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What, precisely, is the role of Congress? During another Trump administration, it can be hard to determine. The power to declare war, long considered a crucial legislative power, has turned into a murky right of the executive branch in the years since the 9/11 attacks; the president, in recent months, has asserted even more of that power for himself, authorizing strikes on boats in the Caribbean.

The authority over spending seems to have largely been taken away from Congress too; currently, under the office of budget chief, Russell Vought, a great deal of the ability to appropriate federal funds has also shifted to the presidency, with the administration claiming the ability to cancel congressionally authorized spending and attempting to move the funds elsewhere. It’s not like they’re enacting any legislation, either; almost all legislation must now be crammed into budget reconciliation bills, massive perennial must-spend comprehensive bills that can bypass the senate obstruction. But when these don’t pass – and increasingly, they don’t – the federal government just ceases operations. At least, big parts of the government shut down – and it’s uncertain how many citizens notice. At present, the government has been closed all month; there are little indication of it resuming operations in the near future. But the presidency keeps on humming along.

And so the issue of dominance of Congress can seem somewhat moot. Why should U.S. citizens be concerned who has a controlling share in a institution that has mostly abolished itself?

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

And yet Proposition 50, the Golden State’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could provide five more congressional positions to the Democrats if it is approved by voters in a upcoming vote in the coming weeks, has seized the political imagination of liberals across the country. In part, it is a belated reaction to trends happening elsewhere: GOP-led states have long adopted extreme biased redistricting while large Democratic-controlled such as California, New York and the Evergreen State draw their district lines via nonpartisan independent commissions, an asymmetry that has led to closely divided control of the House and a longstanding feeling, by the left, that their political group is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The state proposal is clearly intended as a countermove to a mid-term redistricting that was recently approved in the Lone Star State, which installed boundaries that will provide Republicans an five more seats in the state House representation next year; comparable redistricting moves are under way in states such as Missouri and the Hoosier State. (The left in Virginia are likewise emulating the state’s lead in seeking to redistrict.)

The California initiative seems probable to be approved, as progressive electorate react with fear and anger to Trump’s authoritarian centralization of authority and seek ways to check his worst tendencies. But Prop 50 is not free from debate. Some opponents warn that the move could have unintended consequences, with blue states’ attempts to change districts triggering a retaliatory pattern in which red states do additional to design their maps so as to eliminate any chance of opposition party success. Different critics have questioned the proposal on more purely principled pro-democracy bases: a electoral area that is drawn 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 representative: it implies, necessarily, that the power of opposing views is suppressed, and that the process of deliberation, argument and convincing that is supposed to characterize a healthy democratic process will be limited only to party primaries, if it occurs at all.

It is worth taking each of these objections on their own terms. The first argument, that Prop 50 will provoke conservatives to redraw their own maps in response, fails as a causal argument: it is illogical to say that Republicans will be compelled to behave in undemocratic ways by Democrats’ actions when they are already doing so in the absence of those steps. The GOP, I would observe, has not needed any motivation of revenge to change maps that secure long-term seats for themselves: they have been willing to do this for their own benefit, in the total absence of Democratic reciprocation, for a long time.

The second objection, I think, is more significant, reflecting not just a strategic disagreement about how to confront the Republicans’ undemocratic turn, but a kind of melancholic wish for a distinct country than the one that the United States has turned into. It is true that in a more ideal world – in the reality that most Democrats, I think, yearn for and hope for – the proposition would be distasteful to our principles, and not required by our situation. It is undesirable to manipulate targeted demographics; it is not good for politicians to choose their voters, instead of the reverse; it is negative that votes are rendered uncontested. That these measures have grown necessary in order to impede the autocratic creep of Trump’s power and reduce the amount of suffering he is capable to inflict is unfortunate; it is a sign of how much we have declined from a state more like a democracy. But they are necessary. It is only after the fight against Trumpism has been won that we can mourn what opposing it has made us.

If the legislative branch fails to in practice have legislative, military or budgetary authority, what is it, precisely, that the proposition’s additional five blue representatives will be dispatched to Washington to do? One thing that Congress still holds is the authority to compel testimony, and the ability to examine. Even in our time of stagnant government and legislative decline, it has made use of that power to great effect. In the coming years, if the measure is approved and California’s additional representatives are sworn in, they will become a part of a body with the authority to probe Trump, to broadcast their investigations into his actions and to force members of his inner circle to testify. It’s significant, and more importantly, it’s not anything that any Republican would do.

• The columnist is a Guardian US writer