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What, exactly, is the role of Congress? In the second Trump administration, it can be hard to determine. The power to initiate armed conflict, long considered a crucial legislative power, has turned into a unclear prerogative of the executive branch in the years since the 9/11 attacks; Trump, in recent months, has asserted even more of that control for his administration, conducting military actions on boats in the Caribbean Sea.

The authority over spending appears to be mostly been stripped from the legislative branch too; currently, under the leadership of budget chief, the OMB director, a great deal of the power to appropriate government money has likewise defaulted to the executive, with the White House claiming the authority to cancel legislatively approved expenditures and seeking to move the money to other uses. It’s not like they’re enacting any laws, anyway; virtually all legislation must now be crammed into budget reconciliation bills, massive perennial essential comprehensive bills that can circumvent the senate obstruction. But when these fail to be approved – and more and more, they do not – the government simply shuts down. That is, big parts of the government shut down – and it’s uncertain how many citizens notice. Currently, the federal 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 the House and Senate can seem rather moot. Why should U.S. citizens care who has a controlling share in a body that has mostly abolished itself?

In what way ‘oppose the president’ messaging could help California’s Proposition 50 succeed

And yet Prop 50, the Golden State’s redistricting referendum that could provide five more House seats to the Democrats if it is embraced by the electorate in a upcoming vote in the coming weeks, has captured the political imagination of progressives nationwide. Partly, it is a belated reaction to trends occurring in other states: GOP-led states have for a long time adopted dramatic partisan gerrymandering while big Democratic-controlled such as the Golden State, New York and Washington draw their district lines via nonpartisan redistricting panels, an imbalance that has resulted in narrowly split control of the House and a longstanding sense, by the left, that their political group is at a disadvantage. The California proposal is clearly designed as a response to a mid-decade redrawing of maps that recently passed in the Lone Star State, which installed boundaries that will give the GOP an five more positions in the state House representation in the upcoming term; comparable redistricting moves are in progress in states such as Missouri and the Hoosier State. (Democrats in Virginia are also emulating California’s example in seeking to redistrict.)

The state initiative seems likely to pass, as Democratic and liberal voters react with concern and anger to Trump’s authoritarian centralization of power and seek methods to restrain his worst impulses. But the proposition is not without debate. Some opponents caution that the move could backfire, with blue states’ attempts to change districts triggering a revenge pattern in which red states do additional to design their districts so as to eliminate any chance of Democratic competitiveness. Different critics have critiqued the measure on strictly ideological pro-democracy grounds: a district that is created in such a manner that the result of the vote is never really in doubt, they say, is one that cannot be said to be truly democratic: it means, inevitably, that the power of opposing voices is suppressed, and that the process of deliberation, argument and persuasion that is meant to characterize a functioning political system will be confined only to party primaries, if it happens at all.

It is valuable considering each of these objections on their own terms. The initial critique, that the measure will provoke the right to alter their respective districts in retaliation, does not hold up as a logical argument: it does not make sense to claim that Republicans will be compelled to act in undemocratic ways by the left’s measures when they are already doing so in the absence of those steps. The Republican party, I would observe, has required no any motivation of revenge to change maps that secure 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 substantive, expressing not just a tactical disagreement about how to confront the Republicans’ undemocratic shift, but a sort of melancholic wish for a different nation than the one that the US has become. It is true that in a better situation – in the world that most Democrats, it is believed, yearn for and hope for – the proposition would be distasteful to our principles, and not required by our situation. It is not good to pack and crack targeted population groups; it is not good for elected officials to select their voters, instead of the reverse; it is negative that votes are rendered uncontested. That these measures have grown necessary in order to slow the autocratic creep of Trump’s control and lessen the level of suffering he is capable to inflict is unfortunate; it is a indication of how much we have fallen from something more like a democracy. But they are necessary. Only after the battle against Trumpism has been won that we can lament what opposing it has transformed us into.

If the legislative branch fails to in reality have legislative, military or appropriations authority, what is it, exactly, that Prop 50’s five new blue representatives will be sent to Washington to do? One aspect that Congress still holds is the authority to compel testimony, and the ability to investigate. Even in our era of sclerotic government and legislative decline, it has made use of that authority to significant impact. In the coming years, if the measure passes and California’s new Democrats are sworn in, they will find themselves a part of a body with the authority to probe Trump, to broadcast their hearings into his actions and to compel members of his close advisors to give evidence. It’s significant, and more importantly, it’s not anything that any conservative would do.

• Moira Donegan is a Guardian US writer