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What, precisely, is the role of Congress? In the second presidency of Donald Trump, it is difficult to determine. The authority to declare war, long considered a crucial congressional authority, has turned into a unclear prerogative of the presidential office in the years since the 9/11 attacks; the president, in the past few months, has claimed even more of that control for himself, authorizing strikes on vessels in the Caribbean.

The power of the purse appears to be largely been taken away from Congress as well; currently, under the leadership of budget chief, Russell Vought, a great deal of the ability to appropriate government money has likewise defaulted to the executive, with the White House asserting the authority to abort legislatively approved expenditures and attempting to redirect the money to other uses. It’s not like they’re passing any laws, anyway; almost all bills must now be crammed into budget reconciliation bills, massive recurring must-spend comprehensive bills that can bypass the filibuster. But when those don’t pass – and increasingly, they don’t – the federal government simply shuts down. That is, large sections of the administration do – and it’s not clear how many citizens notice. Currently, 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 dominance of the House and Senate can appear somewhat irrelevant. Why should Americans be concerned who has a controlling share in a institution that has mostly rendered itself powerless?

In what way ‘screw Trump’ rhetoric could help the state of California’s Prop 50 succeed

And yet Proposition 50, California’s redistricting referendum that could provide five more House seats to the Democratic Party if it is approved by voters in a special election next month, has seized the attention of progressives across the country. Partly, it is a belated response to trends occurring in other states: Republican-controlled states have long embraced dramatic biased redistricting while big Democratic-controlled such as California, New York and the Evergreen State create their maps via impartial independent commissions, an asymmetry that has resulted in closely divided control of the House and a long-term feeling, by the left, that their political group is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The California measure is explicitly intended as a countermove to a mid-term redistricting that recently passed in Texas, which installed maps that will provide Republicans an five more positions in the state congressional delegation in the upcoming term; similar redistricting moves are in progress in states such as Missouri and Indiana. (The left in Virginia are also following California’s lead in seeking to alter districts.)

The state measure seems probable to pass, as progressive electorate react with concern and frustration to the president’s autocratic centralization of authority and seek methods to check his most extreme impulses. But Prop 50 is not without debate. Some opponents warn that the move could have unintended consequences, with Democratic-controlled states’ attempts to redistrict triggering a revenge cycle in which red states do additional to design their districts so as to eliminate any chance of opposition party success. Different critics have questioned the measure on strictly principled democratic bases: a electoral area that is drawn in such a manner that the result of the election is never really in question, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely representative: it means, necessarily, that the power of dissenting views is muted, and that the process of debate, discussion and persuasion that is meant to define a functioning democratic process will be limited only to primary elections, if it happens at all.

It is valuable considering each of these criticisms on their own terms. The initial argument, that Prop 50 will provoke the right to redraw their own maps in retaliation, fails as a causal point: it does not make sense to say that the GOP will be made to act in antidemocratic ways by the left’s measures when they are already engaging in such behavior without those actions. The Republican party, it can be noted, has not needed any motivation of retaliation to change maps that secure long-term seats for their party: they have been ready to do this for their own benefit, in the total absence of Democratic reciprocation, for years.

The second objection, in my view, is more substantive, expressing not just a tactical difference about how to address the GOP’s anti-democracy shift, but a kind of sad desire for a distinct country than the one that the United States 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 – Prop 50 would be unappealing to our principles, and not required by our situation. It is undesirable to pack and crack disfavored demographics; it is harmful for politicians to select their constituents, instead of the other way around; it is negative that votes are rendered uncontested. That these actions have grown necessary in order to impede the autocratic creep of Trump’s power and lessen the level of harm he is capable to cause is unfortunate; it is a indication of how much we have declined from a state more like a representative government. But they are required. It is only once the fight against Trumpism has been successfully concluded that we can mourn what opposing it has transformed us into.

If Congress does not in practice have lawmaking, war making or budgetary authority, what is it, precisely, that the proposition’s additional five blue representatives will be dispatched to the capital to do? One thing that the House and Senate still retains is subpoena power, and the power to investigate. Even in our era of sclerotic politics and legislative decline, it has utilized of that power to great effect. In the coming years, if the measure passes and California’s new representatives are sworn in, they will become a member of a body with the authority to probe the president, to televise their investigations into his conduct and to force associates of his inner circle to testify. It’s significant, and more importantly, it’s not anything that any Republican would do.

• The columnist is a Guardian US columnist