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What, precisely, is the role of Congress? During another presidency of Donald Trump, it can be hard to tell. The power to initiate armed conflict, long considered a vital congressional authority, has turned into a murky right of the presidential office in the time since September 11; Trump, in the past few months, has asserted additional of that control for himself, conducting strikes on vessels in the Caribbean.

The power of the purse appears to be largely been stripped from Congress too; now, under the leadership of budget chief, Russell Vought, much of the power to allocate government money has likewise shifted to the presidency, with the White House claiming the authority to abort congressionally authorized expenditures and attempting to move the funds to other uses. It’s not like they’re enacting any legislation, either; almost all bills must now be crammed into spending packages, massive recurring must-spend comprehensive bills that can bypass the filibuster. But when those fail to be approved – and increasingly, they do not – the federal government simply ceases operations. At least, large sections of the government shut down – and it’s uncertain how many people are aware. Currently, the federal government has been closed all month; there are no signs of it resuming operations in the near future. But the executive branch continues operating smoothly.

And so the issue of control of Congress can seem somewhat irrelevant. Why should Americans be concerned who has a majority in a body that has mostly rendered itself powerless?

In what way ‘oppose the president’ rhetoric could help California’s Proposition 50 prevail

And yet Proposition 50, California’s redistricting referendum that could provide five additional House seats to the Democrats if it is embraced by the electorate in a special election next month, has captured the attention of progressives across the country. In part, it is a delayed response to trends occurring in other states: Republican-controlled states have long adopted extreme partisan gerrymandering while large blue states such as California, New York and Washington create their maps via nonpartisan independent commissions, an imbalance that has resulted in narrowly split control of the House and a long-term sense, by Democrats, that their party is at a disadvantage. The state proposal is clearly designed as a response to a mid-decade redrawing of maps that recently passed in the Lone Star State, which installed maps that will give Republicans an additional five seats in the state’s House representation next year; similar redistricting moves are in progress in states such as the Show-Me State and Indiana. (The left in Virginia are also emulating California’s example in seeking to alter districts.)

The California measure seems probable to pass, as progressive voters respond with concern and frustration to Trump’s authoritarian centralization of authority and seek ways to check his worst tendencies. But Prop 50 is not without debate. Some opponents warn that the move could backfire, with blue states’ efforts to change districts setting off a retaliatory cycle in which red states do even more to draw their districts so as to foreclose any chance of opposition party success. Others have questioned the proposal on strictly ideological democratic bases: a district that is drawn in such a manner that the result of the election is never really in question, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be truly representative: it means, inevitably, that the power of dissenting voices is suppressed, and that the procedure of debate, discussion and persuasion that is meant to characterize a healthy political system will be limited only to primary elections, if it happens at all.

It is valuable considering each of these objections on their merits. The first critique, that Prop 50 will provoke the right to redraw their own districts in retaliation, does not hold up as a logical point: it does not make sense to say that the GOP will be compelled to behave in undemocratic ways by Democrats’ actions when they are already engaging in such behavior without those steps. The Republican party, I would observe, has required no any motivation of revenge to change maps that guarantee long-term positions for their party: they have been ready to do this for their own benefit, in the complete lack of Democratic reciprocation, for a long time.

The other critique, I think, is more significant, expressing not just a tactical disagreement about how to confront the GOP’s anti-democracy turn, but a kind of melancholic desire for a different country than the one that the United States has turned into. It is accurate that in a more ideal world – in the world that most the left, it is believed, yearn for and aspire to – the proposition would be distasteful to our principles, and not required by our situation. It is undesirable to pack and crack targeted demographics; it is not good for elected officials to select their constituents, instead of the other way around; it is negative that votes are made uncontested. That these measures have grown necessary in order to impede the autocratic creep of Trump’s power and lessen the level of harm he is able to cause is unfortunate; it is a indication of how much we have declined from a state more like a representative government. But they are required. Only after the battle against the current administration’s ideology has been successfully concluded that we can mourn what fighting it has made us.

If Congress fails to in reality have legislative, war making or appropriations authority, what is it, precisely, that the proposition’s five new blue representatives will be dispatched to the capital to do? One aspect that the House and Senate still retains is subpoena power, and the power to examine. Even in our era of stagnant government and legislative decline, it has made use of that power to great effect. In the coming years, if Prop 50 is approved and California’s additional Democrats are sworn in, they will find themselves a part of a body with the authority to investigate Trump, to broadcast their investigations into his actions and to force associates of his inner circle to testify. It’s not nothing, and more importantly, it’s not anything that any Republican would do.

• The columnist is a Guardian US writer