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What, precisely, is the role of Congress? During another Trump administration, it is difficult to determine. The power to declare war, traditionally viewed as a crucial legislative power, has become a murky right of the presidential office in the time since September 11; Trump, in recent months, has claimed additional of that control for his administration, conducting strikes on vessels in the Caribbean.

The power of the purse appears to be mostly been taken away from the legislative branch too; now, under the leadership of budget chief, the OMB director, much of the power to appropriate government money has also shifted to the presidency, with the administration claiming the ability to abort legislatively approved spending and seeking to move the funds to other uses. It’s not like they’re enacting any laws, either; virtually all legislation must now be crammed into spending packages, massive recurring must-spend omnibus legislation that can circumvent the senate obstruction. But when those fail to be approved – and increasingly, they don’t – the government simply ceases operations. That is, large sections of the government do – and it’s uncertain how many citizens notice. At present, the government has been shut down for the entire month; there are little indication of it resuming operations in the near future. But the presidency keeps on operating smoothly.

And so the issue of dominance of the House and Senate can appear somewhat moot. Why should U.S. citizens care who has a majority in a body that has largely abolished itself?

In what way ‘screw Trump’ messaging may help the state of California’s Proposition 50 prevail

And yet Prop 50, California’s redistricting referendum that could deliver five more congressional positions to the Democrats if it is approved by the electorate in a special election in the coming weeks, has seized the attention of liberals nationwide. Partly, it is a belated reaction to developments happening elsewhere: GOP-led states have long embraced dramatic biased redistricting while big blue states such as the Golden State, New York and Washington draw their district lines via impartial independent commissions, an asymmetry that has led to narrowly split House control and a longstanding feeling, by the left, that their party is at a disadvantage. The California proposal is clearly intended as a response to a mid-term redistricting that recently passed in the Lone Star State, which installed boundaries that will provide Republicans an five more seats in the state’s 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 the Old Dominion are likewise emulating the state’s example in attempting to redistrict.)

The California initiative seems probable to pass, as progressive voters respond with concern and anger to the president’s autocratic centralization of authority and seek methods to restrain his worst tendencies. But Prop 50 is not free from controversy. Some critics warn that the action could have unintended consequences, with blue states’ attempts to change districts setting off a retaliatory pattern in which red states do even more to draw their districts so as to foreclose any chance 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 outcome of the election is not in doubt, they say, is one that cannot be said to be truly representative: it means, necessarily, that the power of dissenting views is suppressed, and that the procedure of debate, argument and persuasion that is meant to characterize a functioning political system will be limited only to party primaries, if it happens at all.

It is worth considering each of these criticisms on their own terms. The first argument, that the measure will spur conservatives to redraw their respective districts in retaliation, fails as a logical argument: it does not make sense to claim that the GOP will be made to act in undemocratic ways by the left’s actions when they are already doing so in the absence of those steps. The GOP, it can be noted, has not needed any motivation of revenge to redraw boundaries that guarantee long-term positions for their party: they have been ready to do this for their own benefit, in the complete absence of Democratic reciprocation, for years.

The second critique, in my view, is more substantive, expressing not just a strategic disagreement about how to address the GOP’s anti-democracy shift, but a sort of melancholic desire for a distinct nation than the one that the United States has become. It is true that in a more ideal world – in the world that most Democrats, I think, yearn for and aspire to – the proposition would be distasteful to our values, and not required by our circumstances. It is undesirable to manipulate targeted population groups; it is not good for elected officials to select their constituents, instead of the reverse; it is not good that votes are made uncontested. That these measures have grown essential in order to slow the authoritarian advance of the president’s control and reduce the level of suffering he is capable to cause is unfortunate; it is a indication of how far we have declined from something more like a democracy. But they are required. Only after the battle against Trumpism has been won that we can lament what fighting it has transformed us into.

If Congress does not in reality have legislative, war making or budgetary authority, what is it, exactly, that Prop 50’s additional five Democratic representatives will be sent to the capital to do? One aspect that the House and Senate still retains is the authority to compel testimony, and the ability to investigate. Even in our time of sclerotic politics and legislative decline, it has utilized of that power to great effect. In the coming years, if Prop 50 is approved and the state’s additional Democrats are sworn in, they will find themselves a member of a body with the authority to probe Trump, to televise their investigations into his actions and to compel associates of his close advisors to give evidence. It’s significant, and crucially, it’s not anything that any Republican would do.

• The columnist is a Guardian US writer