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What, precisely, is the role of the U.S. Congress? During another presidency of Donald Trump, it can be hard to determine. The power to initiate armed conflict, long considered a crucial congressional authority, has become a unclear 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, authorizing strikes on boats in the Caribbean.

The authority over spending appears to be mostly been taken away from Congress as well; now, under the leadership of management and budget director, the OMB director, a great deal of the power to allocate federal funds has likewise defaulted to the presidency, with the administration asserting the ability to abort legislatively approved expenditures and attempting to move the money to other uses. It’s as if they’re enacting any legislation, anyway; almost all bills must currently be packed into spending packages, massive recurring must-spend comprehensive bills that can circumvent the filibuster. But when those don’t pass – and increasingly, they do not – the government simply ceases operations. At least, big parts of the government shut down – and it’s uncertain how many citizens are aware. At present, the federal government has been closed for the entire month; there are little indication of it reopening in the near future. But the executive branch continues operating smoothly.

And so the issue of dominance of Congress can seem somewhat irrelevant. Why should Americans be concerned who holds a controlling share in a body that has mostly abolished itself?

In what way ‘screw Trump’ rhetoric may help the state of California’s Prop 50 succeed

And yet Prop 50, the Golden State’s redistricting referendum that could provide five more congressional positions to the Democratic Party if it is approved by voters in a special election next month, has captured the political imagination of progressives across the country. Partly, it is a belated reaction to developments occurring elsewhere: GOP-led states have for a long time adopted extreme biased redistricting while large blue states such as the Golden State, New York and the Evergreen State draw their district lines via impartial independent commissions, an imbalance that has led to closely divided control of the House and a longstanding sense, by the left, that their party is at a disadvantage. The state proposal is explicitly designed as a countermove to a mid-decade redistricting that recently passed in Texas, which installed maps that will provide the GOP an additional five positions in the state congressional delegation next year; comparable redistricting moves are in progress in states such as Missouri and the Hoosier State. (Democrats in the Old Dominion are also emulating the state’s example in seeking to alter districts.)

The state initiative seems likely to pass, as Democratic and liberal electorate respond with fear and anger to the president’s authoritarian centralization of power and look for ways to check his worst tendencies. But Prop 50 is not free from controversy. Some opponents warn that the action could have unintended consequences, with Democratic-controlled states’ efforts to redistrict setting off a retaliatory cycle in which red states do even more to draw their districts so as to eliminate any chance of opposition party success. Others have critiqued the proposal on more purely principled pro-democracy grounds: a district that is created in such a manner that the outcome of the vote is never really in doubt, they say, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely representative: it implies, inevitably, that the power of opposing voices is suppressed, and that the procedure of debate, discussion and convincing that is supposed to define a healthy political system will be limited only to primary elections, if it happens at all.

It is valuable taking each of these objections on their own terms. The first critique, that the measure will spur the right to alter their respective maps in retaliation, does not hold up as a logical point: it is illogical to claim that the GOP 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, it can be noted, has required no any incentive of retaliation to change boundaries that guarantee permanent seats for themselves: they have been willing to do this for their own benefit, in the total absence of Democratic reciprocation, for years.

The second objection, in my view, is more substantive, expressing not just a strategic disagreement about how to confront the GOP’s undemocratic turn, but a kind of melancholic wish for a distinct country than the one that the United States has become. It is true that in a more ideal situation – in the reality that most the left, I think, desire and aspire to – the proposition would be unappealing to our values, and not mandated by our situation. It is undesirable to pack and crack disfavored demographics; it is harmful for politicians to select their constituents, rather than the other way around; it is negative that votes are made noncompetitive. That these measures have become essential in order to slow the authoritarian advance of Trump’s power and reduce the level of harm he is able to cause is sad; it is a indication of how far we have fallen from a state more like a representative government. But they are necessary. Only once the battle against Trumpism has been won that we can lament what fighting it has transformed us into.

If Congress fails to in reality have lawmaking, military or budgetary power, what is it, exactly, that the proposition’s five new blue representatives will be dispatched to Washington to do? One aspect that the House and Senate continues to holds is the authority to compel testimony, and the power to examine. Even in our time of stagnant politics and congressional atrophy, it has utilized of that power to great effect. In 2027, if the measure is approved and California’s additional Democrats are sworn in, they will find themselves a member of a institution with the authority to probe the president, to broadcast their investigations into his actions and to force members of his inner circle to give evidence. It’s not nothing, and more importantly, it’s not something that any Republican would do.

• The columnist is a Guardian US writer