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What, exactly, is the role of Congress? During another presidency of Donald Trump, it can be hard to tell. The power to declare war, traditionally viewed as a crucial congressional authority, has turned into a unclear prerogative of the executive branch in the time since the 9/11 attacks; Trump, in recent months, has claimed additional of that control for himself, authorizing strikes on boats in the Caribbean Sea.

The authority over spending seems to have mostly been taken away from the legislative branch too; now, under the office of budget chief, Russell Vought, much of the ability to appropriate government money has likewise defaulted to the presidency, with the White House claiming the ability to cancel legislatively approved spending and attempting to redirect the funds elsewhere. It’s as if they’re passing any laws, anyway; almost all bills must currently be crammed into spending packages, massive perennial essential comprehensive bills that can bypass the filibuster. But when those fail to be approved – and increasingly, they do not – the federal government just shuts down. At least, big parts of the government do – and it’s uncertain how many people notice. Currently, the government has been closed for the entire month; there are no signs of it resuming operations in the near future. But the executive branch keeps on humming along.

And so the question of dominance of the House and Senate can seem rather irrelevant. Why should Americans care who has a controlling share in a institution that has mostly rendered itself powerless?

In what way ‘screw Trump’ rhetoric may help California’s Proposition 50 prevail

And yet Prop 50, the Golden State’s redistricting referendum that could provide five more House seats to the Democratic Party if it is approved by voters in a upcoming vote in the coming weeks, has captured the political imagination of progressives across the country. In part, it is a delayed reaction to trends happening in other states: GOP-led states have for a long time embraced dramatic biased redistricting while large Democratic-controlled such as the Golden State, the Empire State and the Evergreen State draw their district lines via nonpartisan independent commissions, an imbalance that has led to closely divided House control and a longstanding sense, by the left, that their political group is at a disadvantage. The state proposal is clearly intended as a countermove to a mid-decade redrawing of maps that was recently approved in Texas, which implemented maps that will give Republicans an five more seats in the state 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 the state’s example in attempting to redistrict.)

The state initiative seems likely to pass, as progressive voters respond with fear and anger to the president’s authoritarian consolidation of authority and look for ways to restrain his most extreme tendencies. But Prop 50 is not without debate. Some opponents caution that the move could have unintended consequences, with Democratic-controlled states’ efforts to change districts triggering a retaliatory cycle in which Republican-controlled states do additional to draw their districts so as to foreclose any possibility of Democratic competitiveness. Different critics have critiqued the measure on more purely ideological pro-democracy bases: a electoral area that is created in such a manner that the outcome of the election is never really in question, they argue, 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 deliberation, discussion and convincing that is meant to characterize a healthy democratic process will be confined only to party primaries, if it occurs at all.

It is valuable considering each of these objections on their own terms. The first critique, that the measure will spur the right to alter their own maps in retaliation, does not hold up as a logical argument: it is illogical to claim that Republicans will be compelled to behave in antidemocratic ways by the left’s actions when they are already doing so in the absence of those steps. The GOP, it can be noted, has not needed any incentive of retaliation to change boundaries that secure permanent positions for their party: they have been ready to do this for its own sake, in the complete lack of Democratic reciprocation, for years.

The other objection, I think, is more substantive, expressing not just a strategic difference about how to confront the GOP’s anti-democracy shift, but a sort of melancholic wish for a different country than the one that the United States has become. It is accurate that in a more ideal world – in the reality that most Democrats, I think, desire and aspire to – the proposition would be distasteful to our values, and not required by our circumstances. It is not good to manipulate targeted population groups; it is not good for elected officials to choose their voters, instead of the other way around; it is negative that elections are rendered noncompetitive. That these measures have grown necessary in order to slow the authoritarian advance of the president’s control and lessen the level of suffering he is capable to inflict is unfortunate; it is a indication of how much we have declined from a state more like a democracy. But they are necessary. It is only once the battle against Trumpism has been successfully concluded that we can lament what fighting it has made us.

If the legislative branch does not in practice have legislative, military or budgetary authority, what is it, exactly, that the proposition’s additional five blue representatives will be dispatched to Washington to do? One aspect that Congress continues to holds is the authority to compel testimony, and the power to investigate. Even in our time of stagnant politics and legislative decline, it has made use of that authority to great effect. In 2027, if Prop 50 is approved and California’s additional representatives are sworn in, they will find themselves a member of a body with the power to probe the president, to broadcast their investigations into his conduct and to force associates of his close advisors to testify. It’s significant, and crucially, it’s not anything that any Republican would do.

• The columnist is a Guardian US writer