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What, precisely, is the role of the U.S. Congress? In the second presidency of Donald Trump, it is difficult to determine. 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; the president, in the past few months, has asserted additional of that control for himself, authorizing military actions on vessels in the Caribbean Sea.

The power of the purse seems to have mostly been taken away from the legislative branch too; currently, under the leadership of budget chief, the OMB director, much of the ability to allocate government money has also shifted to the executive, with the administration asserting the ability to abort congressionally authorized spending and seeking to redirect the money to other uses. It’s not like they’re enacting any laws, either; virtually all bills must currently be packed into spending packages, huge perennial essential omnibus legislation that can circumvent the filibuster. But when these don’t pass – and more and more, they don’t – the federal government simply ceases operations. At least, big parts of the administration do – and it’s not clear how many people notice. At present, the federal government has been shut down for the entire month; there are no signs of it reopening in the near future. But the executive branch continues operating smoothly.

And so the question of control of the House and Senate can appear somewhat moot. Why should U.S. citizens care who holds a controlling share in a body that has mostly rendered itself powerless?

How ‘screw Trump’ messaging may assist California’s Prop 50 prevail

And yet Prop 50, the Golden State’s redistricting referendum that could deliver five more House seats to the Democrats if it is approved by the electorate in a upcoming vote next month, has captured the political imagination of progressives across the country. Partly, it is a delayed reaction to developments happening elsewhere: GOP-led states have long embraced extreme partisan gerrymandering while big Democratic-controlled such as the Golden State, New York and Washington create their maps via impartial redistricting panels, an asymmetry that has led to closely divided House control and a long-term sense, by Democrats, that their party is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The California proposal is clearly designed as a countermove to a mid-decade redistricting that was recently approved in Texas, which installed maps that will provide the GOP an additional five seats in the state House representation next year; similar redistricting moves are under way in states such as the Show-Me State and Indiana. (The left in the Old Dominion are likewise emulating the state’s example in seeking to redistrict.)

The state initiative seems likely to pass, as progressive electorate respond with fear and frustration to the president’s autocratic centralization of authority and look for methods to restrain his worst impulses. But Prop 50 is not without debate. Some critics warn that the action could have unintended consequences, with Democratic-controlled states’ attempts to redistrict setting off a revenge cycle in which red states do additional to draw their districts so as to foreclose any possibility of Democratic competitiveness. Different critics have critiqued the proposal on strictly principled pro-democracy grounds: a district that is drawn in such a way that the result of the vote is never really in question, they say, is one that cannot be said to be truly democratic: it means, necessarily, that the power of opposing voices is muted, and that the process of deliberation, discussion and persuasion that is supposed to define a healthy democratic process will be limited only to party primaries, if it happens at all.

It is worth taking each of these objections on their merits. The first argument, that Prop 50 will provoke the right to alter their own districts in retaliation, fails as a causal argument: it is illogical to say that the GOP will be made to act 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, it can be noted, has not needed any incentive of revenge to redraw boundaries that guarantee permanent positions for their party: they have been willing to do this for its own sake, in the complete absence of similar actions by the left, for a long time.

The second objection, I think, is more substantive, reflecting not just a tactical disagreement about how to confront the GOP’s undemocratic shift, but a sort of sad desire for a distinct nation than the one that the US has turned into. It is true that in a more ideal world – in the reality that most Democrats, it is believed, yearn for and hope for – the proposition 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 elected officials to choose their constituents, rather than the other way around; it is negative that votes are made noncompetitive. That these actions have become necessary in order to slow the authoritarian advance of the president’s control and reduce the amount of suffering he is capable to cause is unfortunate; it is a indication of how much we have declined from something more like a democracy. But they are required. Only once the battle against Trumpism has been won that we can mourn what opposing it has transformed us into.

If the legislative branch does not in practice have legislative, war making or budgetary power, what is it, exactly, that the proposition’s additional five Democratic house members will be sent to Washington to do? One thing that Congress still holds is the authority to compel testimony, and the power to investigate. Even in our time of stagnant government and legislative decline, it has utilized of that power to significant impact. In 2027, if Prop 50 passes and California’s new Democrats are take office, they will find themselves a part of a institution with the authority to investigate Trump, to broadcast their hearings into his conduct and to compel members of his close advisors to testify. It’s not nothing, and crucially, it’s not anything that any conservative would do.

• Moira Donegan is a Guardian US writer