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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, long considered a vital congressional authority, has turned into a murky right of the executive branch in the years since the 9/11 attacks; Trump, in recent months, has asserted additional of that power for his administration, authorizing strikes on boats in the Caribbean.

The power of the purse appears to be mostly been stripped from Congress as well; now, under the office of management and budget director, Russell Vought, much of the power to appropriate government money has also defaulted to the executive, with the White House asserting the ability to abort congressionally authorized spending and seeking to move the funds to other uses. It’s as if they’re enacting any legislation, anyway; almost all legislation must now be crammed into budget reconciliation bills, huge recurring essential omnibus legislation that can bypass the filibuster. But when these don’t pass – and more and more, they do not – the federal government simply ceases operations. That is, big parts of the administration do – and it’s not clear how many citizens are aware. At present, the government has been closed all month; there are no signs of it resuming operations in the near future. But the presidency keeps on operating smoothly.

And so the question of control of Congress can appear rather moot. Why should Americans care who holds a majority in a institution that has largely abolished itself?

In what way ‘screw Trump’ messaging could assist California’s Proposition 50 succeed

And yet Prop 50, the Golden State’s redistricting referendum that could provide five more congressional positions to the Democrats if it is approved by the electorate in a upcoming vote in the coming weeks, has captured the attention of progressives across the country. Partly, it is a belated response to developments occurring elsewhere: GOP-led states have for a long time embraced dramatic biased redistricting while big blue states such as the Golden State, New York and Washington draw their district lines via nonpartisan redistricting panels, an asymmetry that has resulted in narrowly split House control and a longstanding sense, by Democrats, that their party is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The California measure is explicitly intended as a countermove to a mid-term redistricting that was recently approved in the Lone Star State, which implemented boundaries that will give the GOP an five more seats in the state’s congressional delegation in the upcoming term; comparable boundary changes are in progress in states such as Missouri and Indiana. (Democrats in Virginia are likewise following the state’s lead in seeking to redistrict.)

The state initiative seems likely to pass, as progressive electorate respond with fear and frustration to the president’s authoritarian consolidation of power and look for methods to check his most extreme tendencies. But the proposition is not free from debate. Some opponents caution that the move could have unintended consequences, with blue states’ efforts to redistrict triggering a retaliatory pattern in which red states do additional to design their maps so as to foreclose any chance of opposition party success. Different critics have critiqued the proposal on strictly principled democratic bases: a district that is drawn in such a way that the result of the election is not in question, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be truly democratic: it means, inevitably, that the influence of opposing voices is muted, and that the process of deliberation, discussion and persuasion that is meant to define a functioning democratic process will be limited only to party primaries, if it occurs at all.

It is worth considering each of these criticisms on their own terms. The first critique, that Prop 50 will spur conservatives to redraw their respective districts in retaliation, does not hold up as a causal point: it is illogical to claim that Republicans 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, I would observe, has not needed any incentive of retaliation to redraw boundaries that guarantee long-term positions for their party: they have been ready to do this for its own sake, in the complete lack of Democratic reciprocation, for a long time.

The other critique, I think, is more substantive, expressing not just a strategic difference about how to address the Republicans’ undemocratic turn, but a sort of melancholic wish for a different country than the one that the US has become. It is accurate that in a more ideal world – in the world that the majority of Democrats, I think, desire and aspire to – the proposition would be unappealing to our values, and not required by our situation. It is not good to pack and crack disfavored demographics; it is not good for politicians to select their constituents, instead of the other way around; it is negative that elections are rendered noncompetitive. That these actions have grown essential in order to slow the authoritarian advance of Trump’s power and reduce the level of suffering he is capable to inflict is sad; it is a indication of how far we have fallen from a state more like a representative government. But they are necessary. It is only once the battle against the current administration’s ideology has been won that we can mourn what opposing it has made us.

If Congress fails to in practice have legislative, war making or appropriations power, what is it, exactly, that Prop 50’s additional five blue house members will be dispatched to Washington to do? One aspect that Congress continues to holds is the authority to compel testimony, and the power to examine. Even in our time of sclerotic government and congressional atrophy, it has made use of that power 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 authority to probe Trump, to broadcast their hearings into his conduct and to compel associates of his inner circle to give evidence. It’s not nothing, and crucially, it’s not anything that any Republican would do.

• Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist