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What, precisely, is the role of Congress? In the second presidency of Donald Trump, it is difficult to determine. The power to declare war, traditionally viewed as a vital congressional authority, has become a unclear right of the executive branch in the time since September 11; the president, in recent months, has asserted additional of that power for his administration, authorizing military actions on boats in the Caribbean Sea.

The power of the purse seems to have mostly been stripped from the legislative branch too; currently, under the office of management and budget director, Russell Vought, much of the ability to allocate government money has also shifted to the presidency, with the administration claiming the ability to cancel congressionally authorized expenditures and attempting to redirect the funds elsewhere. It’s as if they’re enacting any laws, either; almost all bills must currently be crammed into budget reconciliation bills, massive recurring essential omnibus legislation that can circumvent the filibuster. But when those fail to be approved – and increasingly, they don’t – the federal government just ceases operations. At least, big parts of the government shut down – and it’s uncertain how many citizens notice. Currently, the government has been shut down all month; there are little indication of it reopening anytime soon. But the executive branch continues humming along.

And so the question of control of Congress can appear somewhat irrelevant. Why should Americans be concerned who has a majority in a institution that has mostly rendered itself powerless?

In what way ‘screw Trump’ messaging could assist the state of California’s Proposition 50 succeed

And yet Prop 50, the Golden State’s redistricting referendum that could provide five additional House seats to the Democrats if it is embraced by the electorate in a special election next month, has seized the political imagination of progressives nationwide. Partly, it is a belated response to developments happening in other states: GOP-led states have for a long time adopted extreme partisan gerrymandering while large blue states such as the Golden State, New York and the Evergreen State draw their district lines via nonpartisan independent commissions, an imbalance that has led to closely divided control of the House and a longstanding sense, by the left, that their party is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The California measure is clearly designed as a response to a mid-decade redrawing of maps that recently passed in the Lone Star State, which installed maps that will provide Republicans an additional five seats in the state House representation next year; comparable redistricting moves are under way in states such as the Show-Me State and the Hoosier State. (The left in Virginia are likewise following the state’s lead in attempting to alter districts.)

The state measure seems probable to be approved, as progressive electorate react with concern and anger to the president’s authoritarian consolidation of authority and seek methods to check his most extreme tendencies. But Prop 50 is not free from controversy. Some opponents warn that the move could have unintended consequences, with blue states’ attempts to redistrict setting off a revenge pattern in which Republican-controlled states do additional to design their districts so as to foreclose any possibility of opposition party success. Different critics have critiqued the proposal on strictly principled pro-democracy bases: a district that is created in such a way that the result of the election is never really in question, they say, is one that cannot be said to be truly representative: it means, necessarily, that the power of dissenting voices is muted, and that the procedure of debate, argument and convincing that is meant to define a functioning democratic process will be limited only to primary elections, if it happens at all.

It is worth considering each of these criticisms on their merits. The first argument, that Prop 50 will spur conservatives to redraw their respective districts in response, fails as a logical argument: it is illogical to claim that Republicans will be made to behave in antidemocratic ways by Democrats’ measures when they are already doing so in the absence of those steps. The Republican party, I would observe, has not needed any motivation of retaliation to redraw boundaries that secure long-term seats for themselves: they have been willing to do this for their own benefit, in the total absence of Democratic reciprocation, for years.

The second objection, in my view, is more significant, reflecting not just a strategic difference about how to confront the GOP’s anti-democracy shift, but a kind of sad desire for a different nation than the one that the United States has become. It is true that in a more ideal world – in the reality that the majority of the left, 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 disfavored population groups; it is not good for elected officials to select their constituents, instead of the reverse; it is negative that votes are rendered uncontested. That these actions have become essential in order to impede the authoritarian advance of Trump’s control and reduce the amount of harm he is capable to inflict is sad; it is a indication of how far we have fallen from a state more like a representative government. But they are required. It is only once the battle against the current administration’s ideology has been won that we can lament what fighting it has transformed us into.

If the legislative branch does not in reality have lawmaking, war making or appropriations authority, what is it, exactly, that Prop 50’s five new Democratic house members will be sent to the capital to do? One thing that the House and Senate still holds is the authority to compel testimony, and the ability to examine. Even in our era of sclerotic politics and congressional atrophy, it has utilized of that authority to significant impact. In 2027, if the measure passes and California’s new representatives are take office, they will find themselves a part of a institution with the authority to probe Trump, to televise their investigations into his conduct and to compel associates of his close advisors to give evidence. It’s not nothing, and crucially, it’s not anything that any conservative would do.

• Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist