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What, exactly, is the role of Congress? During another Trump administration, it is difficult to tell. The authority to declare war, traditionally viewed as a crucial legislative power, has turned into a murky prerogative of the executive branch in the years since the 9/11 attacks; Trump, in the past few months, has asserted additional of that power for himself, authorizing military actions on vessels in the Caribbean.

The authority over spending appears to be mostly been stripped from Congress too; currently, under the office of management and budget director, the OMB director, a great deal of the ability to allocate government money has likewise defaulted to the presidency, with the administration asserting the authority to abort congressionally authorized spending and seeking to move the funds to other uses. It’s as if they’re passing any laws, anyway; almost all bills must currently be crammed into budget reconciliation bills, massive recurring essential comprehensive bills that can bypass the filibuster. But when these don’t pass – and more and more, they do not – the federal government just shuts down. At least, large sections of the government do – and it’s not clear how many people are aware. At present, the federal government has been shut down all month; there are little indication of it reopening anytime soon. But the presidency continues operating smoothly.

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

How ‘screw Trump’ rhetoric could help California’s Proposition 50 prevail

And yet Proposition 50, California’s redistricting referendum that could deliver five more House seats to the Democratic Party if it is embraced by the electorate in a special election in the coming weeks, has captured the attention of liberals nationwide. Partly, it is a belated reaction to trends happening in other states: Republican-controlled states have for a long time embraced dramatic biased redistricting while big Democratic-controlled such as California, the Empire State and Washington create their district lines via nonpartisan redistricting panels, an asymmetry that has led to closely divided House control and a longstanding feeling, by the left, that their party is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The California proposal is explicitly intended as a countermove to a mid-decade redrawing of maps that was recently approved in Texas, which implemented boundaries that will provide Republicans an additional five seats in the state’s congressional delegation in the upcoming term; similar boundary changes are under way in states such as the Show-Me State and the Hoosier State. (The left in the Old Dominion are also emulating California’s lead in attempting to alter districts.)

The California measure seems probable to pass, as Democratic and liberal electorate react with fear and frustration to the president’s authoritarian centralization of authority and seek ways to restrain his worst impulses. But Prop 50 is not free from controversy. Some critics warn that the move could have unintended consequences, with blue states’ attempts to redistrict setting off a revenge pattern in which red states do additional to design their districts so as to eliminate any possibility of opposition party success. Different critics have critiqued the proposal on more purely principled pro-democracy 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 genuinely democratic: it means, necessarily, that the influence of opposing voices is suppressed, and that the procedure of debate, discussion and convincing that is meant to characterize a healthy democratic process will be limited only to party primaries, if it happens at all.

It is worth taking each of these objections on their own terms. The initial argument, that the measure will provoke the right to redraw their own districts in response, fails as a causal argument: it is illogical to claim that Republicans will be compelled to behave in undemocratic ways by Democrats’ actions when they are already engaging in such behavior in the absence of those steps. The Republican party, I would observe, has not needed any incentive of revenge to redraw boundaries that secure long-term positions for themselves: they have been willing to do this for their own benefit, in the total lack of Democratic reciprocation, for a long time.

The other critique, in my view, is more substantive, reflecting not just a strategic difference about how to address the GOP’s undemocratic turn, but a kind 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 world that most Democrats, I think, desire and aspire to – the proposition would be unappealing to our principles, and not required by our situation. It is not good to pack and crack targeted demographics; it is not good for politicians to select their voters, instead of the other way around; it is not good that votes are rendered uncontested. That these actions have become necessary in order to slow the autocratic creep of Trump’s control and lessen the amount of harm he is able to cause is sad; it is a indication of how much we have declined from something more like a representative government. But they are necessary. Only once the battle against the current administration’s ideology has been won that we can lament what fighting it has made us.

If Congress does not in reality have lawmaking, war making or appropriations power, what is it, precisely, that the proposition’s five new blue house members will be sent to Washington to do? One aspect that Congress continues to retains is the authority to compel testimony, and the ability to investigate. Even in our era of stagnant government and legislative decline, it has utilized of that power to significant impact. In 2027, if Prop 50 is approved and the state’s additional Democrats are take office, they will become a part of a body with the authority to probe Trump, to broadcast their hearings into his actions and to force members of his close advisors to testify. It’s significant, and more importantly, it’s not something that any Republican would do.

• Moira Donegan is a Guardian US writer