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What, precisely, is the role of Congress? During another 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 right of the executive branch in the time since the 9/11 attacks; Trump, in the past few months, has claimed additional of that power for himself, authorizing military actions on vessels in the Caribbean Sea.

The authority over spending appears to be mostly been stripped from the legislative branch too; currently, under the office of budget chief, the OMB director, much of the power to allocate government money has likewise shifted to the presidency, with the White House asserting the ability to cancel congressionally authorized spending and attempting to move the funds elsewhere. It’s not like they’re enacting any laws, either; almost all legislation must currently be packed into spending packages, massive perennial essential comprehensive bills that can circumvent the senate obstruction. But when these fail to be approved – and increasingly, they don’t – the federal government simply ceases operations. That is, big parts of the administration shut down – and it’s not clear how many citizens notice. At present, the federal government has been closed for the entire month; there are no signs of it resuming operations anytime soon. But the presidency keeps on humming along.

And so the issue of dominance of Congress can seem somewhat moot. Why should Americans be concerned who holds a controlling share in a body that has mostly abolished itself?

In what way ‘screw Trump’ messaging may help California’s Proposition 50 prevail

And yet Proposition 50, the Golden State’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could deliver five more House seats to the Democrats if it is embraced by the electorate in a special election next month, has seized the political imagination of progressives nationwide. In part, it is a belated reaction to trends happening in other states: Republican-controlled states have for a long time embraced extreme partisan gerrymandering while big blue states such as California, New York and Washington create their maps via impartial redistricting panels, an asymmetry that has resulted in closely divided House control and a longstanding feeling, by the left, that their political group is at a disadvantage. The California proposal is explicitly designed as a response to a mid-term redrawing of maps that was recently approved in the Lone Star State, which installed maps that will provide Republicans an five more seats in the state House representation next year; similar boundary changes are in progress in states such as Missouri and the Hoosier State. (Democrats in Virginia are also emulating the state’s lead in seeking to redistrict.)

The state initiative seems probable to pass, as progressive voters respond with concern and anger to Trump’s authoritarian consolidation of power and look for ways to check his most extreme impulses. But Prop 50 is not without debate. Some critics caution that the action could have unintended consequences, with blue states’ attempts to redistrict setting off a retaliatory cycle in which red states do additional to design their districts so as to foreclose any chance of Democratic competitiveness. Different critics have questioned the proposal on strictly ideological pro-democracy grounds: a district that is created in such a manner that the outcome of the vote is not in doubt, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely democratic: it implies, necessarily, that the power of opposing voices is suppressed, and that the procedure of deliberation, discussion and persuasion that is supposed to characterize a healthy political system will be limited only to primary elections, if it occurs at all.

It is valuable considering each of these criticisms on their own terms. The initial critique, that Prop 50 will spur the right to alter their respective districts in response, does not hold up as a causal point: it is illogical to claim that Republicans will be compelled to act in antidemocratic ways by the left’s measures when they are already doing so in the absence of those steps. The GOP, I would observe, has required no any motivation of retaliation to redraw boundaries that guarantee permanent positions for their party: they have been willing to do this for its own sake, in the complete lack of Democratic reciprocation, for years.

The second objection, in my view, is more substantive, reflecting not just a tactical difference about how to confront the GOP’s undemocratic shift, but a kind of melancholic desire for a different nation than the one that the US has become. It is true that in a more ideal situation – 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 undesirable to manipulate targeted demographics; it is harmful for elected officials to choose their constituents, rather than the other way around; it is negative that votes are made uncontested. That these actions have grown necessary in order to slow the authoritarian creep of Trump’s control and reduce the amount of harm he is able to cause is sad; it is a sign of how far we have declined from something more like a democracy. But they are required. Only after the battle against Trumpism has been successfully concluded that we can mourn what opposing it has made us.

If the legislative branch does not in reality have legislative, war making or budgetary authority, what is it, exactly, that the proposition’s additional five Democratic representatives will be sent to Washington to do? One aspect that Congress still retains is subpoena power, and the power to investigate. Even in our time of sclerotic government and legislative decline, it has made use of that power to great effect. In the coming years, if Prop 50 passes and California’s additional Democrats are sworn in, they will find themselves a part of a institution with the power to investigate Trump, to televise their hearings into his conduct and to force members of his inner circle to testify. It’s not nothing, and more importantly, it’s not something that any Republican would do.

• The columnist is a Guardian US writer