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What, precisely, is the purpose of the U.S. Congress? During another presidency of Donald Trump, it can be hard to determine. The authority to declare war, long considered a vital congressional authority, has become a unclear prerogative of the presidential office in the time since the 9/11 attacks; the president, in the past few months, has claimed even more of that control for his administration, authorizing strikes on vessels in the Caribbean.

The power of the purse appears to be mostly been stripped from the legislative branch as well; currently, under the leadership of budget chief, the OMB director, much of the power to appropriate federal funds has likewise shifted to the presidency, with the administration asserting the authority to abort congressionally authorized expenditures and attempting to move the funds elsewhere. It’s as if they’re enacting any legislation, either; almost all legislation must now be packed into spending packages, huge recurring must-spend comprehensive bills that can circumvent the filibuster. But when those don’t pass – and increasingly, they do not – the government just shuts down. That is, large sections of the government shut down – and it’s not clear how many people are aware. Currently, the government has been closed all month; there are no signs of it reopening anytime soon. But the presidency keeps on humming along.

And so the question of control of the House and Senate can seem somewhat moot. Why should Americans be concerned who has a majority in a institution that has largely abolished itself?

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

And yet Proposition 50, California’s redistricting referendum that could deliver five additional congressional positions to the Democrats if it is approved by the electorate in a upcoming vote next month, has captured the political imagination of progressives across the country. In part, it is a belated response to developments happening in other states: Republican-controlled states have long adopted extreme biased redistricting while large Democratic-controlled such as the Golden State, the Empire State and Washington create their district lines via impartial redistricting panels, an asymmetry that has resulted in closely divided House control and a longstanding sense, by Democrats, that their political group is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The state measure is clearly intended as a response to a mid-term redistricting that was recently approved in the Lone Star State, which implemented maps that will give Republicans an additional five seats in the state’s House representation in the upcoming term; similar redistricting moves are under way in states such as Missouri and the Hoosier State. (Democrats in the Old Dominion are also following California’s lead in seeking to redistrict.)

The state measure seems probable to pass, as progressive voters respond with fear and frustration to Trump’s autocratic consolidation of authority and seek methods to restrain his most extreme tendencies. But Prop 50 is not free from debate. Some critics caution that the move could backfire, with Democratic-controlled states’ attempts to redistrict triggering a retaliatory pattern in which Republican-controlled states do additional to design their districts so as to eliminate any chance of Democratic competitiveness. Others have questioned the measure on strictly principled democratic grounds: a district that is created in such a manner that the result of the election is never really in doubt, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be truly representative: it means, necessarily, that the power of opposing voices is suppressed, and that the process of deliberation, discussion and persuasion that is supposed to characterize a healthy political system will be confined only to primary elections, if it occurs at all.

It is worth taking each of these objections on their own terms. The first argument, that Prop 50 will spur the right to alter their own districts in response, fails as a causal point: it does not make sense to claim that the GOP will be made to behave in antidemocratic ways by Democrats’ actions when they are already doing so in the absence of those actions. The GOP, it can be noted, has required no any incentive of retaliation to change boundaries that guarantee permanent seats for their party: they have been ready 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 substantive, expressing not just a strategic difference about how to address the Republicans’ anti-democracy turn, but a sort 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 the majority of Democrats, I think, desire and aspire to – the proposition would be distasteful to our values, and not required by our circumstances. It is undesirable to pack and crack targeted population groups; it is not good for elected officials to choose their voters, rather than the other way around; it is not good that elections are made noncompetitive. That these actions have grown essential in order to slow the authoritarian creep of Trump’s control and reduce the amount of harm he is able to inflict is sad; it is a sign of how much we have fallen from a state more like a democracy. But they are necessary. Only after the battle against Trumpism has been successfully concluded that we can lament what fighting it has transformed us into.

If Congress fails to in reality have lawmaking, war making or budgetary authority, what is it, precisely, that the proposition’s additional five Democratic representatives will be dispatched to Washington to do? One aspect that the House and Senate still retains is the authority to compel testimony, and the ability to investigate. Even in our era of stagnant politics and congressional atrophy, it has made use of that power to great effect. In the coming years, if Prop 50 is approved and the state’s additional representatives are take office, they will become a member of a body with the authority to investigate Trump, to televise their investigations into his conduct and to compel members of his close advisors to testify. It’s not nothing, and crucially, it’s not something that any Republican would do.

• Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist