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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 authority to declare war, traditionally viewed as a crucial congressional authority, has become a murky right of the presidential office in the time since the 9/11 attacks; the president, in the past few months, has claimed even more of that control for himself, conducting military actions on vessels in the Caribbean.

The power of the purse appears to be mostly been taken away from the legislative branch too; now, under the office of management and budget director, Russell Vought, much of the ability to allocate federal funds has also shifted to the presidency, with the White House claiming the authority to cancel congressionally authorized expenditures and attempting to redirect the funds to other uses. It’s not like they’re enacting any legislation, either; almost all legislation must now be crammed into spending packages, massive perennial must-spend comprehensive bills that can bypass the filibuster. But when those fail to be approved – and increasingly, they don’t – the federal government just shuts down. That is, large sections of the government shut down – and it’s uncertain how many citizens are aware. Currently, the government has been shut down all month; there are little indication of it reopening anytime soon. But the presidency continues operating smoothly.

And so the question of dominance of Congress can seem somewhat moot. Why should U.S. citizens be concerned who holds a controlling share in a institution that has mostly rendered itself powerless?

In what way ‘oppose the president’ messaging could help California’s Prop 50 prevail

And yet Prop 50, the Golden State’s redistricting referendum that could provide five additional congressional positions to the Democrats if it is approved by voters in a special election in the coming weeks, has seized the political imagination of progressives across the country. In part, it is a delayed response to trends occurring elsewhere: Republican-controlled states have long embraced dramatic partisan gerrymandering while large Democratic-controlled such as the Golden State, the Empire State and Washington create their maps via nonpartisan redistricting panels, an imbalance that has led to closely divided control of the House and a longstanding feeling, by Democrats, that their party is at a disadvantage. The state measure is clearly designed as a countermove to a mid-decade redrawing of maps that was recently approved in Texas, which installed boundaries that will provide Republicans an additional five seats in the state’s House representation in the upcoming term; similar boundary changes are under way in states such as Missouri and the Hoosier State. (The left in Virginia are likewise emulating the state’s example in seeking to alter districts.)

The California initiative seems likely to be approved, as Democratic and liberal voters respond with fear and anger to Trump’s authoritarian consolidation of authority and look for methods to restrain his worst tendencies. But the proposition is not without controversy. Some critics warn that the action could have unintended consequences, with blue states’ efforts to redistrict setting off a revenge pattern in which red states do additional to draw their districts so as to eliminate any chance of Democratic competitiveness. Others have questioned the proposal on strictly principled pro-democracy bases: a district that is drawn in such a manner that the result of the election is not in question, they say, is one that cannot be said to be truly democratic: it means, inevitably, that the influence of opposing views is suppressed, and that the process of deliberation, discussion and convincing that is supposed to characterize a healthy political system will be confined only to primary elections, if it happens at all.

It is worth taking each of these criticisms on their own terms. The first critique, that the measure will spur conservatives to redraw their own districts in retaliation, fails as a causal point: it does not make sense to say that Republicans will be made to behave in antidemocratic ways by the left’s actions when they are already engaging in such behavior in the absence of those steps. The Republican party, I would observe, has required no any incentive of retaliation to change boundaries that guarantee long-term positions for their party: they have been ready to do this for its own sake, in the total lack of similar actions by the left, for years.

The other critique, I think, is more substantive, expressing not just a strategic disagreement about how to confront the Republicans’ anti-democracy turn, but a kind of melancholic wish for a different nation than the one that the US has become. It is true that in a better world – in the reality that most Democrats, it is believed, desire and aspire to – the proposition would be unappealing to our principles, and not required by our circumstances. It is undesirable to pack and crack disfavored demographics; it is harmful for elected officials to choose their constituents, instead of the reverse; it is not good that elections are made uncontested. That these actions have grown essential in order to impede the autocratic creep of Trump’s control and reduce the level of suffering he is able to inflict is unfortunate; it is a sign of how far we have fallen from something more like a democracy. But they are required. Only once the battle against Trumpism has been successfully concluded that we can mourn what fighting it has made us.

If Congress fails to in practice have lawmaking, war making or budgetary authority, what is it, precisely, that the proposition’s five new Democratic representatives will be sent to the capital to do? One thing that the House and Senate continues to retains is the authority to compel testimony, and the power to examine. Even in our era of sclerotic government and legislative decline, it has made use of that authority to significant impact. In the coming years, if Prop 50 is approved and the state’s additional Democrats are take office, they will become a part of a body with the power to probe Trump, to broadcast their investigations into his actions and to compel members of his inner circle to give evidence. It’s significant, and crucially, it’s not something that any Republican would do.

• Moira Donegan is a Guardian US writer