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What, exactly, is the role of Congress? During another presidency of Donald Trump, it is difficult to tell. The power to declare war, long considered a vital congressional authority, has become a murky right of the executive branch in the years since the 9/11 attacks; the president, in the past few months, has asserted even more of that power for his administration, authorizing strikes on vessels in the Caribbean.

The power of the purse seems to have mostly been stripped from the legislative branch too; currently, under the leadership of budget chief, the OMB director, a great deal of the power to appropriate government money has likewise shifted to the executive, with the White House asserting the ability to abort legislatively approved spending and seeking to redirect the money elsewhere. It’s as if they’re passing any laws, anyway; almost all bills must now be packed into spending packages, huge perennial essential comprehensive bills that can circumvent the senate obstruction. But when those fail to be approved – and more and more, they do not – the government simply ceases operations. That is, big parts of the government do – and it’s uncertain how many people are aware. Currently, the federal government has been closed all month; there are little indication of it resuming operations anytime soon. But the presidency keeps on operating smoothly.

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

How ‘screw Trump’ messaging could help California’s Proposition 50 succeed

And yet Proposition 50, the Golden State’s redistricting referendum that could deliver five more House seats to the Democratic Party if it is approved by the electorate in a special election in the coming weeks, has captured the attention of progressives nationwide. In part, it is a delayed response to trends occurring elsewhere: Republican-controlled states have long embraced dramatic partisan gerrymandering while large blue states such as the Golden State, New York and Washington create their maps via nonpartisan independent commissions, an asymmetry that has resulted in narrowly split control of the House and a longstanding sense, by Democrats, that their party is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The state measure is explicitly intended as a response to a mid-decade redrawing of maps that recently passed in Texas, which implemented maps that will give Republicans an five more seats in the state House representation next year; similar redistricting moves are in progress in states such as the Show-Me State and Indiana. (Democrats in the Old Dominion are also emulating California’s lead in seeking to alter districts.)

The state measure seems probable to pass, as progressive voters respond with fear and anger to Trump’s authoritarian consolidation of power and seek ways to check his most extreme impulses. But the proposition is not free from debate. Some opponents caution that the move could have unintended consequences, with Democratic-controlled states’ attempts to change districts setting off a revenge cycle in which Republican-controlled states do even more to design their maps so as to eliminate any possibility of Democratic competitiveness. Others have critiqued the measure on more purely ideological democratic grounds: a district that is drawn in such a way that the result of the election is never really in doubt, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be truly democratic: it means, inevitably, that the power of dissenting voices is muted, and that the process of debate, discussion and convincing that is meant to define a functioning political system will be limited only to party primaries, if it occurs at all.

It is valuable taking each of these criticisms on their own terms. The initial argument, that the measure will spur the right to redraw their own maps in retaliation, fails as a causal point: it is illogical to say that Republicans will be made to act in antidemocratic ways by the left’s measures when they are already doing so in the absence of those steps. The Republican party, I would observe, has required no any motivation of revenge to change maps that guarantee permanent seats for their party: they have been willing to do this for their own benefit, in the complete lack of similar actions by the left, for years.

The other critique, in my view, is more significant, reflecting not just a tactical difference about how to address the Republicans’ undemocratic shift, but a kind of sad desire for a different country than the one that the United States has turned into. It is true that in a better situation – in the world that most the left, I think, yearn for and hope for – Prop 50 would be distasteful to our values, and not mandated by our circumstances. It is undesirable to manipulate targeted population groups; it is not good for politicians to select their voters, rather than the other way around; it is negative that votes are rendered uncontested. That these actions have become essential in order to impede the authoritarian advance of the president’s control and reduce the amount of harm he is able to inflict is unfortunate; it is a sign of how much we have fallen from a state 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 lawmaking, military or budgetary power, what is it, exactly, that Prop 50’s additional five blue representatives will be dispatched to Washington to do? One thing that the House and Senate still retains is the authority to compel testimony, and the ability to examine. Even in our era of stagnant government and congressional atrophy, it has made use of that authority to great effect. In the coming years, if the measure is approved and the state’s new Democrats are take office, they will find themselves a member of a body with the power to investigate Trump, to televise their investigations into his actions and to compel associates of his inner circle to testify. It’s significant, and crucially, it’s not something that any Republican would do.

• The columnist is a Guardian US columnist