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What, exactly, is the role of Congress? During another Trump administration, it can be hard to tell. The power to declare war, long considered a vital congressional authority, has turned into a murky prerogative of the presidential office in the years since the 9/11 attacks; Trump, in recent months, has asserted even more of that control for himself, conducting military actions on vessels in the Caribbean.

The power of the purse seems to have mostly been taken away from Congress too; now, under the leadership of budget chief, the OMB director, much of the ability to appropriate federal funds has also defaulted to the executive, with the White House claiming the ability to abort legislatively approved expenditures and seeking to redirect the money to other uses. It’s as if they’re enacting any laws, anyway; virtually all bills must now be crammed into budget reconciliation bills, massive recurring must-spend omnibus legislation that can circumvent the filibuster. But when these fail to be approved – and increasingly, they do not – the federal government just ceases operations. At least, big parts of the government do – and it’s uncertain how many people notice. Currently, the government has been shut down all month; there are no signs of it reopening anytime soon. But the executive branch continues operating smoothly.

And so the question of control of Congress can appear somewhat moot. Why should Americans care who holds a majority in a institution that has largely rendered itself powerless?

How ‘oppose the president’ messaging may assist the state of California’s Proposition 50 succeed

And yet Prop 50, the Golden State’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could provide five additional congressional positions to the Democrats if it is embraced by voters in a upcoming vote in the coming weeks, has captured the political imagination of progressives nationwide. In part, it is a belated response to trends happening in other states: Republican-controlled states have for a long time embraced extreme biased redistricting while big blue states such as the Golden State, the Empire State and the Evergreen State create their maps via nonpartisan independent commissions, an asymmetry that has led to narrowly split control of the House and a longstanding sense, by the left, that their party is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The state measure is explicitly designed as a response to a mid-decade redrawing of maps that was recently approved in the Lone Star State, which implemented maps that will give Republicans an additional five positions in the state House representation next year; comparable redistricting moves are in progress in states such as Missouri and the Hoosier State. (The left in the Old Dominion are also following California’s lead in attempting to alter districts.)

The state measure seems likely to be approved, as Democratic and liberal voters react with fear and frustration to the president’s autocratic centralization of power and seek ways to check his worst impulses. But the proposition is not free from controversy. Some critics warn that the move could backfire, with blue states’ attempts to redistrict triggering a retaliatory cycle in which Republican-controlled states do additional to draw their districts so as to foreclose any possibility of Democratic competitiveness. Others have questioned the proposal on more purely ideological pro-democracy grounds: a electoral area that is created in such a manner that the outcome of the election is not in question, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely democratic: it implies, necessarily, that the influence of dissenting views is muted, and that the process of debate, argument and persuasion that is meant to define a healthy political system will be confined only to party primaries, if it happens at all.

It is valuable considering each of these objections on their own terms. The first critique, that Prop 50 will provoke conservatives to redraw their own districts in response, fails as a logical point: it does not make sense to say that Republicans will be made to act in undemocratic ways by Democrats’ 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 revenge to change maps that guarantee permanent positions for themselves: they have been willing to do this for its own sake, in the complete absence of Democratic reciprocation, for years.

The other critique, I think, is more significant, expressing not just a tactical difference about how to address the GOP’s anti-democracy turn, but a kind 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 reality that most Democrats, it is believed, yearn for and aspire to – Prop 50 would be distasteful to our values, and not mandated by our situation. It is undesirable to pack and crack disfavored population groups; it is not good for elected officials to select their voters, rather than the other way around; it is negative that elections are rendered uncontested. That these actions have grown essential in order to impede the authoritarian advance of the president’s control and lessen the level of suffering he is able to inflict is unfortunate; it is a indication of how far we have declined from a state more like a representative government. But they are necessary. Only once the battle against Trumpism has been won that we can lament what opposing it has made us.

If Congress fails to in reality have lawmaking, military or appropriations authority, what is it, exactly, that Prop 50’s additional five Democratic representatives will be sent to Washington to do? One aspect that the House and Senate still holds is the authority to compel testimony, and the power to examine. Even in our time of stagnant politics and congressional atrophy, it has utilized of that authority to great effect. In 2027, if the measure is approved and California’s additional Democrats are sworn in, they will find themselves a part of a institution with the power to probe the president, to broadcast their hearings into his conduct and to compel members of his inner circle to testify. It’s significant, and crucially, it’s not anything that any conservative would do.

• Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist