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What, precisely, is the role of Congress? In the second presidency of Donald Trump, it is difficult to tell. The authority to initiate armed conflict, traditionally viewed as a crucial congressional authority, has become a unclear prerogative of the presidential office in the years since September 11; Trump, in recent months, has claimed additional of that power for his administration, conducting military actions on boats in the Caribbean.

The authority over spending appears to be mostly been stripped from the legislative branch as well; now, under the leadership of management and budget director, Russell Vought, much of the ability to allocate federal funds has likewise defaulted to the executive, with the White House claiming the authority to cancel legislatively approved expenditures and attempting to move the money elsewhere. It’s as if they’re passing any laws, anyway; virtually all bills must now be crammed into budget reconciliation bills, huge perennial essential omnibus legislation that can bypass the senate obstruction. But when these don’t pass – and more and more, they don’t – the government just ceases operations. That is, large sections of the government shut down – and it’s uncertain how many citizens notice. At present, the federal government has been shut down all month; there are little indication of it resuming operations in the near future. But the executive branch keeps on operating smoothly.

And so the issue of dominance of Congress can appear somewhat moot. Why should Americans care who has a controlling share in a institution that has mostly abolished itself?

How ‘oppose the president’ rhetoric could assist the state of California’s Proposition 50 succeed

And yet Proposition 50, the Golden State’s redistricting referendum that could deliver five additional House seats to the Democrats if it is approved by the electorate in a special election in the coming weeks, has captured the attention of progressives nationwide. Partly, it is a delayed reaction to trends occurring elsewhere: Republican-controlled states have long adopted dramatic partisan gerrymandering while big Democratic-controlled such as the Golden State, New York and the Evergreen State draw their maps via impartial redistricting panels, an imbalance that has resulted in narrowly split House control and a longstanding sense, by Democrats, that their party is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The state proposal is explicitly intended as a response to a mid-decade redrawing of maps that recently passed in the Lone Star State, which implemented boundaries that will give Republicans an five more seats in the state House representation in the upcoming term; similar boundary changes are in progress in states such as the Show-Me State and the Hoosier State. (Democrats in the Old Dominion are likewise following California’s example in attempting to redistrict.)

The state initiative seems likely to pass, as progressive electorate react with concern and anger to Trump’s autocratic consolidation of authority and seek methods to check his most extreme impulses. But Prop 50 is not free from controversy. Some opponents caution that the action could backfire, with blue states’ efforts to change districts triggering a revenge cycle in which Republican-controlled states do additional to draw their maps so as to eliminate any possibility of Democratic competitiveness. Others have questioned the proposal on strictly principled democratic bases: a electoral area that is drawn in such a way that the result of the election is never really in question, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be truly representative: it means, inevitably, that the influence of dissenting voices is suppressed, and that the process of deliberation, discussion and convincing that is meant to characterize a healthy democratic process will be limited only to party primaries, if it occurs at all.

It is worth considering each of these objections on their own terms. The first argument, that Prop 50 will spur conservatives to alter their own districts in response, does not hold up as a causal argument: it is illogical to claim that the GOP will be compelled to act in undemocratic ways by Democrats’ measures when they are already doing so in the absence of those steps. The Republican party, it can be noted, has not needed any incentive of retaliation to redraw maps that secure long-term positions for themselves: they have been willing to do this for their own benefit, in the total lack of similar actions by the left, for years.

The other critique, in my view, is more substantive, reflecting not just a strategic difference about how to confront the GOP’s anti-democracy shift, but a sort of sad desire for a distinct nation than the one that the US has become. It is accurate that in a better world – in the reality that the majority of the left, I think, yearn for and aspire to – the proposition would be unappealing to our principles, and not required by our situation. It is undesirable to manipulate targeted demographics; it is not good for politicians to choose their voters, rather than the other way around; it is not good that elections are made noncompetitive. That these measures have grown necessary in order to impede the autocratic advance of Trump’s control and lessen the level of harm he is able to inflict is unfortunate; it is a sign of how much we have declined from something more like a representative government. But they are necessary. It is only once the fight against Trumpism has been successfully concluded that we can lament what opposing it has made us.

If Congress fails to in reality have legislative, war making or appropriations power, what is it, precisely, that Prop 50’s five new blue house members will be sent to Washington to do? One thing that Congress continues to holds is the authority to compel testimony, and the power to examine. Even in our era of stagnant government and legislative decline, it has utilized of that power to great effect. In 2027, if Prop 50 passes and the state’s additional representatives are take office, they will find themselves a member of a body with the power to probe the president, to broadcast their hearings into his actions and to compel members of his close advisors to testify. It’s significant, and crucially, it’s not something that any Republican would do.

• Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist