrats if it is embraced by the electorate in a special election next month, has seized the attention of liberals across the country. In part, it is a delayed response to developments occurring elsewhere: GOP-led states have long adopted extreme partisan gerrymandering while large Democratic-controlled such as California, New York and Washington create their district lines via nonpartisan redistricting panels, 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 clearly designed as a countermove to a mid-term redrawing of maps that recently passed in the Lone Star State, which installed maps that will provide Republicans an additional five positions in the state congressional delegation in the upcoming term; comparable redistricting moves are under way in states such as Missouri and the Hoosier State. (Democrats in Virginia are likewise emulating California’s example in attempting to alter districts.)

The state initiative seems probable to be approved, as progressive voters react with concern and anger to the president’s autocratic consolidation of power and look for methods to restrain his most extreme tendencies. But Prop 50 is not free from debate. Some opponents caution that the action could have unintended consequences, with blue states’ attempts to change districts triggering a revenge cycle in which red states do additional to draw their districts so as to eliminate any possibility of opposition party success. Others have questioned the measure on strictly ideological pro-democracy grounds: a electoral area that is created in such a manner that the outcome of the vote is not in doubt, they say, is one that cannot be said to be truly representative: it means, necessarily, that the power of dissenting voices is muted, and that the procedure of debate, argument and persuasion that is meant to characterize a functioning democratic process will be confined only to primary elections, if it happens at all.

It is worth considering each of these criticisms on their merits. The initial critique, that the measure will provoke conservatives to redraw their own maps in retaliation, fails as a causal argument: it is illogical to claim that the GOP will be compelled to act in antidemocratic ways by Democrats’ actions when they are already doing so without those steps. The Republican party, I would observe, has not needed any incentive of revenge to redraw boundaries that secure permanent positions for themselves: they have been willing to do this for its own sake, in the complete absence of Democratic reciprocation, for a long time.

The second objection, in my view, is more significant, reflecting not just a tactical difference about how to confront the Republicans’ undemocratic turn, but a sort of melancholic wish for a distinct country than the one that the United States has become. It is accurate that in a better situation – in the world that most Democrats, it is believed, yearn for and aspire to – Prop 50 would be unappealing to our principles, and not required by our circumstances. It is undesirable to pack and crack disfavored demographics; it is harmful for politicians to select their constituents, instead of the other way around; it is not good that votes are made uncontested. That these actions have grown essential in order to impede the autocratic creep of Trump’s control and lessen the amount of suffering he is capable 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. It is only once the fight against the current administration’s ideology has been won that we can mourn what opposing it has transformed us into.

If Congress does not in practice have lawmaking, military or appropriations power, what is it, exactly, that Prop 50’s additional five blue house members will be dispatched to Washington to do? One thing that the House and Senate continues to retains is the authority to compel testimony, and the ability to investigate. Even in our era of stagnant politics and congressional atrophy, it has utilized of that authority to great effect. In the coming years, if the measure is approved and the state’s new representatives are sworn in, they will find themselves a member of a institution with the authority to investigate the president, to broadcast their investigations into his actions and to force associates of his inner circle to testify. It’s not nothing, and crucially, it’s not something that any Republican would do.

• Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist