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What, exactly, is the role of the U.S. Congress? During another Trump administration, it can be hard to tell. The authority to initiate armed conflict, traditionally viewed as a crucial congressional authority, has become a unclear right of the presidential office in the time since the 9/11 attacks; the president, in the past few months, has asserted even more of that power for his administration, authorizing strikes on vessels in the Caribbean Sea.

The authority over spending appears to be mostly been taken away from Congress as well; now, under the leadership of budget chief, the OMB director, much of the ability to allocate government money has also shifted to the presidency, with the White House asserting the ability to abort congressionally authorized expenditures and attempting to move the funds elsewhere. It’s not like they’re enacting any laws, either; almost all bills must currently be packed into spending packages, huge recurring must-spend comprehensive bills that can bypass the filibuster. But when those don’t pass – and more and more, they do not – the federal government just ceases operations. That is, big parts of the government shut down – and it’s uncertain how many citizens are aware. At present, the federal government has been shut down all month; there are little indication of it resuming operations anytime soon. But the executive branch continues humming along.

And so the issue of dominance of the House and Senate can appear rather irrelevant. Why should Americans be concerned who has a majority in a institution that has largely abolished itself?

In what way ‘oppose the president’ rhetoric may assist the state of California’s Prop 50 prevail

And yet Prop 50, California’s redistricting referendum that could deliver five more House seats to the Democratic Party if it is approved by voters in a special election in the coming weeks, has seized the political imagination of liberals across the country. In part, it is a delayed reaction to developments occurring in other states: Republican-controlled states have long adopted dramatic biased redistricting while large blue states such as the Golden State, the Empire State and Washington draw their maps via nonpartisan independent commissions, an asymmetry that has led to closely divided House control and a longstanding feeling, by the left, that their party is at a disadvantage. The California measure is explicitly designed as a countermove to a mid-decade redrawing of maps that was recently approved in the Lone Star State, which implemented maps that will provide Republicans an five more seats in the state’s House representation next year; comparable boundary changes are under way in states such as the Show-Me State and the Hoosier State. (Democrats in Virginia are also following the state’s lead in seeking to alter districts.)

The California initiative seems likely to pass, as Democratic and liberal voters respond with fear and anger to the president’s autocratic centralization of authority and seek ways to check his most extreme impulses. But the proposition is not free from controversy. Some critics warn that the action could have unintended consequences, with Democratic-controlled states’ efforts to change districts setting off a revenge cycle in which Republican-controlled states do additional to draw their maps so as to foreclose any chance of Democratic competitiveness. Others have questioned the measure on more purely ideological democratic bases: a district that is created in such a way that the outcome of the election is never really in doubt, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely representative: it implies, inevitably, that the influence of dissenting voices is suppressed, and that the process of deliberation, discussion and convincing that is meant to define a healthy democratic process will be limited only to party primaries, if it occurs at all.

It is valuable considering each of these objections on their own terms. The initial argument, that Prop 50 will provoke the right to alter their respective maps in response, fails as a logical point: it is illogical to claim that Republicans will be compelled to behave in undemocratic ways by the left’s measures when they are already engaging in such behavior in the absence of those steps. The Republican party, I would observe, has required no any incentive of revenge to change boundaries that secure long-term seats for themselves: they have been ready to do this for its own sake, in the total absence of Democratic reciprocation, for years.

The other objection, in my view, is more substantive, expressing not just a tactical disagreement about how to address the GOP’s undemocratic shift, but a kind of melancholic desire for a distinct nation 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, desire and hope for – the proposition would be unappealing to our principles, and not mandated by our circumstances. It is not good to manipulate targeted population groups; it is not good for politicians to choose their constituents, instead of the other way around; it is not good that votes are made noncompetitive. That these actions have grown necessary in order to impede the authoritarian advance of the president’s power and lessen the level of harm he is capable to inflict is sad; it is a sign of how far we have declined from a state more like a representative government. But they are necessary. Only once the fight against the current administration’s ideology has been won that we can lament what fighting it has made us.

If the legislative branch does not in practice have lawmaking, military or appropriations power, what is it, precisely, that the proposition’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 era of sclerotic politics and legislative decline, it has made use of that authority to significant impact. In the coming years, if the measure is approved and California’s new Democrats are sworn in, they will find themselves a part of a institution with the authority to investigate the president, to broadcast their hearings into his conduct and to force associates of his inner circle to give evidence. It’s significant, and more importantly, it’s not anything that any Republican would do.

• Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist