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What, precisely, is the role of the U.S. Congress? In the second Trump administration, it can be hard to tell. The authority to initiate armed conflict, traditionally viewed as a crucial congressional authority, has become a murky prerogative of the executive branch in the time since September 11; Trump, in recent months, has claimed even more of that control for himself, conducting strikes on vessels in the Caribbean.

The power of the purse appears to be mostly been taken away from Congress as well; now, under the office of management and budget director, Russell Vought, much of the power to appropriate government money has likewise shifted to the presidency, with the White House asserting the authority to abort legislatively approved spending and attempting to redirect the money to other uses. It’s not like they’re passing any legislation, anyway; virtually all bills must now be packed into budget reconciliation bills, huge recurring essential comprehensive bills that can circumvent the senate obstruction. But when these don’t pass – and increasingly, they don’t – the government just shuts down. That is, large sections of the government shut down – and it’s not clear how many people are aware. Currently, the federal government has been closed for the entire month; there are little indication of it resuming operations anytime soon. But the executive branch continues humming along.

And so the question of dominance of Congress can appear rather moot. Why should U.S. citizens be concerned who holds a majority in a institution that has largely abolished itself?

In what way ‘oppose the president’ rhetoric may help California’s Prop 50 succeed

And yet Proposition 50, California’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could deliver five additional congressional positions to the Democrats if it is approved by the electorate in a upcoming vote next month, has captured the attention of progressives across the country. In part, it is a belated response to developments occurring in other states: GOP-led states have long embraced extreme biased redistricting while big Democratic-controlled such as California, New York and Washington create their maps via nonpartisan independent commissions, an asymmetry that has led to closely divided House control and a long-term feeling, by Democrats, that their political group is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The California proposal is clearly intended as a response to a mid-term redrawing of maps that was recently approved in the Lone Star State, which implemented maps that will give the GOP an five more seats in the state House representation in the upcoming term; similar boundary changes are under way in states such as Missouri and the Hoosier State. (The left in Virginia are also emulating California’s example in seeking to redistrict.)

The state measure seems probable to pass, as progressive electorate respond with fear and frustration to Trump’s autocratic consolidation of authority and look for ways to restrain his worst tendencies. But Prop 50 is not free from debate. Some opponents caution that the move could backfire, with Democratic-controlled states’ attempts to change districts triggering a retaliatory cycle in which Republican-controlled states do even more to design their districts so as to foreclose any possibility of Democratic competitiveness. Others have critiqued the measure on strictly ideological democratic grounds: a district that is drawn in such a way that the result of the election is not in question, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely democratic: it means, inevitably, that the influence of opposing voices is suppressed, and that the process of debate, argument and persuasion that is supposed to define a healthy democratic process will be limited only to party primaries, if it happens at all.

It is valuable taking each of these criticisms on their own terms. The first critique, that Prop 50 will provoke conservatives to alter their respective maps in response, fails as a logical point: it is illogical to claim that the GOP will be made to act in undemocratic ways by Democrats’ actions when they are already engaging in such behavior without those steps. The GOP, it can be noted, has required no any incentive of revenge to change maps that guarantee long-term positions for themselves: they have been ready to do this for their own benefit, in the total lack of similar actions by the left, for years.

The other objection, I think, is more substantive, expressing not just a tactical disagreement about how to confront the Republicans’ anti-democracy shift, but a kind of sad desire for a different nation than the one that the US has become. It is accurate that in a better situation – in the world that the majority of Democrats, I think, yearn for and aspire to – the proposition would be unappealing to our principles, and not mandated by our circumstances. It is undesirable to pack and crack targeted population groups; it is harmful for elected officials to select their voters, instead of the reverse; it is negative that votes are rendered noncompetitive. That these actions have become necessary in order to impede the authoritarian advance of Trump’s power and lessen the level of harm he is capable to cause is sad; it is a sign of how much we have fallen from something more like a representative government. But they are required. It is only once the battle against Trumpism has been won that we can lament what opposing it has made us.

If the legislative branch fails to in reality have lawmaking, military or budgetary authority, what is it, precisely, that the proposition’s additional five Democratic representatives will be sent to Washington to do? One aspect that Congress still holds is the authority to compel testimony, and the ability to investigate. Even in our time of sclerotic politics and legislative decline, it has made use of that authority to great effect. In 2027, if the measure is approved and California’s new Democrats are take office, they will become a part of a institution with the authority to investigate Trump, to televise their hearings into his conduct and to compel members of his close advisors to give evidence. It’s not nothing, and crucially, it’s not anything that any Republican would do.

• The columnist is a Guardian US writer