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What, precisely, is the role of Congress? During another presidency of Donald Trump, it can be hard to determine. The power to declare war, traditionally viewed as a crucial legislative power, has become a murky right of the presidential office in the years since the 9/11 attacks; the president, in the past few months, has asserted even more of that power for his administration, authorizing military actions on vessels in the Caribbean.

The authority over spending appears to be largely been stripped from the legislative branch too; now, under the office of management and budget director, Russell Vought, much of the ability to allocate federal funds has likewise shifted to the executive, with the administration asserting the ability to cancel congressionally authorized spending and seeking to move the money elsewhere. It’s as if they’re passing any laws, either; virtually all bills must currently be crammed into spending packages, huge perennial must-spend comprehensive bills that can circumvent the filibuster. But when those don’t pass – and more and more, they do not – the government simply ceases operations. That is, large sections of the government shut down – and it’s uncertain how many people notice. At present, the federal government has been shut down all month; there are little indication of it reopening in the near future. But the executive branch continues operating smoothly.

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

How ‘screw Trump’ messaging could assist California’s Proposition 50 succeed

And yet Prop 50, the Golden State’s redistricting referendum that could deliver five additional House seats to the Democratic Party if it is approved by voters in a special election in the coming weeks, has captured the political imagination of progressives across the country. Partly, it is a belated response to developments occurring in other states: GOP-led states have long adopted extreme biased redistricting while large Democratic-controlled such as California, New York and Washington draw their district lines via nonpartisan redistricting panels, an imbalance that has resulted in closely divided House control and a long-term feeling, by Democrats, that their political group is at a disadvantage. The state proposal is clearly designed as a countermove to a mid-decade redistricting that was recently approved in the Lone Star State, which installed maps that will provide the GOP an five more positions in the state’s congressional delegation next year; similar redistricting moves are in progress in states such as the Show-Me State and Indiana. (Democrats in the Old Dominion are also emulating the state’s example in seeking to alter districts.)

The California initiative seems probable to be approved, as progressive voters respond with concern and anger to Trump’s autocratic consolidation of power and look for ways to check his most extreme tendencies. But Prop 50 is not free from debate. Some opponents warn that the action could backfire, with blue states’ attempts to change districts setting off a retaliatory pattern in which Republican-controlled states do additional to design their maps so as to foreclose any chance of Democratic competitiveness. Others have questioned the measure on strictly ideological pro-democracy grounds: a electoral area that is created in such a way that the result of the election is never really in doubt, they say, is one that cannot be said to be truly democratic: it means, inevitably, that the power of dissenting views is suppressed, and that the process of debate, argument and persuasion that is meant to define a healthy democratic process will be confined only to primary elections, if it happens at all.

It is valuable taking each of these criticisms on their own terms. The initial argument, that Prop 50 will spur the right to alter their respective maps in response, does not hold up as a causal argument: it is illogical to claim that Republicans will be compelled to act in antidemocratic ways by the left’s actions when they are already engaging in such behavior without those actions. The GOP, it can be noted, has not needed any motivation of retaliation to change boundaries that guarantee permanent seats for their party: they have been ready to do this for its own sake, in the total absence of Democratic reciprocation, for years.

The second critique, in my view, is more significant, reflecting not just a tactical disagreement about how to confront the Republicans’ anti-democracy shift, but a sort of sad wish for a distinct nation than the one that the US has become. It is true that in a more ideal world – in the world that the majority of Democrats, it is believed, desire and hope for – the proposition would be unappealing to our values, and not required by our situation. It is not good to pack and crack targeted demographics; it is not good for elected officials to choose their voters, rather than the reverse; it is negative that votes are made noncompetitive. That these actions have become necessary in order to slow the autocratic advance of Trump’s control and lessen the amount of suffering he is capable to inflict is sad; it is a indication of how far we have fallen from a state more like a representative government. But they are required. It is only once the fight against the current administration’s ideology has been successfully concluded that we can mourn what fighting it has transformed us into.

If Congress does not in reality have lawmaking, war making or appropriations power, what is it, precisely, that the proposition’s five new blue house members will be dispatched to Washington to do? One thing that the House and Senate continues to retains is the authority to compel testimony, and the ability to examine. Even in our time of stagnant politics and legislative decline, it has made use of that authority to significant impact. In 2027, if the measure passes and California’s new Democrats are sworn in, they will find themselves a part of a institution with the power to investigate Trump, to televise their hearings into his conduct and to force members of his close advisors to testify. It’s not nothing, and more importantly, it’s not something that any Republican would do.

• Moira Donegan is a Guardian US writer