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What, precisely, is the role of Congress? During another Trump administration, it can be hard to determine. The power to initiate armed conflict, long considered a vital legislative power, has turned into a unclear prerogative of the executive branch in the years since September 11; the president, in recent months, has asserted even more of that control for himself, conducting strikes on vessels in the Caribbean.

The power of the purse seems to have mostly been stripped from Congress as well; now, under the leadership of management and budget director, Russell Vought, much of the power to appropriate federal funds has also shifted to the executive, with the White House claiming the authority to cancel congressionally authorized spending and attempting to redirect the money elsewhere. It’s as if they’re passing any laws, anyway; virtually all bills must currently be packed into spending packages, huge recurring must-spend omnibus legislation that can bypass the filibuster. But when these don’t pass – and increasingly, they do not – the federal government just shuts down. That is, large sections of the administration do – and it’s not clear how many people notice. At present, the government has been shut down all month; there are no signs of it resuming operations in the near future. But the executive branch continues operating smoothly.

And so the question of dominance of the House and Senate can appear somewhat irrelevant. Why should U.S. citizens be concerned who has a controlling share in a body that has largely abolished itself?

In what way ‘oppose the president’ messaging may help California’s Proposition 50 prevail

And yet Prop 50, the Golden State’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could deliver five additional congressional positions to the Democrats if it is embraced by voters in a upcoming vote next month, has captured the attention of progressives nationwide. Partly, it is a delayed response to trends occurring elsewhere: Republican-controlled states have for a long time adopted extreme biased redistricting while big blue states such as the Golden State, the Empire State and the Evergreen State create their district lines via impartial independent commissions, an imbalance that has resulted in narrowly split House control and a longstanding sense, by the left, that their political group is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The state measure is clearly intended as a response to a mid-decade redrawing of maps that recently passed in Texas, which installed maps that will give Republicans an additional five positions in the state’s congressional delegation next year; similar boundary changes are under way in states such as the Show-Me State and Indiana. (The left in the Old Dominion are also following California’s example in seeking to redistrict.)

The California initiative seems likely to pass, as progressive voters respond with concern and anger to the president’s authoritarian consolidation of power and look for ways to restrain his most extreme impulses. But the proposition is not without controversy. Some critics caution that the action could have unintended consequences, with Democratic-controlled states’ attempts to change districts setting off a retaliatory pattern in which red states do even more to draw their maps so as to eliminate any chance of Democratic competitiveness. Others have critiqued the measure on strictly ideological democratic grounds: a district that is created in such a manner that the result of the vote is not in doubt, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely representative: it means, necessarily, that the influence of opposing views is suppressed, and that the process of deliberation, discussion and convincing that is meant to characterize a healthy political system will be confined only to primary elections, if it happens at all.

It is valuable taking each of these objections on their own terms. The initial critique, that the measure will provoke conservatives to alter their respective maps in retaliation, does not hold up as a logical point: it does not make sense to claim that the GOP will be made to act in antidemocratic ways by the left’s measures when they are already doing so in the absence of those actions. The GOP, I would observe, has required no any incentive of revenge to redraw boundaries that secure long-term positions for their party: they have been ready to do this for their own benefit, in the complete absence of similar actions by the left, for years.

The second critique, I think, is more substantive, reflecting not just a strategic difference about how to confront the GOP’s undemocratic turn, but a kind of sad wish for a different country than the one that the United States has turned into. It is accurate that in a more ideal situation – in the reality that most Democrats, I think, desire and hope for – the proposition would be unappealing to our principles, and not mandated by our situation. It is undesirable to pack and crack targeted demographics; it is not good for elected officials to choose their constituents, instead of the reverse; it is not good that elections are rendered noncompetitive. That these actions have grown necessary in order to slow the authoritarian creep of the president’s power and reduce the level of suffering he is capable to cause is unfortunate; it is a sign of how far we have declined from something more like a representative government. But they are required. Only after the fight against the current administration’s ideology has been successfully concluded that we can lament what opposing it has made us.

If the legislative branch does not in practice have lawmaking, military or budgetary power, what is it, exactly, that the proposition’s additional five blue house members will be sent to the capital to do? One thing that the House and Senate still holds is the authority to compel testimony, and the power to examine. Even in our era of sclerotic government and congressional atrophy, it has utilized of that power to great effect. In 2027, if Prop 50 is approved and the state’s additional representatives are sworn in, they will find themselves a member of a institution with the power to probe the president, to televise their investigations into his conduct and to force members of his close advisors to testify. It’s not nothing, and crucially, it’s not anything that any conservative would do.

• Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist