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What, precisely, is the role of the U.S. Congress? During another presidency of Donald Trump, it is difficult to determine. The power to declare war, long considered a crucial congressional authority, has turned into a murky prerogative of the presidential office in the time since the 9/11 attacks; the president, in the past few months, has claimed additional of that power for himself, authorizing strikes on vessels in the Caribbean.

The power of the purse appears to be largely been taken away from Congress as well; currently, under the office of budget chief, Russell Vought, a great deal of the ability to allocate federal funds has likewise shifted to the executive, with the White House asserting the ability to abort legislatively approved spending and seeking to redirect the money to other uses. It’s as if they’re enacting any legislation, either; virtually all bills must currently be crammed into budget reconciliation bills, massive recurring must-spend omnibus legislation that can circumvent the filibuster. But when those don’t pass – and more and more, they don’t – the government just ceases operations. That is, big parts of the government do – and it’s not clear how many people are aware. At present, the government has been closed for the entire month; there are no signs of it resuming operations anytime soon. But the presidency 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 institution that has mostly rendered itself powerless?

In what way ‘screw Trump’ rhetoric could assist California’s Prop 50 prevail

And yet Prop 50, California’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could provide five more congressional positions to the Democrats if it is approved by the electorate in a upcoming vote in the coming weeks, has captured the attention of liberals nationwide. Partly, it is a delayed response to trends happening elsewhere: Republican-controlled states have long adopted extreme biased redistricting while big Democratic-controlled such as the Golden State, New York and Washington draw their maps via nonpartisan independent commissions, an imbalance that has led to closely divided House control and a longstanding sense, by Democrats, that their party is at a disadvantage. The California measure is explicitly 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 give the GOP an additional five positions in the state’s congressional delegation in the upcoming term; similar redistricting moves are under way in states such as the Show-Me State and the Hoosier State. (Democrats in Virginia are also emulating California’s lead in attempting to redistrict.)

The California initiative seems likely to pass, as Democratic and liberal electorate react with concern and anger to Trump’s authoritarian centralization of power and seek methods to restrain his most extreme tendencies. But Prop 50 is not without controversy. Some critics caution that the action could backfire, with blue states’ efforts to redistrict triggering a revenge pattern in which red states do even more to design their maps so as to foreclose any chance of Democratic competitiveness. Others have questioned the measure on more purely principled democratic bases: a district that is drawn in such a manner that the outcome of the vote is not in question, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be truly representative: it means, inevitably, that the power of opposing voices is suppressed, and that the procedure of deliberation, discussion and convincing that is meant to define a healthy political system will be limited only to primary elections, if it happens at all.

It is worth considering each of these criticisms on their own terms. The first critique, that the measure will provoke conservatives to alter their respective maps in retaliation, does not hold up as a logical point: it is illogical to claim that the GOP will be compelled to act in undemocratic ways by Democrats’ measures when they are already engaging in such behavior in the absence of those steps. The Republican party, I would observe, has not needed any incentive of retaliation to redraw maps that secure permanent positions for themselves: they have been willing to do this for their own benefit, in the total lack of Democratic reciprocation, for a long time.

The other objection, I think, is more substantive, expressing not just a strategic disagreement about how to address the GOP’s undemocratic turn, but a sort of melancholic desire for a distinct country 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, I think, desire and aspire to – Prop 50 would be unappealing to our values, and not required by our circumstances. It is not good to pack and crack targeted population groups; it is not good for politicians to select their constituents, rather than the reverse; it is negative that elections are made uncontested. That these measures have grown essential in order to slow the autocratic advance of the president’s control and lessen the level of suffering he is able to cause is unfortunate; it is a indication of how far we have declined from something 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 mourn what fighting it has transformed us into.

If the legislative branch fails to in reality have legislative, military or appropriations authority, what is it, exactly, that the proposition’s additional five blue representatives will be sent to Washington to do? One thing that the House and Senate still retains is the authority to compel testimony, and the ability to investigate. Even in our era of stagnant government and legislative decline, it has made use of that authority to significant impact. In the coming years, if the measure is approved and the state’s new representatives are take office, they will become a member of a body with the authority to investigate Trump, to broadcast their investigations into his actions and to force members of his close advisors to give evidence. It’s significant, and crucially, it’s not anything that any conservative would do.

• The columnist is a Guardian US writer