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What, exactly, is the role of the U.S. Congress? During another presidency of Donald Trump, it is difficult to determine. The power to initiate armed conflict, traditionally viewed as a crucial legislative power, has turned into a murky prerogative of the executive branch in the years since the 9/11 attacks; the president, in recent months, has claimed even more of that control for his administration, conducting military actions on boats in the Caribbean.

The power of the purse appears to be mostly been stripped from the legislative branch as well; now, under the leadership of management and budget director, Russell Vought, much of the power to allocate federal funds has also shifted to the presidency, with the administration asserting the ability to abort legislatively approved expenditures and attempting to redirect the money to other uses. It’s not like they’re enacting any legislation, either; almost all bills must currently be packed into spending packages, massive perennial must-spend omnibus legislation that can circumvent the filibuster. But when these don’t pass – 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 notice. At present, the government has been shut down for the entire month; there are little indication of it reopening in the near future. But the presidency keeps on operating smoothly.

And so the question of dominance of the House and Senate can appear somewhat moot. Why should Americans be concerned who holds a controlling share in a body that has mostly abolished itself?

In what way ‘screw Trump’ rhetoric could help California’s Proposition 50 succeed

And yet Prop 50, the Golden State’s redistricting referendum that could deliver five more congressional positions to the Democratic Party if it is embraced by the electorate in a special election in the coming weeks, has captured the political imagination of progressives across the country. In part, it is a belated response to developments occurring in other states: GOP-led states have for a long time adopted dramatic biased redistricting while large Democratic-controlled such as California, the Empire State and Washington create their maps via impartial independent commissions, an imbalance that has led to narrowly split control of the House and a long-term sense, by Democrats, that their political group is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The California measure is clearly intended as a response to a mid-decade redrawing of maps that was recently approved in the Lone Star State, which installed boundaries that will provide the GOP an five more seats in the state’s House representation in the upcoming term; comparable redistricting moves are in progress in states such as Missouri and Indiana. (Democrats in Virginia are likewise emulating the state’s example in seeking to redistrict.)

The state measure seems probable to be approved, as progressive electorate respond with fear and frustration to the president’s authoritarian centralization of authority and seek ways to check his worst impulses. But Prop 50 is not without debate. Some critics caution that the move could backfire, with Democratic-controlled states’ attempts to redistrict setting off a retaliatory cycle in which red states do even more to design their maps so as to eliminate any possibility of opposition party success. Others have questioned the measure on strictly ideological democratic grounds: a district that is drawn 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 means, inevitably, that the influence of dissenting views is suppressed, and that the process of deliberation, argument and convincing that is meant to define a healthy democratic process will be limited only to primary elections, if it occurs at all.

It is worth taking each of these criticisms on their own terms. The initial argument, that the measure will spur conservatives to alter their own districts in retaliation, does not hold up as a logical argument: it is illogical to say that Republicans will be made to behave in undemocratic ways by the left’s actions when they are already doing so without those actions. The GOP, it can be noted, has not needed any motivation of revenge to change maps that guarantee permanent seats for themselves: they have been willing to do this for its own sake, in the total absence of similar actions by the left, for years.

The other critique, I think, is more substantive, expressing not just a strategic difference about how to address the Republicans’ undemocratic shift, but a kind of melancholic wish for a distinct nation than the one that the United States has turned into. It is accurate that in a more ideal world – in the reality that most Democrats, I think, yearn for and hope for – the proposition would be unappealing to our principles, and not required by our circumstances. It is undesirable to pack and crack targeted demographics; it is harmful for elected officials to choose their voters, instead of the reverse; it is negative that votes are rendered uncontested. That these actions have become essential in order to slow the authoritarian creep of Trump’s power and lessen the level of suffering he is capable to cause is sad; it is a indication of how far we have declined from a state more like a democracy. But they are required. Only once the battle against the current administration’s ideology has been successfully concluded that we can lament what fighting it has made us.

If the legislative branch does not in reality have lawmaking, military or budgetary authority, what is it, exactly, that the proposition’s five new blue house members will be dispatched to the capital to do? One thing that the House and Senate still holds is the authority to compel testimony, and the power to investigate. Even in our time of sclerotic government and congressional atrophy, it has made use of that power to significant impact. In the coming years, if the measure passes and the state’s additional representatives are sworn in, they will become a member of a body with the authority to probe the president, to televise their hearings into his actions and to compel associates of his inner circle to give evidence. It’s not nothing, and crucially, it’s not something that any Republican would do.

• The columnist is a Guardian US writer