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What, exactly, is the role of the U.S. Congress? In the second presidency of Donald Trump, it can be hard to tell. The power to declare war, long considered a crucial congressional authority, has become a murky prerogative of the presidential office in the time since the 9/11 attacks; Trump, in the past few months, has claimed even more of that control for his administration, authorizing strikes on vessels in the Caribbean Sea.

The power of the purse seems to have largely been stripped from Congress too; currently, under the leadership of budget chief, the OMB director, a great deal of the power to appropriate federal funds has also shifted to the presidency, with the administration asserting the ability to cancel legislatively approved spending and seeking to redirect the funds to other uses. It’s as if they’re passing any legislation, anyway; virtually all legislation must currently be crammed into spending packages, massive recurring essential comprehensive bills that can circumvent the senate obstruction. But when those fail to be approved – and more and more, they do not – the government simply ceases operations. At least, big parts of the government shut down – and it’s uncertain how many people are aware. Currently, the federal government has been shut down for the entire month; there are no signs of it reopening anytime soon. But the executive branch continues operating smoothly.

And so the issue of dominance of the House and Senate can seem somewhat moot. Why should Americans care who has a controlling share in a body that has mostly rendered itself powerless?

In what way ‘oppose the president’ messaging could assist California’s Proposition 50 prevail

And yet Proposition 50, California’s redistricting referendum that could deliver five more congressional positions to the Democrats if it is embraced by voters in a upcoming vote next month, 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 embraced extreme biased redistricting while large Democratic-controlled such as California, the Empire State and Washington draw their maps via nonpartisan independent commissions, an asymmetry that has resulted in closely divided control of the House and a longstanding sense, by the left, that their party is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The California proposal is explicitly designed as a response to a mid-decade redrawing of maps that recently passed in the Lone Star State, which implemented maps that will give Republicans an additional five seats in the state House representation in the upcoming term; similar boundary changes are under way in states such as Missouri and Indiana. (The left in Virginia are likewise emulating California’s lead in seeking to redistrict.)

The California measure seems probable to pass, as Democratic and liberal electorate respond with concern and anger to Trump’s authoritarian centralization of power and seek ways to check his most extreme impulses. But the proposition is not without debate. Some opponents warn that the move could backfire, with Democratic-controlled states’ efforts to redistrict setting off a revenge cycle in which Republican-controlled states do even more to design their districts so as to foreclose any chance of opposition party success. Different critics have questioned the measure on strictly ideological democratic bases: a electoral area that is created in such a way 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 influence of opposing voices is suppressed, and that the procedure of deliberation, discussion and persuasion that is supposed to characterize a healthy democratic process will be limited only to party primaries, if it happens at all.

It is valuable considering each of these objections on their own terms. The first critique, that the measure will provoke conservatives to alter their respective maps in response, does not hold up as a logical point: it does not make sense to say that the GOP will be compelled to act in antidemocratic ways by Democrats’ measures when they are already doing so in the absence of those actions. The GOP, I would observe, has not needed any incentive of retaliation to change maps that secure permanent seats for their party: they have been ready to do this for their own benefit, in the complete lack of Democratic reciprocation, for years.

The other objection, in my view, is more significant, reflecting not just a tactical disagreement about how to confront the GOP’s undemocratic turn, but a sort of melancholic wish for a different nation than the one that the US has turned into. It is true that in a better world – in the world that most Democrats, I think, yearn for and hope for – Prop 50 would be distasteful to our principles, and not mandated by our circumstances. It is not good to manipulate targeted demographics; it is not good for elected officials to select their voters, instead of the other way around; it is not good that votes are rendered noncompetitive. That these actions have grown necessary in order to impede the authoritarian advance of Trump’s control and reduce the amount of suffering he is able to cause is sad; it is a sign of how far we have declined from a state more like a democracy. But they are necessary. It is only once 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 fails to in reality have legislative, military or appropriations power, what is it, exactly, that Prop 50’s additional five blue house members will be sent to the capital to do? One aspect that the House and Senate continues to holds is the authority to compel testimony, and the ability to examine. Even in our era of stagnant politics and congressional atrophy, it has made use of that power to significant impact. In 2027, if the measure passes and California’s additional representatives are take office, they will become a part of a body with the authority to investigate the president, to televise their investigations into his actions and to compel members of his inner circle to testify. It’s significant, and crucially, it’s not anything that any Republican would do.

• The columnist is a Guardian US columnist