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What, precisely, is the role of the U.S. Congress? During another Trump administration, it is difficult to tell. The power to initiate armed conflict, long considered a crucial legislative power, has become a murky prerogative of the presidential office in the time since September 11; the president, in the past few months, has claimed additional of that control for his administration, authorizing military actions on boats in the Caribbean.

The authority over spending seems to have largely been taken away from Congress too; now, under the leadership of management and budget director, Russell Vought, a great deal of the power to allocate federal funds has also shifted to the executive, with the White House claiming the ability to cancel congressionally authorized expenditures and attempting to redirect the funds to other uses. It’s not like they’re passing any legislation, either; virtually all bills must now be packed into budget reconciliation bills, huge recurring essential comprehensive bills that can bypass the senate obstruction. But when these don’t pass – and increasingly, they do not – the federal government simply ceases operations. At least, large sections of the administration shut down – and it’s uncertain how many citizens notice. At present, the federal government has been shut down for the entire month; there are little indication of it reopening in the near future. But the presidency continues operating smoothly.

And so the question of control of the House and Senate can seem somewhat moot. Why should U.S. citizens be concerned who has a controlling share in a body that has largely abolished itself?

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

And yet Prop 50, the Golden State’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could provide five additional House seats to the Democrats if it is approved by voters in a special election next month, has seized the political imagination of liberals across the country. In part, it is a delayed response to developments occurring in other states: GOP-led states have for a long time embraced dramatic partisan gerrymandering while big blue states such as the Golden State, New York and Washington create their district lines via nonpartisan independent commissions, an imbalance that has led to closely divided House control and a long-term feeling, by Democrats, that their political group is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The California proposal is clearly designed as a countermove to a mid-term redrawing of maps that was recently approved in the Lone Star State, which implemented maps that will provide Republicans an additional five positions in the state’s congressional delegation next year; comparable boundary changes are in progress in states such as Missouri and the Hoosier State. (Democrats in the Old Dominion are also emulating the state’s lead in seeking to alter districts.)

The state measure seems probable to pass, as Democratic and liberal voters respond with fear and anger to the president’s autocratic consolidation of authority and seek ways to restrain his most extreme impulses. But the proposition is not without controversy. Some opponents warn that the move could have unintended consequences, with blue states’ efforts to redistrict triggering a revenge cycle in which Republican-controlled states do even more to design their districts so as to eliminate any possibility of Democratic competitiveness. Others have questioned the measure on strictly ideological democratic bases: a district that is drawn in such a way that the outcome of the election is not in doubt, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely democratic: it implies, necessarily, that the influence of opposing voices is muted, and that the process of debate, discussion and convincing that is meant to define a functioning political system will be confined only to primary elections, if it happens at all.

It is worth taking each of these criticisms on their own terms. The first argument, that Prop 50 will spur the right to alter their respective districts in retaliation, does not hold up as a causal argument: it is illogical to say that the GOP will be made to behave in undemocratic ways by the left’s measures when they are already engaging in such behavior without those actions. The Republican party, it can be noted, has required no any incentive of retaliation to change maps that guarantee long-term seats for themselves: they have been ready to do this for their own benefit, in the total absence of Democratic reciprocation, for a long time.

The other critique, in my view, is more substantive, expressing not just a tactical difference about how to address the GOP’s undemocratic turn, but a sort of sad desire for a distinct country than the one that the US has become. It is accurate that in a better situation – in the reality that the majority of Democrats, it is believed, desire and hope for – Prop 50 would be unappealing to our principles, and not mandated by our situation. It is undesirable to manipulate disfavored demographics; it is harmful for elected officials to choose their voters, instead of the reverse; it is not good that votes are rendered uncontested. That these actions have become necessary in order to slow the authoritarian creep of the president’s control and lessen the level of harm he is able to inflict is unfortunate; it is a sign of how far we have declined from a state more like a representative government. But they are required. It is only once the battle 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 reality have legislative, war making or appropriations authority, what is it, exactly, that the proposition’s five new blue representatives will be sent to Washington to do? One aspect that the House and Senate continues to holds is the authority to compel testimony, and the power to examine. Even in our era of sclerotic government and legislative decline, it has utilized of that power to significant impact. In 2027, if Prop 50 is approved and California’s additional representatives are sworn in, they will become a part of a institution with the power to investigate the president, to televise their hearings into his actions and to compel associates of his close advisors to give evidence. It’s not nothing, and more importantly, it’s not anything that any Republican would do.

• Moira Donegan is a Guardian US writer