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What, exactly, is the role of Congress? During another presidency of Donald Trump, it can be hard to determine. The power to initiate armed conflict, traditionally viewed as a vital congressional authority, has turned into a unclear prerogative of the presidential office in the years since the 9/11 attacks; the president, in the past few months, has asserted even more of that power for himself, authorizing strikes on boats in the Caribbean Sea.

The power of the purse appears to be mostly been taken away from Congress as well; now, under the leadership of budget chief, the OMB director, a great deal of the ability to appropriate government money has also shifted to the presidency, with the administration asserting the authority to abort legislatively approved expenditures and attempting to redirect the funds to other uses. It’s as if they’re passing any legislation, anyway; almost all bills must currently be packed into budget reconciliation bills, huge recurring must-spend omnibus legislation that can circumvent the filibuster. But when these don’t pass – and increasingly, they don’t – the federal government simply shuts down. That is, big parts of the government shut down – and it’s not clear how many people are aware. Currently, the government has been closed for the entire month; there are little indication of it reopening anytime soon. But the executive branch keeps on operating smoothly.

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

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

And yet Prop 50, California’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could provide five more congressional positions to the Democrats if it is embraced by voters in a special election in the coming weeks, has captured the political imagination of liberals nationwide. In part, it is a belated response to trends happening in other states: Republican-controlled states have long embraced extreme partisan gerrymandering while large blue states such as the Golden State, the Empire State and Washington create their maps via nonpartisan independent commissions, an imbalance that has resulted in narrowly split House control and a long-term feeling, by the left, that their political group is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The California measure is explicitly designed as a countermove to a mid-decade redrawing of maps that was recently approved in the Lone Star State, which implemented maps that will provide the GOP an additional five seats in the state’s House representation in the upcoming term; comparable redistricting moves are in progress in states such as Missouri and Indiana. (Democrats in the Old Dominion are likewise following California’s example in attempting to alter districts.)

The California measure seems probable to pass, as progressive electorate react with concern and anger to Trump’s autocratic centralization of power and look for ways to restrain his worst tendencies. But Prop 50 is not free from debate. Some opponents warn that the move could backfire, with blue states’ attempts to redistrict setting off a retaliatory cycle in which red states do additional to design their maps so as to eliminate any possibility of Democratic competitiveness. Others have questioned the proposal on strictly principled pro-democracy grounds: a district that is drawn 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 truly democratic: it implies, inevitably, that the influence of opposing voices is suppressed, and that the process of deliberation, discussion and persuasion that is meant to characterize a functioning political system 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 first critique, that Prop 50 will spur the right to alter their respective maps in retaliation, fails as a causal point: it is illogical to say that the GOP will be made to act in undemocratic ways by Democrats’ actions when they are already doing so without those steps. The GOP, it can be noted, has required no any motivation of revenge to redraw maps that guarantee long-term seats for themselves: they have been willing to do this for its own sake, in the total absence of similar actions by the left, for years.

The second objection, in my view, is more significant, expressing not just a strategic difference about how to confront the Republicans’ undemocratic shift, but a sort of melancholic desire for a different country than the one that the US has turned into. It is accurate that in a more ideal situation – in the reality that the majority of the left, I think, yearn for and aspire to – the proposition would be unappealing to our values, and not mandated by our situation. It is not good to pack and crack disfavored population groups; it is not good for elected officials to choose their constituents, instead of the reverse; it is negative that elections are made noncompetitive. That these measures have grown essential in order to impede the authoritarian creep of Trump’s control and lessen the amount of suffering he is able to inflict is sad; it is a sign of how much we have fallen from a state more like a representative government. But they are necessary. 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 the legislative branch fails to in reality have lawmaking, military or budgetary authority, what is it, precisely, that the proposition’s additional five blue house members will be dispatched to Washington to do? One aspect 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 made use of that authority to significant impact. In 2027, if Prop 50 passes and California’s additional Democrats are take office, they will become a member of a institution with the authority to probe the president, to broadcast their investigations into his conduct and to compel associates of his close advisors to testify. It’s significant, and more importantly, it’s not anything that any Republican would do.

• Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist