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What, exactly, is the role of the U.S. Congress? In the second presidency of Donald Trump, it is difficult to tell. The power to declare war, long considered a vital congressional authority, has become a unclear right of the executive branch in the years since the 9/11 attacks; Trump, in recent months, has asserted even more of that power for himself, conducting military actions on boats in the Caribbean.

The power of the purse appears to be largely been taken away from the legislative branch as well; now, under the office of management and budget director, Russell Vought, much of the ability to appropriate federal funds has also shifted to the presidency, with the White House asserting the authority to abort legislatively approved spending and attempting to redirect the money to other uses. It’s as if they’re passing any legislation, either; virtually all legislation must now be packed into budget reconciliation bills, huge recurring essential comprehensive bills that can bypass the filibuster. But when these fail to be approved – and more and more, they do not – 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. At present, the government has been shut down for the entire month; there are no signs of it reopening anytime soon. But the presidency continues operating smoothly.

And so the issue of dominance of the House and Senate can seem somewhat irrelevant. Why should Americans care who holds a controlling share in a institution that has mostly abolished itself?

How ‘oppose the president’ messaging may help California’s Prop 50 succeed

And yet Prop 50, California’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could deliver five more House seats to the Democratic Party if it is embraced by the electorate in a special election next month, has captured the political imagination of liberals nationwide. Partly, it is a delayed response to developments occurring in other states: GOP-led states have long embraced dramatic partisan gerrymandering while big Democratic-controlled such as California, the Empire State and the Evergreen State draw their district lines via nonpartisan independent commissions, an imbalance that has led to closely divided House control and a long-term feeling, by Democrats, that their party is at a disadvantage. The California measure is explicitly designed as a response to a mid-decade redistricting that recently passed in the Lone Star State, which installed boundaries that will give Republicans an five more positions in the state congressional delegation next year; comparable redistricting moves are in progress in states such as Missouri and Indiana. (The left in the Old Dominion are likewise emulating California’s lead in attempting to redistrict.)

The state measure seems likely to be approved, as progressive voters react with fear and frustration to Trump’s authoritarian consolidation of power and seek ways to restrain his worst impulses. But the proposition is not free from debate. Some opponents caution that the move could backfire, with blue states’ efforts to change districts triggering a retaliatory cycle in which red states do additional to design their maps so as to foreclose any chance of opposition party success. Different critics have critiqued the measure on strictly ideological pro-democracy grounds: a district that is created in such a way that the outcome of the vote is never really in question, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be truly democratic: it means, inevitably, that the influence of opposing views is muted, and that the procedure of debate, discussion and convincing that is supposed to define a functioning democratic process will be confined only to primary elections, if it happens at all.

It is worth considering each of these criticisms on their own terms. The initial argument, that the measure will spur conservatives to redraw their respective maps in retaliation, fails as a causal point: it does not make sense to claim that the GOP will be compelled to behave in antidemocratic ways by the left’s measures when they are already engaging in such behavior in the absence of those actions. The GOP, I would observe, has required no any incentive of retaliation to change boundaries that guarantee permanent seats for their party: they have been willing to do this for their own benefit, in the complete lack of Democratic reciprocation, for years.

The other critique, in my view, is more significant, expressing not just a tactical difference about how to address the Republicans’ anti-democracy shift, but a kind of sad desire for a different country than the one that the US has turned into. It is accurate that in a more ideal world – in the reality that most Democrats, I think, yearn for and aspire to – the proposition would be distasteful to our principles, and not required by our situation. It is not good to manipulate targeted population groups; it is not good for elected officials to select their voters, instead of the reverse; it is not good that votes are made noncompetitive. That these measures have grown necessary in order to slow the autocratic advance of Trump’s power and lessen the level of suffering he is able to inflict is unfortunate; it is a sign of how much we have fallen from something more like a representative government. But they are required. It is only after the battle against the current administration’s ideology has been won that we can lament what fighting it has made us.

If Congress fails to in reality have legislative, war making or appropriations power, what is it, precisely, that the proposition’s five new Democratic house members will be dispatched to the capital to do? One aspect that Congress still holds is the authority to compel testimony, and the power to investigate. Even in our era of stagnant politics and legislative decline, it has made use of that authority to significant impact. In 2027, if the measure is approved and California’s additional Democrats are take office, they will find themselves a member of a institution with the authority to investigate the president, to broadcast their investigations into his conduct and to force associates of his close advisors to give evidence. It’s not nothing, and more importantly, it’s not anything that any Republican would do.

• The columnist is a Guardian US writer