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What, precisely, is the role of Congress? In the second Trump administration, it is difficult to tell. The authority to initiate armed conflict, long considered a crucial congressional authority, has turned into a murky right of the executive branch in the years since September 11; Trump, in the past few months, has claimed even more of that control for his administration, authorizing military actions on vessels in the Caribbean.

The authority over spending appears to be mostly been stripped from Congress as well; currently, under the office of management and budget director, Russell Vought, a great deal of the ability to allocate government money has likewise defaulted to the presidency, with the White House asserting the ability to abort legislatively approved expenditures and seeking to redirect the money to other uses. It’s as if they’re enacting any legislation, anyway; almost all bills must now be crammed into spending packages, huge perennial must-spend comprehensive bills that can bypass the senate obstruction. But when those don’t pass – and more and more, they do not – the federal government just ceases operations. That is, big parts of the administration shut down – and it’s uncertain how many people notice. Currently, the government has been shut down all month; there are no signs of it resuming operations anytime soon. But the executive branch continues operating smoothly.

And so the issue of dominance of Congress can appear rather moot. Why should Americans be concerned who has a controlling share in a institution that has mostly rendered itself powerless?

In what way ‘screw Trump’ messaging may assist California’s Prop 50 prevail

And yet Prop 50, California’s redistricting referendum that could provide five additional House seats to the Democratic Party if it is approved by the electorate in a special election next month, has captured the attention of progressives nationwide. In part, it is a belated reaction to developments happening in other states: Republican-controlled states have for a long time adopted extreme biased redistricting while large Democratic-controlled such as the Golden State, New York and Washington create their maps via nonpartisan independent commissions, an imbalance that has resulted in closely divided control of the House and a longstanding feeling, by the left, that their political group is at a disadvantage. The California measure is clearly designed as a response to a mid-term redrawing of maps that recently passed in Texas, which installed boundaries that will provide the GOP an additional five seats in the state’s congressional delegation in the upcoming term; similar redistricting moves are under way in states such as the Show-Me State and Indiana. (The left in Virginia are likewise following California’s example in seeking to alter districts.)

The California initiative seems probable to pass, as progressive voters respond with concern and frustration to the president’s authoritarian centralization of power and look for methods to restrain his worst impulses. But the proposition is not free from controversy. Some opponents caution that the action could backfire, with Democratic-controlled states’ efforts to change districts setting off a revenge cycle in which red 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 electoral area that is drawn in such a manner that the outcome of the election is not in question, they say, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely democratic: it means, inevitably, that the influence of opposing voices is suppressed, and that the procedure of deliberation, argument and convincing that is meant to characterize a healthy political system will be limited only to primary elections, if it happens at all.

It is valuable considering each of these objections on their own terms. The first critique, that the measure will provoke the right to alter their own maps in retaliation, fails as a causal point: it is illogical to say that Republicans will be compelled to behave in antidemocratic ways by Democrats’ measures when they are already doing so in the absence of those actions. The Republican party, I would observe, has not needed any incentive of revenge to change maps that guarantee permanent positions for their party: they have been ready to do this for their own benefit, in the total lack of similar actions by the left, for a long time.

The second critique, I think, is more substantive, expressing not just a strategic difference about how to address the GOP’s undemocratic turn, but a sort of sad wish for a distinct country than the one that the US has turned into. It is accurate that in a more ideal situation – in the world that most the left, it is believed, desire and aspire to – the proposition would be unappealing to our values, and not required by our situation. It is undesirable to manipulate disfavored population groups; it is harmful for elected officials to select their constituents, instead of the other way around; it is not good that votes are rendered noncompetitive. That these measures have become essential in order to impede the autocratic creep of the president’s control and reduce the level of harm he is capable to cause is unfortunate; it is a sign of how far we have declined from something 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 lament what fighting it has transformed us into.

If Congress fails to in practice have lawmaking, military or budgetary authority, what is it, exactly, that the proposition’s five new Democratic representatives will be sent to the capital to do? One aspect that the House and Senate continues to holds is the authority to compel testimony, and the ability to investigate. Even in our era of stagnant government and legislative decline, it has made use of that authority to great effect. In 2027, if Prop 50 passes and California’s new representatives are take office, they will become a member of a body with the authority to investigate Trump, to broadcast their hearings into his conduct and to compel members of his inner circle to give evidence. It’s significant, and crucially, it’s not anything that any Republican would do.

• The columnist is a Guardian US writer