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What, exactly, is the role of the U.S. Congress? During another presidency of Donald Trump, it can be hard to determine. The authority to declare war, long considered a vital congressional authority, has turned into a murky right of the presidential office in the time since September 11; the president, in the past few months, has claimed even more of that control for his administration, conducting military actions on boats in the Caribbean.

The power of the purse seems to have largely been stripped from Congress too; currently, under the leadership of management and budget director, Russell Vought, much of the power to appropriate government money has also defaulted to the presidency, with the administration asserting the authority to cancel legislatively approved spending and seeking to redirect the money elsewhere. It’s as if they’re passing any legislation, either; virtually all legislation must currently be packed into spending packages, massive perennial essential comprehensive bills that can bypass the senate obstruction. But when those fail to be approved – and more and more, they don’t – the government just shuts down. At least, big parts of the administration do – and it’s uncertain how many people are aware. At present, the government has been closed all month; there are no signs of it reopening in the near future. But the presidency keeps on operating smoothly.

And so the issue of dominance of the House and Senate can appear rather moot. Why should U.S. citizens care who has a controlling share in a body that has largely rendered itself powerless?

In what way ‘oppose the president’ messaging may help California’s Proposition 50 prevail

And yet Proposition 50, the Golden State’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could deliver five more congressional positions to the Democrats if it is embraced by voters in a upcoming vote in the coming weeks, has seized the political imagination of progressives nationwide. In part, it is a delayed reaction to developments occurring elsewhere: GOP-led states have long embraced dramatic biased redistricting while big Democratic-controlled such as California, New York and the Evergreen State create their district lines via nonpartisan independent commissions, an asymmetry that has led to closely divided House control and a long-term feeling, by Democrats, that their party is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The California proposal is explicitly designed as a countermove to a mid-decade redrawing of maps that was recently approved in Texas, which implemented boundaries that will give Republicans an five more seats in the state’s House representation in the upcoming term; comparable boundary changes are under way in states such as the Show-Me State and the Hoosier State. (The left in the Old Dominion are also following the state’s lead in attempting to alter districts.)

The California measure seems likely to pass, as Democratic and liberal voters respond with concern and frustration to Trump’s authoritarian consolidation of authority and seek methods to restrain his worst tendencies. But the proposition is not without controversy. Some opponents warn that the move could backfire, with Democratic-controlled states’ efforts to change districts triggering a revenge cycle in which Republican-controlled states do additional to draw their districts so as to foreclose any possibility of opposition party success. Different critics have questioned the measure on strictly principled democratic bases: a electoral area that is created in such a manner that the outcome of the vote is never really in doubt, they say, is one that cannot be said to be truly democratic: it implies, inevitably, that the power of opposing voices is muted, and that the process of deliberation, discussion and convincing that is supposed to define a functioning political system will be confined only to primary elections, if it happens at all.

It is valuable taking each of these objections on their merits. The initial argument, that Prop 50 will provoke the right to redraw their own maps in response, fails as a logical argument: it does not make sense to say that Republicans will be compelled to act in antidemocratic ways by Democrats’ actions when they are already engaging in such behavior without those actions. The Republican party, I would observe, has required no any incentive of revenge to redraw maps that secure long-term seats for their party: they have been ready to do this for their own benefit, in the total absence of similar actions by the left, for a long time.

The second objection, I think, is more substantive, expressing not just a strategic disagreement about how to address the GOP’s undemocratic turn, but a kind of sad desire for a distinct nation than the one that the US has turned into. It is true that in a more ideal world – in the world that most Democrats, it is believed, yearn for and aspire to – the proposition would be unappealing to our principles, and not mandated by our circumstances. It is not good to pack and crack targeted demographics; it is not good for politicians to select their constituents, rather than the other way around; it is not good that votes are rendered uncontested. That these measures have grown necessary in order to slow the authoritarian creep of the president’s power and lessen the amount of harm he is able to inflict is unfortunate; it is a indication of how far we have fallen from something more like a representative government. But they are necessary. It is only after the battle against Trumpism has been successfully concluded that we can mourn what fighting it has transformed us into.

If the legislative branch fails to in reality have lawmaking, military or budgetary power, what is it, precisely, that Prop 50’s additional five blue representatives will be dispatched to Washington to do? One thing that the House and Senate continues to retains is the authority to compel testimony, and the ability to investigate. Even in our era of sclerotic government and legislative decline, it has made use of that power to significant impact. In the coming years, if the measure is approved and the state’s new representatives are sworn in, they will become a part of a body with the authority to investigate Trump, to televise their investigations into his actions and to compel members of his inner circle to testify. It’s significant, and crucially, it’s not something that any Republican would do.

• The columnist is a Guardian US writer