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What, precisely, is the role of the U.S. Congress? In the second Trump administration, it can be hard to determine. The power to declare war, traditionally viewed as a crucial legislative power, has turned into a murky right of the presidential office in the years since September 11; Trump, in the past few months, has asserted additional of that control for himself, authorizing strikes on vessels in the Caribbean Sea.

The power of the purse seems to have largely been stripped from the legislative branch as well; now, under the office of management and budget director, Russell Vought, much of the power to allocate government money has also defaulted to the presidency, with the administration asserting the authority to abort congressionally authorized spending and attempting to redirect the funds to other uses. It’s as if they’re passing any legislation, anyway; virtually all bills must now be packed into budget reconciliation bills, huge recurring essential omnibus legislation that can circumvent the senate obstruction. But when these fail to be approved – and increasingly, they don’t – the government simply shuts down. That is, big parts of the administration shut down – and it’s not clear how many people notice. At present, the federal government has been shut down all month; there are no signs of it resuming operations anytime soon. But the presidency keeps on operating smoothly.

And so the issue of control of Congress can seem somewhat irrelevant. Why should U.S. citizens be concerned who has a controlling share in a body that has largely rendered itself powerless?

How ‘oppose the president’ rhetoric may assist California’s Prop 50 succeed

And yet Prop 50, California’s redistricting referendum that could provide five more House seats to the Democrats if it is approved by the electorate in a special election next month, has seized the attention of progressives nationwide. In part, it is a belated response to trends occurring in other states: GOP-led states have for a long time adopted extreme partisan gerrymandering while large Democratic-controlled such as the Golden State, the Empire State and the Evergreen State create their maps 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 countermove to a mid-decade redistricting that recently passed in the Lone Star State, which installed boundaries that will give the GOP an additional five positions in the state’s congressional delegation next year; similar redistricting moves are under way in states such as Missouri and the Hoosier State. (Democrats in the Old Dominion are likewise emulating California’s example in seeking to alter districts.)

The California measure seems probable to be approved, as progressive electorate respond with fear and anger to Trump’s authoritarian centralization of power and seek ways to check his worst impulses. But Prop 50 is not without controversy. Some critics warn that the move could backfire, with Democratic-controlled states’ efforts to redistrict triggering a revenge pattern in which Republican-controlled states do additional to design their districts so as to foreclose any possibility of opposition party success. Different critics have critiqued the measure on more purely ideological democratic bases: a electoral area that is created in such a way that the outcome of the election is not in question, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be truly representative: it means, inevitably, that the power of dissenting views is muted, and that the procedure of deliberation, discussion and persuasion that is meant to characterize a functioning political system will be limited only to party primaries, if it happens at all.

It is worth considering each of these objections on their own terms. The initial critique, that Prop 50 will spur conservatives to redraw their own districts in retaliation, does not hold up as a causal point: it is illogical to say that the GOP will be compelled to behave in antidemocratic ways by the left’s measures when they are already doing so in the absence of those steps. The GOP, I would observe, has not needed any motivation of revenge to redraw maps that guarantee long-term positions for themselves: they have been ready to do this for its own sake, in the complete absence of Democratic reciprocation, for years.

The other objection, I think, is more significant, reflecting not just a tactical difference about how to address the GOP’s undemocratic shift, but a kind of sad desire 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 Democrats, it is believed, desire and hope for – the proposition would be unappealing to our values, and not required by our circumstances. It is not good to manipulate targeted population groups; it is harmful for elected officials to choose their constituents, rather than the other way around; it is not good that elections are made uncontested. That these actions have grown essential in order to slow the authoritarian creep of the president’s control and reduce the level of suffering he is capable to inflict is sad; it is a indication of how far we have declined from something more like a representative government. But they are required. It is only after the fight against the current administration’s ideology has been successfully concluded that we can lament what fighting it has transformed us into.

If the legislative branch does not in practice have lawmaking, military or appropriations authority, what is it, precisely, that the proposition’s five new Democratic house members will be dispatched to Washington to do? One thing that Congress still retains is the authority to compel testimony, and the power to investigate. Even in our time of stagnant government and congressional atrophy, it has made use of that authority to significant impact. In the coming years, if the measure is approved and the state’s additional representatives are sworn in, they will find themselves a member of a institution with the power to probe the president, to televise their investigations into his actions and to force associates of his inner circle to testify. It’s not nothing, and crucially, it’s not anything that any Republican would do.

• Moira Donegan is a Guardian US writer