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What, precisely, is the role of 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 turned into a murky right of the presidential office in the time since September 11; the president, in recent months, has asserted even more of that control for his administration, authorizing military actions on boats in the Caribbean.

The power of the purse appears to be mostly been stripped from the legislative branch too; now, under the office of budget chief, Russell Vought, much of the power to appropriate federal funds has also defaulted to the executive, with the White House asserting the authority to abort legislatively approved expenditures and attempting to move the money elsewhere. It’s not like they’re passing any legislation, anyway; almost all bills must now be crammed into spending packages, huge perennial must-spend omnibus legislation that can bypass the senate obstruction. But when these fail to be approved – and increasingly, they do not – the government just ceases operations. At least, large sections of the administration shut down – and it’s not clear how many citizens are aware. At present, the federal government has been closed for the entire month; there are no signs of it reopening in the near future. But the executive branch continues humming along.

And so the issue of dominance of Congress can seem rather irrelevant. Why should Americans be concerned who holds a controlling share in a body that has largely abolished itself?

In what way ‘oppose the president’ messaging may assist California’s Prop 50 succeed

And yet Proposition 50, the Golden State’s redistricting referendum that could provide five more House seats to the Democrats if it is embraced by the electorate in a upcoming vote next month, has seized the political imagination of progressives across the country. In part, it is a delayed reaction to developments occurring elsewhere: GOP-led states have for a long time adopted extreme partisan gerrymandering while big blue states such as the Golden State, New York and the Evergreen State create their district lines via impartial independent commissions, an imbalance that has resulted in closely divided control of the House and a long-term feeling, by the left, that their party is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The state proposal is clearly intended as a countermove to a mid-decade redistricting that recently passed in the Lone Star State, which installed boundaries that will give Republicans an additional five seats in the state’s congressional delegation next year; comparable redistricting moves are in progress in states such as Missouri and Indiana. (The left in the Old Dominion are likewise following California’s example in attempting to redistrict.)

The California initiative seems probable to be approved, as progressive voters react with concern and frustration to the president’s authoritarian centralization of power and look for ways to check his most extreme tendencies. But the proposition is not free from debate. Some opponents warn that the action could have unintended consequences, with blue states’ efforts to change districts setting off a revenge pattern in which red states do even more to design their maps so as to foreclose any chance of opposition party success. Different critics have critiqued the measure on more purely principled pro-democracy grounds: a district that is drawn in such a manner that the outcome of the vote is not in question, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be truly democratic: it implies, inevitably, that the power of dissenting voices is suppressed, and that the procedure of deliberation, discussion and convincing that is supposed to define a functioning political system will be confined only to primary elections, if it occurs at all.

It is valuable taking each of these objections on their own terms. The initial critique, that the measure will spur the right to redraw their respective districts in retaliation, fails as a logical point: it is illogical to claim that Republicans will be made to act in undemocratic ways by the left’s actions when they are already engaging in such behavior in the absence of those actions. The GOP, it can be noted, has not needed any motivation of revenge to redraw maps that guarantee long-term positions for themselves: they have been willing to do this for its own sake, in the complete lack of Democratic reciprocation, for years.

The second objection, I think, is more significant, reflecting not just a tactical difference about how to confront the GOP’s anti-democracy shift, but a sort of sad wish for a distinct country than the one that the US has turned into. It is accurate that in a better situation – in the world that the majority of Democrats, it is believed, desire and aspire to – the proposition would be distasteful to our principles, and not mandated by our circumstances. It is undesirable to pack and crack targeted population groups; it is not good for politicians to select their voters, instead of the reverse; it is negative that votes are made noncompetitive. That these actions have grown essential in order to slow the autocratic creep of Trump’s control and reduce the amount of suffering he is capable to inflict is sad; it is a indication of how much we have fallen from a state more like a democracy. But they are required. Only after the fight against Trumpism has been successfully concluded that we can mourn what fighting it has transformed us into.

If Congress fails to in reality have lawmaking, war making or appropriations 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 retains is the authority to compel testimony, and the power to examine. Even in our time of stagnant government and legislative decline, it has utilized of that power to significant impact. In the coming years, if the measure is approved and California’s additional Democrats are sworn in, they will become a part of a institution with the authority to investigate Trump, to televise their hearings into his actions and to compel associates of his close advisors to give evidence. It’s significant, and more importantly, it’s not anything that any Republican would do.

• Moira Donegan is a Guardian US writer