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What, precisely, is the role of the U.S. Congress? In the second Trump administration, it is difficult to determine. The authority to initiate armed conflict, long considered a vital congressional authority, has turned into a unclear right of the executive branch in the years since September 11; Trump, in the past few months, has claimed even more of that control for himself, conducting strikes on boats in the Caribbean Sea.

The authority over spending appears to be largely been stripped from Congress too; currently, under the office of budget chief, the OMB director, much of the power to allocate government money has likewise shifted to the executive, with the White House claiming the ability to cancel congressionally authorized expenditures and seeking to redirect the money elsewhere. It’s not like they’re passing any legislation, anyway; almost all legislation must now be crammed into budget reconciliation bills, massive perennial must-spend comprehensive bills that can circumvent the senate obstruction. But when these fail to be approved – and increasingly, they don’t – the government just ceases operations. At least, big parts of the government do – and it’s uncertain how many citizens are aware. At present, the government has been shut down for the entire month; there are no signs of it reopening in the near future. But the executive branch continues humming along.

And so the question of dominance of Congress can appear somewhat moot. Why should Americans be concerned who has a majority in a institution that has mostly rendered itself powerless?

In what way ‘oppose the president’ messaging may assist California’s Prop 50 succeed

And yet Prop 50, California’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 in the coming weeks, has captured the attention of progressives nationwide. Partly, it is a delayed reaction to trends happening elsewhere: Republican-controlled states have long embraced extreme biased redistricting while large Democratic-controlled such as California, New York and Washington draw their maps via nonpartisan redistricting panels, an asymmetry that has resulted in closely divided control of the House and a long-term feeling, by Democrats, that their party is at a disadvantage. The California proposal is clearly intended as a countermove to a mid-decade redistricting that recently passed in Texas, which installed boundaries that will provide Republicans an five more seats in the state’s House representation in the upcoming term; similar redistricting moves are under way in states such as Missouri and Indiana. (The left in the Old Dominion are also emulating California’s lead in attempting to alter districts.)

The state initiative seems probable to be approved, as progressive voters respond with concern and anger to the president’s authoritarian centralization of power and look for ways to check his most extreme tendencies. But Prop 50 is not without debate. Some critics caution that the move could have unintended consequences, with blue states’ efforts to change districts setting off a revenge cycle in which Republican-controlled states do additional to design their maps so as to eliminate any possibility of Democratic competitiveness. Different critics have critiqued the measure on more purely ideological pro-democracy grounds: a electoral area that is created in such a manner that the result of the vote is never really in doubt, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be truly democratic: it implies, necessarily, that the influence of opposing views is suppressed, and that the procedure of deliberation, discussion and convincing that is meant to define a functioning democratic process will be limited only to primary elections, if it happens at all.

It is valuable considering each of these objections on their own terms. The initial critique, that Prop 50 will provoke conservatives to redraw their own districts in response, does not hold up as a logical point: it is illogical to claim that Republicans 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 motivation of revenge to redraw maps that guarantee permanent positions for themselves: they have been willing to do this for its own sake, in the complete absence of similar actions by the left, for a long time.

The other critique, in my view, is more significant, expressing not just a strategic difference about how to address the Republicans’ anti-democracy turn, but a sort of sad 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 world that the majority of Democrats, I think, desire and aspire to – Prop 50 would be distasteful to our principles, and not mandated by our circumstances. It is not good to manipulate targeted demographics; it is not good for politicians to choose their constituents, rather than the other way around; it is negative that elections are rendered uncontested. That these actions have grown essential in order to slow the autocratic creep of Trump’s control and reduce the amount of harm he is capable to cause is unfortunate; it is a sign of how much we have fallen from something more like a democracy. But they are required. It is only once the fight against the current administration’s ideology has been won that we can mourn what fighting it has transformed us into.

If the legislative branch does not in practice have lawmaking, war making or budgetary power, what is it, precisely, that the proposition’s five new blue representatives will be dispatched to Washington to do? One aspect that the House and Senate still holds is the authority to compel testimony, and the ability to examine. Even in our time of stagnant politics and legislative decline, it has utilized of that power to great effect. In 2027, if the measure is approved and California’s additional representatives are sworn in, they will become a part of a body with the power to probe the president, to broadcast their hearings into his conduct and to force associates of his close advisors to testify. It’s significant, and more importantly, it’s not something that any Republican would do.

• Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist