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What, precisely, is the role of the U.S. Congress? During another Trump administration, it is difficult to determine. The authority to initiate armed conflict, traditionally viewed as a crucial legislative power, has turned into a murky right of the presidential office in the time since September 11; Trump, in the past few months, has asserted even more of that control for himself, conducting strikes on boats in the Caribbean Sea.

The authority over spending appears to be largely been stripped from the legislative branch too; now, under the leadership of budget chief, Russell Vought, much of the power to allocate government money has also shifted to the executive, with the White House asserting the authority to abort congressionally authorized spending and seeking to move the funds to other uses. It’s as if they’re enacting any laws, anyway; virtually all bills must currently be packed into spending packages, massive perennial must-spend omnibus legislation that can bypass the filibuster. But when these fail to be approved – and increasingly, they do not – the federal government just shuts down. At least, large sections of the administration shut down – and it’s uncertain how many people are aware. Currently, the government has been shut down all month; there are no signs of it resuming operations in the near future. But the executive branch keeps on humming along.

And so the issue of control of the House and Senate can appear somewhat moot. Why should U.S. citizens care who has a controlling share in a institution that has largely rendered itself powerless?

How ‘screw Trump’ messaging could assist California’s Proposition 50 prevail

And yet Prop 50, the Golden State’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could deliver five more House seats to the Democratic Party if it is embraced by voters in a upcoming vote in the coming weeks, has seized the political imagination of progressives across the country. Partly, it is a belated reaction to developments occurring elsewhere: Republican-controlled states have long embraced extreme partisan gerrymandering while big Democratic-controlled such as the Golden State, the Empire State and the Evergreen State create their maps via impartial independent commissions, an imbalance that has resulted in narrowly split control of the House and a longstanding feeling, by Democrats, that their party is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The state proposal is clearly designed as a response to a mid-decade redrawing of maps that was recently approved in the Lone Star State, which implemented maps that will give Republicans an five more positions in the state’s congressional delegation next year; similar redistricting moves are under way in states such as the Show-Me State and the Hoosier State. (The left in the Old Dominion are likewise emulating California’s lead in seeking to redistrict.)

The California initiative seems probable to be approved, as Democratic and liberal electorate respond with fear and frustration to Trump’s authoritarian consolidation of authority and seek methods to check his worst tendencies. But the proposition is not free from controversy. Some opponents caution that the move could have unintended consequences, with blue states’ efforts to change districts triggering a revenge cycle in which Republican-controlled states do additional to design their districts so as to eliminate any possibility of Democratic competitiveness. Different critics have critiqued the measure on strictly ideological pro-democracy bases: a electoral area that is created in such a manner that the result of the election is not in doubt, they say, is one that cannot be said to be truly representative: it means, necessarily, that the power of dissenting voices is muted, and that the procedure of debate, argument and convincing that is meant to define a functioning political system will be confined only to primary elections, if it happens at all.

It is worth considering each of these objections on their merits. The initial argument, that the measure will spur the right to alter their respective maps in retaliation, fails as a causal argument: it does not make sense to claim that the GOP will be compelled to behave in undemocratic ways by the left’s actions when they are already engaging in such behavior without those actions. The Republican party, I would observe, has not needed any incentive of revenge to change maps that secure permanent seats for their party: they have been willing 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 significant, expressing not just a tactical disagreement about how to address the GOP’s anti-democracy turn, but a sort of melancholic wish for a distinct nation than the one that the United States has turned into. It is accurate that in a better situation – in the world that the majority of the left, I think, desire and aspire to – Prop 50 would be unappealing to our principles, and not required by our circumstances. It is undesirable to manipulate targeted demographics; it is not good for politicians to select their constituents, instead of the reverse; it is negative that votes are made noncompetitive. That these actions have grown essential in order to slow the autocratic creep of Trump’s power and lessen the level of suffering he is able to cause is sad; it is a sign of how much we have declined from something more like a representative government. But they are required. It is only once the fight against Trumpism has been won that we can lament what fighting it has made us.

If the legislative branch does not in reality have lawmaking, military or appropriations power, what is it, precisely, that Prop 50’s additional five Democratic representatives will be dispatched to the capital to do? One thing that Congress continues to retains is the authority to compel testimony, and the ability to examine. Even in our era of stagnant politics and legislative decline, it has utilized of that authority to great effect. In the coming years, if Prop 50 passes and the state’s new representatives are sworn in, they will find themselves a part of a body with the authority to probe Trump, to televise their hearings into his actions and to compel associates of his inner circle to testify. It’s not nothing, and crucially, it’s not anything that any Republican would do.

• Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist