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What, precisely, is the role of the U.S. Congress? During another Trump administration, it can be hard to determine. The power to initiate armed conflict, long considered a vital congressional authority, has turned into a murky right of the executive branch in the years since the 9/11 attacks; the president, in recent months, has claimed additional of that control for his administration, authorizing military actions on boats in the Caribbean.

The power of the purse seems to have mostly been taken away from Congress as well; currently, under the leadership of management and budget director, Russell Vought, much of the ability to allocate federal funds has also defaulted to the presidency, with the White House asserting the ability to abort congressionally authorized expenditures and attempting to move the money to other uses. It’s not like they’re enacting any legislation, either; almost all legislation must now be packed into budget reconciliation bills, massive perennial essential omnibus legislation that can circumvent the filibuster. But when those don’t pass – and more and more, they do not – the federal government just shuts down. That is, big parts of the government do – and it’s not clear how many people are aware. At present, the federal government has been closed all month; there are no signs of it resuming operations anytime soon. But the presidency continues operating smoothly.

And so the issue of dominance of Congress can seem rather moot. Why should U.S. citizens care who holds a controlling share in a body that has mostly rendered itself powerless?

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

And yet Proposition 50, California’s redistricting referendum that could provide five additional congressional positions to the Democrats if it is embraced by voters in a upcoming vote next month, has seized the attention of progressives nationwide. Partly, it is a belated response to developments occurring elsewhere: GOP-led states have long embraced dramatic partisan gerrymandering while large Democratic-controlled such as California, New York and Washington create their maps via nonpartisan independent commissions, an asymmetry that has resulted in closely divided control of the House and a long-term sense, by Democrats, that their party is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The state proposal is explicitly intended as a countermove to a mid-decade redrawing of maps that was recently approved in Texas, which implemented boundaries that will provide Republicans an five more positions 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 likewise emulating the state’s lead in seeking to redistrict.)

The California initiative seems probable to be approved, as progressive electorate respond with concern and anger to the president’s autocratic centralization of authority and look for methods to check his most extreme tendencies. But the proposition is not free from debate. Some opponents caution that the move could backfire, with Democratic-controlled states’ efforts to change districts triggering a revenge pattern in which Republican-controlled states do even more to draw their maps so as to foreclose any chance of Democratic competitiveness. Different critics have critiqued the measure on more purely principled democratic bases: a district 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 truly representative: it means, necessarily, that the power of dissenting views is suppressed, and that the procedure of deliberation, argument and convincing that is meant to characterize a functioning democratic process will be limited only to primary elections, if it occurs at all.

It is worth considering each of these criticisms on their own terms. The first argument, that Prop 50 will provoke the right to alter their own maps in retaliation, fails as a logical point: it is illogical to claim that Republicans will be made to behave in undemocratic ways by the left’s measures when they are already engaging in such behavior without those actions. The GOP, 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 lack of Democratic reciprocation, for years.

The other critique, I think, is more substantive, reflecting not just a tactical disagreement about how to confront the Republicans’ anti-democracy turn, but a kind of sad wish for a distinct nation than the one that the United States has turned into. It is accurate that in a more ideal world – in the reality that most the left, I think, desire and aspire to – Prop 50 would be distasteful to our values, and not mandated by our situation. It is not good to pack and crack targeted population groups; it is harmful for elected officials to choose their voters, rather than the other way around; it is negative that elections are rendered noncompetitive. That these measures have become necessary in order to impede the autocratic advance of Trump’s power and reduce the level of suffering he is able to cause is unfortunate; it is a sign of how much we have declined from a state more like a democracy. But they are necessary. Only after the fight against the current administration’s ideology has been won that we can mourn what fighting it has made us.

If Congress does not in practice have lawmaking, war making or budgetary authority, what is it, precisely, that Prop 50’s five new Democratic representatives will be sent to the capital to do? One thing that the House and Senate continues to retains is subpoena power, and the ability to investigate. Even in our era of stagnant politics and legislative decline, it has made use of that power to great effect. In 2027, if the measure is approved and California’s additional Democrats are sworn in, they will become a part of a body with the power to investigate the president, to broadcast their investigations into his conduct and to force associates of his inner circle to give evidence. It’s significant, and more importantly, it’s not something that any Republican would do.

• Moira Donegan is a Guardian US writer