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What, exactly, is the role of the U.S. Congress? During another Trump administration, it can be hard to determine. The authority to initiate armed conflict, long considered a crucial legislative power, has turned into a unclear right of the presidential office in the years since September 11; Trump, in the past few months, has claimed even more of that power for himself, authorizing strikes on vessels in the Caribbean Sea.

The authority over spending appears to be mostly been taken away from the legislative branch too; currently, under the leadership of management and budget director, Russell Vought, a great deal of the ability to appropriate government money has also defaulted to the executive, with the White House claiming the authority to abort congressionally authorized expenditures and attempting to redirect the funds to other uses. It’s not like they’re passing any laws, either; virtually all bills must currently be packed into budget reconciliation bills, massive perennial essential comprehensive bills that can bypass the filibuster. But when these fail to be approved – and increasingly, they do not – the federal government simply shuts down. At least, big parts of the administration do – and it’s uncertain how many citizens notice. Currently, the government has been closed all month; there are no signs of it reopening in the near future. But the executive branch keeps on humming along.

And so the question of control of Congress can appear somewhat irrelevant. Why should U.S. citizens be concerned who holds a majority in a body that has mostly rendered itself powerless?

In what way ‘oppose the president’ messaging may assist the state of California’s Proposition 50 prevail

And yet Prop 50, the Golden State’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could provide five more congressional positions to the Democratic Party if it is embraced by voters in a special election in the coming weeks, has seized the attention of liberals nationwide. In part, it is a delayed reaction to trends happening in other states: GOP-led states have for a long time embraced extreme biased redistricting while big Democratic-controlled such as California, the Empire State and the Evergreen State create their maps via nonpartisan redistricting panels, an asymmetry that has resulted in closely divided control of the House and a longstanding feeling, by the left, that their political group is at a disadvantage. The state measure is clearly designed as a countermove to a mid-decade redistricting that was recently approved in the Lone Star State, which installed maps that will give Republicans an additional five seats in the state congressional delegation next year; comparable boundary changes are in progress in states such as Missouri and Indiana. (The left in the Old Dominion are likewise following California’s example in seeking to alter districts.)

The California measure seems likely to be approved, as progressive electorate respond with fear and anger to Trump’s authoritarian consolidation of authority and seek ways to restrain his worst tendencies. But Prop 50 is not without controversy. Some critics warn that the action could have unintended consequences, with Democratic-controlled states’ attempts to redistrict triggering a retaliatory cycle in which red states do additional to draw their maps so as to eliminate any chance of opposition party success. Different critics have questioned the proposal on strictly ideological pro-democracy grounds: a district that is drawn in such a manner that the result of the election is never really in doubt, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely representative: it means, inevitably, that the power of dissenting voices is muted, and that the procedure of deliberation, discussion and convincing that is meant to define a functioning democratic process will be limited only to party primaries, if it happens at all.

It is valuable considering each of these objections on their own terms. The initial critique, that the measure will provoke conservatives to redraw their respective maps in response, fails as a logical argument: it does not make sense to claim that Republicans will be made to behave in undemocratic ways by the left’s measures when they are already engaging in such behavior without those steps. The Republican party, it can be noted, has required no any incentive of retaliation to change boundaries that secure permanent positions for themselves: they have been willing to do this for its own sake, in the total lack of Democratic reciprocation, for years.

The second critique, in my view, is more substantive, reflecting not just a tactical disagreement about how to confront the GOP’s anti-democracy turn, but a sort of melancholic wish for a different country than the one that the US has become. It is accurate that in a better world – in the reality that the majority of the left, I think, desire and hope for – Prop 50 would be unappealing to our principles, and not required by our situation. It is not good to pack and crack targeted demographics; it is harmful for politicians to choose their voters, instead of the reverse; it is negative that votes are rendered noncompetitive. That these actions have become essential in order to impede the autocratic creep of the president’s power and lessen the amount of harm he is capable to cause is unfortunate; it is a sign of how far we have fallen from something more like a democracy. But they are required. Only once the fight against the current administration’s ideology has been won that we can lament what opposing it has transformed us into.

If the legislative branch does not in practice have legislative, war making or appropriations power, what is it, precisely, that Prop 50’s five new Democratic house members will be dispatched to the capital to do? One aspect that the House and Senate still holds is the authority to compel testimony, and the ability to investigate. Even in our time of stagnant politics and congressional atrophy, it has made use of that power to great effect. In the coming years, if the measure passes and the state’s new representatives are sworn in, they will find themselves a member of a institution with the power to probe Trump, to televise their hearings into his conduct and to force associates of his close advisors to give evidence. It’s significant, and more importantly, it’s not something that any Republican would do.

• Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist