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What, precisely, is the role of the U.S. 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 unclear prerogative of the presidential office in the years since the 9/11 attacks; Trump, in recent months, has asserted even more of that control for his administration, authorizing strikes on boats in the Caribbean.

The power of the purse seems to have mostly been stripped from the legislative branch too; now, under the office of management and budget director, Russell Vought, a great deal of the ability to allocate government money has also defaulted to the presidency, with the White House asserting the ability to abort legislatively approved expenditures and seeking to redirect the funds to other uses. It’s not like they’re passing any laws, either; virtually all bills must currently be crammed into spending packages, massive recurring essential comprehensive bills that can bypass the filibuster. But when these fail to be approved – and increasingly, they don’t – the government just ceases operations. At least, big parts of the administration do – and it’s not clear how many citizens are aware. Currently, the federal government has been shut down all month; there are no signs of it reopening in the near future. But the executive branch continues operating smoothly.

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

In what way ‘screw Trump’ messaging could assist California’s Proposition 50 prevail

And yet Proposition 50, California’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 next month, has seized the political imagination of progressives across the country. Partly, it is a belated reaction to developments happening in other states: GOP-led states have for a long time embraced dramatic partisan gerrymandering while large Democratic-controlled such as the Golden State, New York and the Evergreen State draw their district lines via nonpartisan redistricting panels, an imbalance that has resulted in closely divided control of the House and a long-term sense, by Democrats, that their political group is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The state measure is explicitly intended as a response to a mid-term redistricting that was recently approved 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 boundary changes are under way in states such as Missouri and the Hoosier State. (Democrats in Virginia are likewise emulating the state’s lead in attempting to redistrict.)

The California initiative seems probable to pass, as progressive electorate react with concern and anger to Trump’s autocratic centralization of authority and seek methods to restrain his most extreme impulses. But Prop 50 is not without debate. Some opponents warn that the move could have unintended consequences, with Democratic-controlled states’ attempts to change districts setting off a revenge pattern in which red states do additional to design their districts so as to foreclose any possibility of opposition party success. Different critics have questioned the proposal on strictly principled democratic bases: a electoral area that is drawn in such a manner that the result of the vote is not in doubt, they say, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely democratic: it implies, necessarily, that the influence of opposing voices is muted, and that the procedure of deliberation, discussion and persuasion that is meant to define a functioning democratic process will be confined only to primary elections, if it happens at all.

It is valuable taking each of these criticisms on their merits. The initial critique, that Prop 50 will provoke the right to redraw their respective districts in retaliation, does not hold up as a logical point: it is illogical to claim that Republicans will be compelled to behave in undemocratic ways by the left’s actions when they are already doing so in the absence of those actions. The GOP, I would observe, has required no any motivation of retaliation to change maps that guarantee long-term positions for themselves: they have been willing to do this for their own benefit, in the complete lack of Democratic reciprocation, for a long time.

The other critique, I think, is more significant, expressing not just a tactical difference about how to confront the Republicans’ anti-democracy turn, but a sort of melancholic desire for a different country than the one that the United States has become. It is accurate that in a better situation – in the reality that the majority of Democrats, I think, desire and aspire to – the proposition would be distasteful to our principles, and not required by our circumstances. It is undesirable to pack and crack targeted population groups; it is harmful for elected officials to select their voters, rather than the other way around; it is not good that elections are rendered noncompetitive. That these actions have grown necessary in order to slow the autocratic creep of the president’s power and lessen the level of harm he is capable to inflict is unfortunate; it is a indication of how much we have declined from a state more like a representative government. But they are required. Only once the fight against the current administration’s ideology has been won that we can mourn what fighting it has transformed us into.

If Congress does not in practice have legislative, war making or appropriations authority, what is it, exactly, that Prop 50’s additional five blue house members will be dispatched to Washington to do? One aspect that Congress continues to holds is the authority to compel testimony, and the power to investigate. Even in our time of sclerotic politics and legislative decline, it has utilized of that authority to great effect. In the coming years, if the measure passes and the state’s additional Democrats are sworn in, they will find themselves a member of a body with the power to probe the president, to broadcast their hearings into his conduct and to compel members of his inner circle to give evidence. It’s significant, and crucially, it’s not anything that any Republican would do.

• The columnist is a Guardian US columnist