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What, precisely, is the role of the U.S. Congress? During another presidency of Donald Trump, it is difficult to determine. The power to declare war, long considered a crucial congressional authority, has turned into a murky right of the executive branch in the time since September 11; Trump, in recent months, has asserted additional of that control for himself, conducting military actions on vessels in the Caribbean.

The authority over spending seems to have mostly been taken away from Congress as well; now, under the office of budget chief, Russell Vought, much of the ability to allocate federal funds has also shifted to the executive, with the White House claiming the ability to abort legislatively approved spending and seeking to redirect the funds to other uses. It’s as if they’re passing any legislation, anyway; almost all legislation must currently be packed into spending packages, massive perennial essential omnibus legislation that can bypass the filibuster. But when these fail to be approved – and more and more, they don’t – the government just shuts down. That is, big parts of the government do – and it’s uncertain how many citizens notice. Currently, the federal government has been closed for the entire month; there are no signs of it resuming operations in the near future. But the executive branch keeps on operating smoothly.

And so the issue of control of Congress can appear somewhat moot. Why should Americans be concerned who has a controlling share in a body that has largely rendered itself powerless?

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

And yet Prop 50, California’s redistricting referendum that could deliver five additional House seats to the Democratic Party if it is embraced by voters in a special election in the coming weeks, has captured the attention of progressives across the country. Partly, it is a delayed response to developments occurring in other states: Republican-controlled states have long embraced dramatic partisan gerrymandering while large Democratic-controlled such as the Golden State, the Empire State and the Evergreen State draw their district lines via impartial redistricting panels, an imbalance that has resulted in narrowly split House control and a long-term sense, by Democrats, that their political group is at a disadvantage. The state measure is clearly intended as a countermove to a mid-decade redrawing of maps that was recently approved in the Lone Star State, which installed boundaries that will provide the GOP an five more seats in the state’s House representation in the upcoming term; comparable redistricting moves are in progress in states such as Missouri and the Hoosier State. (Democrats in Virginia are likewise emulating the state’s lead in attempting to redistrict.)

The state measure seems probable to pass, as Democratic and liberal voters react with concern and anger to Trump’s autocratic consolidation of power and seek ways to check his most extreme tendencies. But Prop 50 is not free from debate. Some opponents caution that the action could backfire, with Democratic-controlled states’ efforts to change districts triggering a revenge pattern in which Republican-controlled states do additional to design their maps so as to foreclose any chance of opposition party success. Others have questioned the measure on more purely ideological pro-democracy grounds: a electoral area that is created in such a way that the result of the election is never really in doubt, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely democratic: it implies, necessarily, that the power of dissenting views is suppressed, and that the process of debate, discussion and persuasion that is meant to define a healthy political system will be limited only to primary elections, if it occurs at all.

It is worth taking each of these criticisms on their merits. The initial argument, that Prop 50 will provoke the right to alter their respective maps in retaliation, fails as a causal point: it does not make sense to claim that Republicans will be compelled to act in antidemocratic ways by Democrats’ actions when they are already doing so without those steps. 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 ready to do this for its own sake, in the complete absence of Democratic reciprocation, for years.

The second objection, I think, is more significant, reflecting not just a strategic disagreement about how to confront the Republicans’ undemocratic turn, but a sort of melancholic wish for a different country than the one that the United States has become. It is true that in a better situation – in the reality that the majority of the left, I think, desire and hope for – Prop 50 would be unappealing to our principles, and not mandated by our circumstances. It is undesirable to pack and crack targeted demographics; it is not good for elected officials to choose their constituents, rather than the reverse; it is not good that votes are made noncompetitive. That these actions have grown essential in order to impede the authoritarian advance of the president’s power and lessen the level of suffering he is capable to inflict is unfortunate; it is a sign of how much we have declined from something more like a democracy. But they are required. Only once the fight against the current administration’s ideology has been successfully concluded that we can lament what opposing it has made us.

If Congress does not in reality have legislative, war making or appropriations authority, what is it, precisely, that Prop 50’s additional five Democratic representatives will be sent to the capital to do? One thing that Congress still holds is subpoena power, and the ability to examine. Even in our time of stagnant government and legislative decline, it has made use of that authority to great effect. In the coming years, if the measure is approved and California’s additional Democrats are sworn in, they will become a part of a body with the authority to probe Trump, to broadcast their investigations into his conduct and to force members of his inner circle to give evidence. It’s significant, and crucially, it’s not anything that any Republican would do.

• Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist