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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 vital legislative power, has turned into a unclear right of the presidential office in the time since the 9/11 attacks; Trump, in the past few months, has asserted even more of that control for himself, conducting military actions on vessels in the Caribbean.

The authority over spending seems to have mostly been taken away from the legislative branch as well; currently, under the office of management and budget director, Russell Vought, much of the ability to appropriate federal funds has also defaulted to the presidency, with the White House claiming the ability to abort congressionally authorized expenditures and seeking to move the funds elsewhere. It’s not like they’re enacting any laws, anyway; almost all legislation must currently be crammed into budget reconciliation bills, huge recurring essential omnibus legislation that can bypass the filibuster. But when those fail to be approved – and increasingly, they don’t – the federal government just ceases operations. That is, big parts of the government do – and it’s uncertain how many citizens are aware. Currently, the government has been closed for the entire month; there are no signs of it resuming operations anytime soon. But the executive branch continues humming along.

And so the issue of dominance of Congress can appear somewhat irrelevant. Why should Americans be concerned who holds a controlling share in a body that has largely rendered itself powerless?

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

And yet Prop 50, California’s redistricting referendum that could deliver five more congressional positions to the Democratic Party if it is approved by voters in a special election next month, has captured the attention of liberals nationwide. In part, it is a delayed reaction to developments happening elsewhere: Republican-controlled states have for a long time embraced dramatic biased redistricting while large blue states such as the Golden State, New York and the Evergreen State draw their district lines via impartial redistricting panels, an imbalance that has resulted in closely divided House control and a longstanding feeling, by the left, that their party is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The state proposal is explicitly designed as a countermove to a mid-decade redistricting that was recently approved in Texas, which installed boundaries that will provide the GOP an additional five positions in the state’s congressional delegation in the upcoming term; similar boundary changes are in progress in states such as the Show-Me State and Indiana. (The left in the Old Dominion are likewise emulating the state’s example in attempting to alter districts.)

The state measure seems probable to pass, as progressive voters respond with concern and anger to Trump’s authoritarian centralization of power and look for methods to check his most extreme impulses. But the proposition is not free from controversy. Some opponents caution that the move could backfire, with blue states’ attempts to redistrict setting off a retaliatory pattern in which Republican-controlled states do even more to draw their maps so as to eliminate any chance of opposition party success. Different critics have questioned the proposal on strictly ideological pro-democracy bases: a district that is drawn in such a way that the result of the election is not in question, they say, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely representative: it implies, inevitably, that the influence of opposing views is muted, and that the procedure of deliberation, discussion and convincing that is supposed to define a functioning democratic process will be limited only to party primaries, if it happens at all.

It is valuable considering each of these objections on their merits. The first argument, that Prop 50 will spur conservatives to alter their respective maps in retaliation, fails as a logical point: it is illogical to say that the GOP will be made to act in antidemocratic ways by Democrats’ actions when they are already engaging in such behavior in the absence of those actions. The GOP, it can be noted, has required no any incentive of revenge to change boundaries that guarantee long-term positions for themselves: they have been ready to do this for their own benefit, in the complete lack of similar actions by the left, for a long time.

The second objection, in my view, is more significant, reflecting not just a tactical disagreement about how to address the GOP’s undemocratic turn, but a kind 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 most the left, it is believed, desire and hope for – Prop 50 would be distasteful to our values, and not mandated by our situation. It is not good to pack and crack targeted population groups; it is harmful for elected officials to choose their constituents, instead of the reverse; it is not good that elections are rendered noncompetitive. That these actions have become essential in order to slow the authoritarian creep of Trump’s power and reduce the level of harm he is able to inflict is unfortunate; it is a indication of how far we have declined from something more like a democracy. But they are required. It is only after the fight against the current administration’s ideology has been successfully concluded that we can mourn what opposing it has made us.

If Congress does not in practice have lawmaking, war making or budgetary authority, what is it, exactly, that Prop 50’s additional five Democratic representatives will be dispatched to Washington to do? One thing that the House and Senate still retains is subpoena power, and the power to examine. Even in our time of stagnant government and congressional atrophy, it has utilized of that authority to great effect. In 2027, if Prop 50 passes and the state’s additional Democrats are take office, they will become a part of a institution with the power to investigate Trump, to broadcast their hearings into his conduct and to compel associates of his inner circle to give evidence. It’s significant, and more importantly, it’s not anything that any Republican would do.

• The columnist is a Guardian US columnist