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What, precisely, is the role of Congress? In the second Trump administration, it is difficult to determine. The power to initiate armed conflict, traditionally viewed as a crucial congressional authority, has become a murky right of the executive branch in the years since September 11; the president, in the past few months, has claimed even more of that power for himself, authorizing strikes on boats in the Caribbean Sea.

The authority over spending seems to have mostly been stripped from the legislative branch too; now, under the office of budget chief, Russell Vought, much of the power to appropriate federal funds has also shifted to the presidency, with the White House claiming the authority to cancel legislatively approved expenditures and seeking to move the funds to other uses. It’s as if they’re enacting any laws, either; almost all bills must currently be crammed into spending packages, huge perennial must-spend comprehensive bills that can circumvent the senate obstruction. But when these don’t pass – and increasingly, they don’t – the government just shuts down. At least, big parts of the government shut down – and it’s not clear how many citizens are aware. At present, the federal government has been shut down for the entire month; there are little indication of it reopening anytime soon. But the executive branch continues operating smoothly.

And so the question of dominance of Congress can seem somewhat moot. Why should Americans be concerned who holds a majority in a body that has mostly abolished itself?

In what way ‘screw Trump’ rhetoric may help the state of California’s Proposition 50 prevail

And yet Proposition 50, the Golden State’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could provide five additional House seats to the Democrats if it is approved by the electorate in a upcoming vote in the coming weeks, has seized the attention of progressives across the country. Partly, it is a belated response to trends occurring in other states: GOP-led states have long adopted extreme biased redistricting while big blue states such as the Golden State, the Empire State and Washington create their district lines via nonpartisan redistricting panels, an asymmetry that has led to narrowly split control of the House and a longstanding feeling, by the left, that their party is at a disadvantage. The California proposal is explicitly designed as a countermove to a mid-term redrawing of maps that was recently approved in Texas, which installed boundaries that will provide the GOP an five more seats in the state’s congressional delegation next year; comparable redistricting moves are under way in states such as the Show-Me State and Indiana. (Democrats in Virginia are also emulating California’s lead in seeking to redistrict.)

The state measure seems likely to pass, as progressive electorate react with fear and anger to Trump’s autocratic centralization of authority and look for ways to restrain his most extreme tendencies. But the proposition is not without debate. Some critics caution that the move could backfire, with Democratic-controlled states’ efforts to change districts setting off a retaliatory cycle in which Republican-controlled states do additional to design their maps so as to eliminate any chance of Democratic competitiveness. Different critics have critiqued the proposal on strictly ideological pro-democracy bases: a electoral area that is drawn in such a manner that the result of the election is never really in doubt, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely democratic: it implies, inevitably, that the power of opposing voices is suppressed, and that the process of debate, discussion and persuasion that is supposed to define a healthy political system will be limited only to party primaries, if it occurs at all.

It is worth taking each of these criticisms on their own terms. The first critique, that Prop 50 will provoke conservatives to alter their own districts in retaliation, fails as a logical argument: it is illogical to say that the GOP will be made to behave in antidemocratic ways by Democrats’ actions when they are already engaging in such behavior in the absence of those steps. The GOP, it can be noted, has required no any motivation of revenge to change maps that secure long-term seats for their party: they have been willing to do this for its own sake, in the total absence of Democratic reciprocation, for a long time.

The other critique, I think, is more significant, expressing not just a tactical disagreement about how to address the GOP’s anti-democracy shift, but a sort of melancholic desire for a distinct country than the one that the US has become. It is true that in a better situation – in the world that the majority of the left, it is believed, yearn for and hope for – Prop 50 would be distasteful to our principles, and not mandated by our circumstances. It is not good to manipulate disfavored demographics; it is harmful for politicians to select their voters, instead of the other way around; it is negative that votes are rendered uncontested. That these measures have become essential in order to impede the autocratic advance of Trump’s control and lessen the level of harm he is capable to cause is unfortunate; it is a indication of how far we have fallen from a state more like a democracy. 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 made us.

If Congress fails to in practice have lawmaking, war making or appropriations authority, what is it, exactly, that Prop 50’s additional five Democratic representatives will be sent to the capital to do? One aspect that Congress continues to retains is the authority to compel testimony, and the ability to investigate. Even in our era of sclerotic government and congressional atrophy, it has utilized of that authority to great effect. In the coming years, if Prop 50 is approved and California’s new representatives are take office, they will find themselves a part of a institution with the power to investigate Trump, to televise their hearings into his actions and to compel associates of his inner circle to testify. It’s significant, and more importantly, it’s not anything that any Republican would do.

• The columnist is a Guardian US writer