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What, precisely, is the role of Congress? During another Trump administration, it is difficult to tell. The authority to declare war, long considered a vital legislative power, has turned into a unclear prerogative of the executive branch in the time since September 11; Trump, in recent months, has claimed even more of that control for himself, conducting strikes on vessels in the Caribbean.

The authority over spending appears to be mostly been stripped from the legislative branch as well; currently, under the leadership of budget chief, the OMB director, much of the ability to allocate federal funds has likewise shifted to the executive, with the administration claiming the ability to abort legislatively approved expenditures and seeking to redirect the money to other uses. It’s as if they’re passing any laws, anyway; virtually all bills must currently be crammed into spending packages, huge perennial essential comprehensive bills that can circumvent the filibuster. But when these fail to be approved – and increasingly, they do not – the federal government simply shuts down. That is, large sections of the administration do – and it’s uncertain how many people notice. Currently, the government has been closed for the entire month; there are little indication of it reopening anytime soon. But the executive branch keeps on humming along.

And so the question of control of the House and Senate can seem somewhat irrelevant. Why should Americans care who holds a controlling share in a body that has largely rendered itself powerless?

In what way ‘oppose the president’ messaging could help the state of California’s Prop 50 succeed

And yet Proposition 50, the Golden State’s redistricting referendum that could provide five more congressional positions to the Democratic Party if it is approved by voters in a upcoming vote in the coming weeks, has captured the attention of progressives nationwide. Partly, it is a delayed response to trends occurring in other states: GOP-led states have for a long time adopted extreme biased redistricting while big Democratic-controlled such as California, the Empire State and Washington create their maps via impartial redistricting panels, an imbalance that has resulted in closely divided control of the House and a longstanding feeling, by Democrats, that their political group is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The California proposal is clearly intended as a response to a mid-decade redistricting that recently passed in the Lone Star State, which installed maps that will provide Republicans an five more 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 Indiana. (Democrats in the Old Dominion are likewise following California’s example in seeking to alter districts.)

The state initiative seems likely to be approved, as progressive voters react with fear and frustration to Trump’s autocratic centralization of power and seek ways to check his most extreme tendencies. But Prop 50 is not without controversy. Some opponents warn that the action could have unintended consequences, with Democratic-controlled states’ attempts to redistrict triggering a revenge cycle in which red states do even more to design their districts so as to foreclose any possibility of opposition party success. Different critics have critiqued the proposal on more purely ideological democratic grounds: a electoral area that is drawn in such a manner that the outcome of the election is never really in doubt, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely representative: it means, inevitably, that the influence of opposing views is muted, and that the procedure of debate, argument and convincing that is supposed to define a functioning democratic process will be confined only to primary elections, if it occurs at all.

It is valuable taking each of these criticisms on their own terms. The initial critique, that Prop 50 will spur conservatives to redraw their own districts in retaliation, does not hold up as a logical argument: it does not make sense to say that Republicans will be compelled to behave in undemocratic ways by the left’s actions when they are already engaging in such behavior in the absence of those actions. The GOP, I would observe, has not needed any motivation of retaliation to change boundaries that guarantee permanent seats for their party: they have been ready to do this for its own sake, in the total absence of similar actions by the left, for years.

The other objection, I think, is more substantive, expressing not just a strategic disagreement about how to address the GOP’s anti-democracy turn, but a kind of melancholic wish for a distinct nation than the one that the US has become. It is accurate that in a better situation – in the reality that the majority of Democrats, I think, desire and hope for – the proposition would be unappealing to our principles, and not required by our situation. It is undesirable to pack and crack disfavored population groups; it is not good for politicians to choose their voters, instead of the reverse; it is negative that elections are made noncompetitive. That these measures have grown necessary in order to slow the autocratic creep of Trump’s control and reduce the amount of harm he is capable to cause is unfortunate; it is a sign of how much we have declined from something more like a democracy. But they are required. It is only once the fight against the current administration’s ideology has been won that we can mourn what fighting it has made us.

If Congress fails to in reality have legislative, war making or appropriations power, what is it, precisely, that Prop 50’s five new Democratic representatives will be sent to the capital to do? One thing that Congress still retains is subpoena power, and the power to examine. Even in our era of stagnant government and legislative decline, it has made use of that authority to great effect. In the coming years, if the measure passes and California’s new representatives are take office, they will find themselves a part of a body with the power to probe Trump, to broadcast their hearings into his actions and to compel associates of his close advisors to testify. It’s not nothing, and crucially, it’s not anything that any Republican would do.

• The columnist is a Guardian US writer