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What, exactly, is the role of the U.S. Congress? In the second Trump administration, it can be hard to determine. The authority to declare war, long considered a crucial congressional authority, has turned into a unclear right of the executive branch in the time since the 9/11 attacks; the president, in the past few months, has asserted additional of that control for himself, conducting military actions on vessels in the Caribbean.

The power of the purse appears to be largely been stripped from the legislative branch too; currently, under the leadership of budget chief, the OMB director, a great deal of the ability to allocate federal funds has also shifted to the presidency, with the White House asserting the authority to cancel legislatively approved expenditures and attempting to move the funds elsewhere. It’s not like they’re enacting any legislation, anyway; virtually all legislation must now be packed into spending packages, massive perennial must-spend comprehensive bills that can bypass the filibuster. But when those fail to be approved – and increasingly, they don’t – the federal government just ceases operations. That is, large sections of the government shut down – and it’s uncertain how many people notice. Currently, the government has been closed all month; there are no signs of it reopening in the near future. But the presidency continues operating smoothly.

And so the issue of control of Congress can appear rather irrelevant. Why should Americans care who holds a controlling share in a institution that has mostly abolished itself?

How ‘oppose the president’ messaging could help the state of California’s Proposition 50 succeed

And yet Proposition 50, California’s redistricting referendum that could provide five additional House seats to the Democrats if it is approved by the electorate in a upcoming vote next month, has seized the political imagination of progressives across the country. In part, it is a belated response to trends happening in other states: Republican-controlled states have for a long time adopted extreme biased redistricting while big blue states such as California, New York and Washington create their district lines via nonpartisan redistricting panels, 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 redistricting that recently passed in Texas, which installed boundaries that will provide Republicans an five more seats in the state House representation next year; similar boundary changes are in progress in states such as the Show-Me State and the Hoosier State. (Democrats in Virginia are likewise following the state’s example in attempting to alter districts.)

The California initiative seems probable to pass, as progressive voters react with concern and anger to Trump’s autocratic consolidation of authority and seek methods to restrain his worst impulses. But Prop 50 is not without controversy. Some opponents warn that the move could have unintended consequences, with blue states’ efforts to change districts setting off a revenge pattern in which red states do additional to draw their maps so as to foreclose any chance of Democratic competitiveness. Others have critiqued the proposal on more purely principled pro-democracy grounds: a district that is drawn 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 democratic: it implies, necessarily, that the influence of opposing views is suppressed, and that the procedure of debate, discussion and persuasion that is meant to define a functioning political system will be limited only to party primaries, if it occurs at all.

It is worth considering each of these criticisms on their merits. The first critique, that the measure will provoke the right to redraw their respective districts in retaliation, does not hold up as a logical argument: it is illogical to claim that the GOP will be made to act in undemocratic ways by Democrats’ measures when they are already doing so in the absence of those steps. The GOP, I would observe, has not needed any incentive of revenge to redraw maps that secure long-term seats for their party: they have been willing to do this for its own sake, in the total absence of Democratic reciprocation, for years.

The second critique, in my view, is more substantive, expressing not just a strategic difference about how to confront the GOP’s undemocratic shift, but a sort of melancholic desire for a distinct country than the one that the US has turned into. It is accurate that in a more ideal situation – in the reality that most Democrats, I think, desire and aspire to – Prop 50 would be distasteful to our principles, and not mandated by our situation. It is not good to pack and crack targeted demographics; it is harmful for elected officials to select their voters, instead of the reverse; it is negative that votes are made noncompetitive. That these measures have grown essential in order to slow the autocratic advance of the president’s power and lessen the level of suffering he is able to inflict is sad; it is a sign of how much we have fallen from something more like a democracy. But they are necessary. Only once the battle against Trumpism has been won that we can mourn what opposing it has made us.

If Congress fails to in reality have lawmaking, war making or appropriations authority, what is it, exactly, that Prop 50’s five new Democratic house members will be sent to the capital to do? One thing that Congress continues to retains is the authority to compel testimony, and the power to examine. Even in our era of stagnant government and congressional atrophy, it has made use of that authority to significant impact. In 2027, if the measure passes and the state’s new Democrats are sworn in, they will become a member of a body with the authority to investigate Trump, to broadcast their hearings into his conduct and to force associates of his close advisors to testify. It’s not nothing, and more importantly, it’s not anything that any conservative would do.

• Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist