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What, precisely, is the role of Congress? During another presidency of Donald Trump, it is difficult to determine. The authority to declare war, long considered a vital congressional authority, has turned into a murky prerogative of the presidential office in the time since September 11; the president, in the past few months, has asserted additional of that control for himself, conducting military actions on vessels in the Caribbean.

The power of the purse appears to be largely been stripped from Congress too; now, under the office of management and budget director, Russell Vought, much of the ability to allocate government money has also shifted to the presidency, with the White House claiming the ability to abort congressionally authorized spending and seeking to redirect the money elsewhere. It’s not like they’re enacting any legislation, either; virtually all bills must currently be crammed into budget reconciliation bills, huge recurring essential omnibus legislation that can circumvent the filibuster. But when those don’t pass – and more and more, they don’t – the government just shuts down. That is, big parts of the government do – and it’s uncertain how many citizens are aware. At present, the federal government has been shut down all month; there are no signs of it resuming operations anytime soon. But the executive branch keeps on humming along.

And so the question of control of Congress can appear rather moot. Why should U.S. citizens be concerned who holds a controlling share in a institution that has mostly rendered itself powerless?

How ‘oppose the president’ rhetoric could assist the state of California’s Proposition 50 succeed

And yet Prop 50, the Golden State’s redistricting referendum that could deliver five additional congressional positions to the Democratic Party if it is embraced by voters in a upcoming vote in the coming weeks, has captured the political imagination of progressives nationwide. Partly, it is a belated reaction to trends occurring in other states: Republican-controlled states have for a long time adopted dramatic partisan gerrymandering while large Democratic-controlled such as California, the Empire State and Washington create their district lines via nonpartisan independent commissions, an imbalance that has led to narrowly split House control and a long-term feeling, by the left, that their party is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The California proposal is explicitly intended as a countermove to a mid-term redistricting that recently passed in the Lone Star State, which installed boundaries that will give the GOP an five more positions in the state’s congressional delegation in the upcoming term; similar redistricting moves are under way in states such as the Show-Me State and the Hoosier State. (The left in the Old Dominion are also following California’s lead in attempting to redistrict.)

The state measure seems probable to be approved, as Democratic and liberal electorate respond with fear and frustration to Trump’s authoritarian centralization of authority and look for ways to restrain his most extreme impulses. But the proposition is not without controversy. Some opponents caution that the action could have unintended consequences, with Democratic-controlled states’ efforts to redistrict setting off a revenge pattern in which Republican-controlled states do even more to design their districts so as to eliminate any possibility of opposition party success. Others have critiqued the proposal on more purely principled democratic grounds: a district that is created in such a manner that the outcome of the vote is not in doubt, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely democratic: it implies, necessarily, that the influence of dissenting voices is suppressed, and that the procedure of deliberation, discussion and convincing that is supposed to characterize a functioning political system will be limited only to party primaries, if it occurs at all.

It is valuable considering each of these criticisms on their own terms. The first argument, that Prop 50 will provoke the right to redraw their own districts in response, does not hold up as a causal argument: it is illogical to say that the GOP will be compelled to behave in antidemocratic ways by Democrats’ actions when they are already doing so without those steps. The GOP, I would observe, has not needed any motivation of revenge to redraw maps that guarantee permanent positions for their party: they have been ready to do this for its own sake, in the complete absence of Democratic reciprocation, for years.

The second critique, I think, is more significant, expressing not just a tactical disagreement about how to confront the Republicans’ anti-democracy turn, but a kind of sad wish for a distinct nation than the one that the United States has become. It is accurate that in a more ideal situation – in the world that most the left, I think, yearn for and hope for – the proposition would be unappealing to our principles, and not mandated by our circumstances. It is undesirable to manipulate disfavored population groups; it is not good for politicians to select their voters, instead of the other way around; it is not good that votes are rendered noncompetitive. That these actions have become necessary in order to slow the autocratic advance of the president’s control and lessen the amount of harm he is capable to cause is sad; it is a sign of how much we have declined from something more like a democracy. But they are necessary. It is only after the battle against the current administration’s ideology has been won that we can lament what fighting it has transformed us into.

If the legislative branch fails to in practice have legislative, war making or appropriations authority, what is it, exactly, that Prop 50’s additional five Democratic representatives will be dispatched to Washington to do? One aspect that the House and Senate continues to retains is the authority to compel testimony, and the ability to examine. Even in our time of sclerotic politics and legislative decline, it has utilized of that power to great effect. In the coming years, if Prop 50 passes and the state’s new representatives are take office, they will find themselves a member of a institution with the power to probe the president, to broadcast their hearings into his conduct and to compel associates of his close advisors to give evidence. It’s significant, and crucially, it’s not anything that any Republican would do.

• Moira Donegan is a Guardian US writer