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What, precisely, is the role of Congress? In the second presidency of Donald Trump, it can be hard to tell. The authority to declare war, traditionally viewed as a crucial legislative power, has become a murky prerogative of the presidential office in the years since September 11; Trump, in recent months, has asserted additional of that power for his administration, authorizing strikes on vessels in the Caribbean.

The authority over spending appears to be mostly been stripped from the legislative branch as well; currently, under the leadership of budget chief, Russell Vought, much of the ability to appropriate government money has likewise shifted to the executive, with the White House asserting the ability to abort congressionally authorized spending and seeking to move the funds elsewhere. It’s not like they’re passing any laws, anyway; virtually all bills must now be crammed into spending packages, massive recurring essential omnibus legislation that can bypass the senate obstruction. But when those don’t pass – and increasingly, they don’t – the government just ceases operations. At least, large sections of the government shut down – and it’s uncertain how many citizens notice. Currently, the federal government has been shut down all month; there are no signs of it resuming operations anytime soon. But the executive branch keeps on humming along.

And so the issue of dominance of Congress can seem somewhat irrelevant. Why should U.S. citizens care who holds a controlling share in a body that has largely abolished itself?

How ‘screw Trump’ messaging may assist California’s Proposition 50 succeed

And yet Prop 50, the Golden State’s redistricting referendum that could provide five more congressional positions to the Democratic Party if it is embraced by the electorate in a upcoming vote in the coming weeks, has seized the attention of liberals nationwide. Partly, it is a belated reaction to trends happening elsewhere: Republican-controlled states have for a long time adopted dramatic biased redistricting while large blue states such as the Golden State, the Empire State and the Evergreen State create their maps via impartial redistricting panels, an asymmetry that has led to narrowly split control of the House and a longstanding feeling, by the left, that their party is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The California measure is explicitly designed as a response to a mid-decade redistricting that was recently approved in Texas, which installed maps that will provide Republicans an five more positions in the state’s House representation in the upcoming term; similar boundary changes are under way in states such as Missouri and Indiana. (Democrats in Virginia are likewise following the state’s example in seeking to redistrict.)

The state initiative seems likely to pass, as progressive voters react with concern and anger to Trump’s autocratic consolidation of authority and look for ways to check his worst tendencies. But Prop 50 is not free from controversy. Some critics warn that the move could backfire, with Democratic-controlled states’ efforts to change districts setting off a retaliatory cycle in which red states do additional to design their maps so as to foreclose any possibility of opposition party success. Different critics have questioned the measure on more purely ideological pro-democracy grounds: a district that is drawn in such a way that the result of the vote is not in doubt, they say, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely democratic: it means, inevitably, that the power of dissenting voices is muted, and that the process of deliberation, discussion and persuasion that is meant to define a healthy democratic process will be confined only to primary elections, if it happens at all.

It is valuable taking each of these objections on their merits. The initial argument, that Prop 50 will spur conservatives to alter their own maps in response, fails as a causal point: it does not make sense to claim that Republicans will be made to act in antidemocratic ways by the left’s measures when they are already engaging in such behavior in the absence of those steps. The Republican party, it can be noted, has not needed any incentive of retaliation to redraw boundaries that guarantee long-term 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 objection, in my view, is more substantive, reflecting not just a strategic disagreement about how to confront the Republicans’ anti-democracy shift, but a kind of melancholic desire for a different country than the one that the US has turned into. It is true that in a better world – in the reality that most Democrats, it is believed, desire and hope for – Prop 50 would be distasteful to our values, and not mandated by our situation. It is undesirable to manipulate targeted population groups; it is harmful for politicians to select their constituents, instead of the reverse; it is not good that votes are rendered uncontested. That these measures have grown necessary in order to slow the authoritarian advance of Trump’s control and reduce the level of harm he is able to inflict is sad; it is a sign of how far we have declined from a state more like a democracy. But they are required. It is only after the battle against the current administration’s ideology has been successfully concluded that we can lament what fighting it has made us.

If Congress does not in practice have legislative, military or appropriations authority, what is it, precisely, that the proposition’s additional five blue house members will be dispatched to Washington to do? One thing that the House and Senate still holds is the authority to compel testimony, and the power to examine. Even in our era of stagnant politics and congressional atrophy, it has utilized of that power to great effect. In 2027, if Prop 50 is approved and California’s new representatives are take office, they will become a part of a body with the authority to investigate Trump, to broadcast their investigations into his conduct and to compel associates of his close advisors to testify. It’s not nothing, and crucially, it’s not anything that any conservative would do.

• The columnist is a Guardian US columnist