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What, exactly, is the purpose of Congress? In the second presidency of Donald Trump, it can be hard to tell. The power to declare war, long considered a vital congressional authority, has become a unclear prerogative of the executive branch in the years since the 9/11 attacks; the president, in recent months, has asserted additional of that power for himself, conducting strikes on boats in the Caribbean Sea.

The authority over spending appears to be largely been stripped from Congress as well; currently, under the leadership of management and budget director, Russell Vought, much of the power to appropriate government money has likewise shifted to the presidency, with the administration claiming the ability to cancel legislatively approved spending and seeking to move the funds to other uses. It’s not like they’re enacting any laws, anyway; virtually all legislation must currently be packed into spending packages, huge perennial must-spend omnibus legislation that can bypass the filibuster. But when these don’t pass – and more and more, they do not – the government simply shuts down. At least, big parts of the government do – and it’s not clear how many people notice. Currently, the government has been shut down for the entire month; there are no signs of it resuming operations anytime soon. But the executive branch keeps on operating smoothly.

And so the question of control of the House and Senate can seem somewhat irrelevant. Why should U.S. citizens care who has a majority in a body that has mostly rendered itself powerless?

How ‘oppose the president’ messaging may help the state of California’s Proposition 50 succeed

And yet Prop 50, California’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could provide five additional congressional positions to the Democratic Party if it is approved by voters in a upcoming vote in the coming weeks, has seized the attention of liberals across the country. In part, it is a belated response to trends occurring elsewhere: Republican-controlled states have for a long time embraced dramatic partisan gerrymandering while big blue states such as California, New York and Washington draw their district lines via nonpartisan independent commissions, an imbalance that has resulted in narrowly split House control and a longstanding feeling, by the left, that their party is at a disadvantage. The state proposal is clearly designed as a response to a mid-decade redistricting that recently passed in the Lone Star State, which implemented maps that will give the GOP an five more seats in the state’s House representation next year; similar redistricting moves are in progress in states such as Missouri and Indiana. (Democrats in the Old Dominion are likewise following California’s example in seeking to redistrict.)

The California measure seems likely to pass, as progressive voters react with concern and anger to Trump’s autocratic centralization of power and look for methods to check his worst impulses. But Prop 50 is not free from controversy. Some critics warn that the move could have unintended consequences, with Democratic-controlled states’ efforts to change districts setting off a retaliatory cycle in which Republican-controlled states do additional to draw their maps so as to eliminate any chance of opposition party success. Different critics have questioned the proposal on more purely ideological pro-democracy bases: a electoral area that is created in such a way that the outcome of the election is never really in question, they say, is one that cannot be said to be truly representative: it means, necessarily, that the influence of opposing views is suppressed, and that the process of deliberation, argument and persuasion that is supposed to characterize a healthy democratic process will be limited only to primary elections, if it happens at all.

It is valuable taking each of these objections on their merits. The initial critique, that the measure will spur the right to redraw their respective districts in response, fails as a logical point: it is illogical to claim that Republicans will be compelled to behave in antidemocratic ways by Democrats’ measures when they are already doing so in the absence of those steps. The GOP, I would observe, has not needed any incentive of revenge to change maps that secure permanent positions for their party: they have been ready to do this for their own benefit, in the complete absence of Democratic reciprocation, for a long time.

The second objection, in my view, is more substantive, expressing not just a tactical difference about how to address the Republicans’ undemocratic turn, but a sort of sad desire for a different country than the one that the US has turned into. It is accurate that in a better world – in the world that the majority of Democrats, it is believed, yearn for and hope for – the proposition would be unappealing to our values, and not mandated by our circumstances. It is not good to pack and crack targeted demographics; it is harmful for elected officials to choose their voters, rather than the reverse; it is not good that votes are made uncontested. That these actions have become necessary in order to slow the authoritarian advance of Trump’s control and lessen the level of harm he is able to cause is unfortunate; it is a sign of how much we have declined from something more like a representative government. But they are necessary. 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 reality have lawmaking, war making or budgetary authority, what is it, precisely, that the proposition’s five new blue house members will be sent to Washington to do? One aspect that the House and Senate 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 passes and the state’s new Democrats are take office, they will become a member of a body with the authority to investigate the president, to broadcast their investigations into his actions and to compel associates of his inner circle to testify. It’s significant, and more importantly, it’s not something that any Republican would do.

• Moira Donegan is a Guardian US writer