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What, exactly, is the role of the U.S. Congress? During another Trump administration, it is difficult to determine. The authority to initiate armed conflict, long considered a vital congressional authority, has turned into a unclear right of the presidential office in the years since the 9/11 attacks; the president, in the past few months, has asserted even more of that power for himself, conducting strikes on vessels in the Caribbean.

The authority over spending appears to be largely been stripped from Congress as well; now, under the leadership of management and budget director, the OMB director, a great deal of the ability to allocate government money has also shifted to the executive, with the White House asserting the ability to cancel congressionally authorized expenditures and seeking to redirect the funds to other uses. It’s as if they’re enacting any laws, either; virtually all bills must currently be crammed into spending packages, huge recurring essential omnibus legislation that can circumvent the senate obstruction. But when these don’t pass – and increasingly, they don’t – the government simply shuts down. At least, large sections of the administration do – and it’s uncertain how many people are aware. At present, the government has been closed for the entire month; there are no signs of it resuming operations anytime soon. But the presidency keeps on operating smoothly.

And so the issue of dominance of the House and Senate can appear rather moot. Why should Americans be concerned who holds a controlling share in a institution that has largely abolished itself?

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

And yet Proposition 50, California’s redistricting referendum that could deliver five additional congressional positions to the Democrats if it is embraced by voters in a special election in the coming weeks, has seized the political imagination of liberals across the country. Partly, it is a delayed response to developments happening elsewhere: Republican-controlled states have long embraced dramatic biased redistricting while big blue states such as the Golden State, New York and the Evergreen State create their district lines via impartial redistricting panels, an imbalance that has resulted in closely divided House control and a longstanding sense, by the left, that their political group is at a disadvantage. The California proposal is clearly designed as a response to a mid-decade redrawing of maps that recently passed in Texas, which installed boundaries that will provide the GOP an additional five seats in the state’s House representation in the upcoming term; comparable redistricting moves are in progress in states such as Missouri and the Hoosier State. (The left in the Old Dominion are likewise following the state’s lead in seeking to redistrict.)

The California measure seems likely to be approved, as progressive electorate react with fear and frustration to Trump’s autocratic consolidation of power and look for methods to check his worst tendencies. But Prop 50 is not free from controversy. Some opponents caution that the action could have unintended consequences, with Democratic-controlled states’ efforts to redistrict setting off a revenge pattern in which Republican-controlled states do even more to draw their districts so as to eliminate any possibility of Democratic competitiveness. Others have critiqued the measure on strictly principled democratic bases: a district that is created in such a way that the outcome of the election is never really in doubt, they say, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely democratic: it implies, necessarily, that the influence of opposing views is muted, and that the procedure of debate, argument and convincing that is meant to characterize a functioning political system will be limited only to party primaries, if it occurs at all.

It is valuable considering each of these objections on their own terms. The initial critique, that Prop 50 will spur the right to alter their respective maps in retaliation, does not hold up as a causal argument: it does not make sense to say that Republicans will be made to act in undemocratic ways by Democrats’ measures when they are already engaging in such behavior in the absence of those steps. The GOP, I would observe, has required no any incentive of retaliation to redraw boundaries that secure permanent seats for their party: they have been ready to do this for their own benefit, in the complete absence of similar actions by the left, for years.

The other critique, in my view, is more substantive, expressing not just a tactical disagreement about how to address the GOP’s anti-democracy turn, but a sort of melancholic wish for a distinct nation than the one that the US has become. It is true that in a more ideal world – in the reality that the majority of Democrats, it is believed, desire and aspire to – Prop 50 would be distasteful to our values, and not required by our situation. It is undesirable to pack and crack targeted demographics; it is not good for politicians to choose their voters, instead of the other way around; it is negative that votes are rendered uncontested. That these measures have become essential in order to impede the autocratic advance of Trump’s power and lessen the level of harm he is capable to cause is unfortunate; it is a sign of how much we have declined from something 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 mourn what opposing it has made us.

If the legislative branch fails to in practice have lawmaking, war making or budgetary authority, what is it, exactly, that Prop 50’s additional five Democratic representatives will be sent to the capital to do? One thing that Congress continues to holds is the authority to compel testimony, and the ability to examine. Even in our era of stagnant government and legislative decline, it has made use of that authority to significant impact. In 2027, if the measure passes and California’s new representatives are sworn in, they will become a member of a institution with the power to investigate the president, to televise their hearings into his actions and to compel associates of his close advisors to testify. It’s significant, and crucially, it’s not something that any Republican would do.

• The columnist is a Guardian US columnist