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What, precisely, is the role of Congress? In the second presidency of Donald Trump, it can be hard to tell. The authority to initiate armed conflict, long considered a vital congressional authority, has turned into a unclear right of the executive branch in the time since the 9/11 attacks; Trump, in recent months, has claimed additional of that control for his administration, authorizing strikes on vessels in the Caribbean.

The authority over spending seems to have mostly been stripped from Congress too; currently, under the office of management and budget director, Russell Vought, a great deal of the power to allocate federal funds has also defaulted to the executive, with the White House claiming the ability to cancel legislatively approved spending and attempting to move the money to other uses. It’s as if they’re passing any legislation, either; almost all legislation must now be crammed into spending packages, massive perennial essential omnibus legislation that can bypass the senate obstruction. But when these don’t pass – and increasingly, they don’t – the federal government just ceases operations. At least, large sections of the government shut down – and it’s uncertain how many people notice. At present, the federal government has been closed for the entire month; there are no signs of it resuming operations in the near future. But the executive branch keeps on operating smoothly.

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

How ‘oppose the president’ rhetoric may assist California’s Prop 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 the electorate in a upcoming vote in the coming weeks, has seized the attention of liberals nationwide. In part, it is a belated response to developments occurring in other states: GOP-led states have long adopted dramatic biased redistricting while large Democratic-controlled such as California, the Empire State and Washington create their district lines via impartial independent commissions, an asymmetry that has resulted in narrowly split House control and a longstanding feeling, by the left, that their party is at a disadvantage. The California proposal is clearly intended as a countermove to a mid-term redistricting that recently passed in Texas, which installed maps that will provide the GOP an five more positions in the state’s House representation in the upcoming term; comparable redistricting moves are in progress in states such as the Show-Me State and the Hoosier State. (Democrats in the Old Dominion are also emulating California’s lead in seeking to alter districts.)

The state initiative seems likely to pass, as Democratic and liberal electorate react with concern and frustration to Trump’s autocratic consolidation of authority and look for ways to restrain his most extreme tendencies. But Prop 50 is not free from controversy. Some opponents warn that the action could have unintended consequences, with blue states’ efforts to redistrict setting off a revenge pattern in which Republican-controlled states do even more to design their districts so as to foreclose any chance of Democratic competitiveness. Others have critiqued the proposal on more purely principled democratic bases: a district 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 genuinely representative: it implies, necessarily, that the power of dissenting views is suppressed, and that the procedure of debate, discussion and convincing that is supposed to characterize a functioning democratic process will be limited only to party primaries, if it occurs at all.

It is valuable taking each of these objections on their merits. The initial argument, that Prop 50 will provoke the right to alter their respective maps in response, fails as a causal point: it is illogical to say that the GOP will be compelled to act in antidemocratic ways by the left’s measures when they are already engaging in such behavior without those actions. The Republican party, it can be noted, has not needed any incentive of retaliation to change maps that secure permanent seats for their party: they have been ready to do this for their own benefit, in the complete absence of Democratic reciprocation, for years.

The second objection, I think, is more significant, reflecting not just a tactical difference about how to confront the GOP’s anti-democracy shift, but a kind of sad wish for a different country 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, it is believed, yearn for and hope for – the proposition would be distasteful to our principles, and not mandated by our situation. It is not good to manipulate disfavored demographics; it is harmful for elected officials to choose their constituents, rather than the other way around; it is negative that elections are made uncontested. That these measures have grown essential in order to slow the autocratic creep of the president’s power and lessen the level of harm he is able to inflict is sad; it is a indication of how much we have fallen from something more like a democracy. But they are necessary. It is only once the battle against the current administration’s ideology has been successfully concluded that we can lament what fighting it has made us.

If the legislative branch fails to in practice have legislative, military or budgetary power, what is it, precisely, that Prop 50’s five new blue house members will be dispatched to Washington to do? One aspect that the House and Senate continues to holds is the authority to compel testimony, and the ability to examine. Even in our era of sclerotic government and congressional atrophy, it has made use of that power to significant impact. In 2027, if Prop 50 passes and California’s new Democrats are take office, they will become a member of a institution with the authority to investigate Trump, to televise their hearings into his conduct and to force associates of his close advisors to testify. It’s significant, and crucially, it’s not anything that any Republican would do.

• The columnist is a Guardian US writer