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What, exactly, is the role of Congress? In the second Trump administration, it is difficult to tell. The authority to declare war, traditionally viewed as a crucial legislative power, has become a unclear prerogative of the presidential office in the time since September 11; Trump, in recent months, has asserted additional of that control for himself, conducting military actions on boats in the Caribbean.

The power of the purse appears to be largely been taken away from Congress too; currently, under the office of budget chief, Russell Vought, a great deal of the ability to appropriate federal funds has likewise defaulted to the executive, with the White House asserting the authority to cancel legislatively approved spending and attempting to move the money to other uses. It’s not like they’re enacting any legislation, either; virtually all legislation must now be packed into spending packages, massive recurring essential comprehensive bills that can circumvent the filibuster. But when these fail to be approved – and increasingly, they do not – the government simply ceases operations. That is, large sections of the government shut down – and it’s uncertain how many people notice. 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 presidency continues operating smoothly.

And so the question of dominance of Congress can appear somewhat irrelevant. Why should Americans be concerned who holds a majority in a body that has largely rendered itself powerless?

In what way ‘oppose the president’ messaging could help 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 House seats to the Democrats if it is embraced by the electorate in a upcoming vote next month, has captured the political imagination of liberals across the country. Partly, it is a belated reaction to developments happening in other states: Republican-controlled states have for a long time adopted dramatic biased redistricting while large Democratic-controlled such as the Golden State, New York and Washington draw their maps via nonpartisan independent commissions, an asymmetry that has led to closely divided control of the House and a long-term sense, by Democrats, that their party is at a disadvantage. The California proposal is explicitly designed as a countermove to a mid-term redrawing of maps that was recently approved in the Lone Star State, which installed maps that will provide the GOP an additional five seats in the state congressional delegation next year; similar redistricting moves are under way in states such as Missouri and Indiana. (Democrats in Virginia are also emulating California’s example in attempting to alter districts.)

The state measure seems probable to pass, as Democratic and liberal electorate react with fear and frustration to the president’s authoritarian centralization of authority and seek ways to restrain his most extreme impulses. But Prop 50 is not without controversy. Some critics warn that the action could have unintended consequences, with Democratic-controlled states’ attempts to change districts setting off a retaliatory cycle in which red states do additional to design their districts so as to eliminate any chance of Democratic competitiveness. Others have critiqued the proposal on more purely ideological democratic grounds: a electoral area that is drawn in such a manner that the result of the election is never really in question, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely representative: it implies, inevitably, that the power of dissenting voices is muted, and that the process of deliberation, argument and convincing that is supposed to define a healthy democratic process will be confined only to party primaries, if it happens at all.

It is valuable considering each of these criticisms on their own terms. The first argument, that the measure will spur conservatives to alter their respective maps in retaliation, fails as a causal argument: it is illogical to claim that Republicans will be made to act in undemocratic ways by the left’s actions when they are already engaging in such behavior in the absence of those actions. The Republican party, I would observe, has not needed any motivation of retaliation to redraw maps that guarantee permanent seats for their party: they have been ready to do this for its own sake, in the total absence of Democratic reciprocation, for a long time.

The second objection, in my view, is more significant, reflecting not just a tactical disagreement about how to confront the Republicans’ anti-democracy turn, but a kind of sad wish for a different nation than the one that the US has turned into. It is true that in a more ideal world – in the reality that the majority of Democrats, it is believed, yearn for and hope for – Prop 50 would be unappealing to our values, and not required by our situation. It is not good to pack and crack targeted demographics; it is harmful for elected officials to select their voters, instead of the other way around; it is negative that elections are rendered noncompetitive. That these measures have grown necessary in order to slow the autocratic creep of Trump’s control and lessen the amount of suffering he is capable to inflict is sad; it is a indication of how much we have fallen from a state more like a representative government. But they are necessary. Only once the fight against the current administration’s ideology has been successfully concluded that we can mourn what opposing it has made us.

If the legislative branch fails to in practice have lawmaking, military or budgetary authority, what is it, precisely, that Prop 50’s five new Democratic representatives will be dispatched to the capital to do? One aspect that Congress continues to retains is subpoena power, and the power to examine. Even in our time of stagnant politics and congressional atrophy, it has made use of that authority to great effect. In the coming years, if Prop 50 passes and the state’s additional Democrats are take office, they will become a part of a institution with the authority to investigate the president, to televise their investigations into his conduct and to force members of his inner circle to testify. It’s not nothing, and more importantly, it’s not something that any Republican would do.

• Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist