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What, exactly, is the purpose of Congress? During another Trump administration, it is difficult to determine. The power to initiate armed conflict, long considered a vital congressional authority, has turned into a unclear right of the presidential office in the years since the 9/11 attacks; Trump, in recent months, has asserted additional of that control for his administration, authorizing strikes on vessels in the Caribbean Sea.

The authority over spending seems to have largely been taken away from Congress as well; currently, under the office of management and budget director, Russell Vought, much of the ability to appropriate government money has also defaulted to the executive, with the White House asserting the ability to cancel legislatively approved expenditures and seeking to move the funds elsewhere. It’s as if they’re passing any laws, either; almost all legislation must now be crammed into spending packages, huge perennial must-spend comprehensive bills that can bypass the filibuster. But when those fail to be approved – and more and more, they do not – the government simply ceases operations. At least, big parts of the administration do – and it’s uncertain how many citizens notice. At present, the government has been shut down all month; there are little indication of it reopening anytime soon. But the presidency keeps on humming along.

And so the issue of control of Congress can appear rather moot. Why should Americans care who has a majority in a institution that has mostly rendered itself powerless?

How ‘screw Trump’ messaging may help the state of California’s Proposition 50 succeed

And yet Prop 50, California’s redistricting referendum that could deliver five additional congressional positions to the Democrats if it is approved by the electorate in a special election next month, has seized the political imagination of progressives across the country. In part, it is a delayed response to developments occurring in other states: Republican-controlled states have for a long time embraced dramatic biased redistricting while big blue states such as the Golden State, the Empire State and Washington draw their maps via impartial independent commissions, an imbalance that has led to narrowly split House control and a longstanding sense, by the left, that their party is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The state measure is explicitly intended as a countermove to a mid-term redistricting that recently passed in Texas, which installed maps that will give the GOP an five more seats in the state House representation in the upcoming term; comparable redistricting moves are in progress in states such as the Show-Me State and the Hoosier State. (Democrats in Virginia are likewise following California’s lead in attempting to alter districts.)

The California initiative seems likely to be approved, as progressive electorate react with concern and anger to Trump’s authoritarian centralization of power and seek ways to restrain his worst impulses. But the proposition is not free from debate. Some opponents warn that the move could backfire, with Democratic-controlled states’ attempts to change districts setting off a revenge cycle in which red states do additional to draw their districts so as to eliminate any chance of opposition party success. Different critics have critiqued the proposal on strictly ideological pro-democracy grounds: a district that is drawn in such a way that the result of the election is not in doubt, they say, is one that cannot be said to be truly representative: it implies, inevitably, that the power of dissenting views is suppressed, and that the procedure of debate, discussion and convincing that is supposed to characterize a healthy democratic process will be confined only to primary elections, if it happens at all.

It is worth taking each of these criticisms on their own terms. The first critique, that Prop 50 will spur conservatives to alter their own districts in response, does not hold up as a causal point: it does not make sense to say that the GOP will be made to behave in antidemocratic ways by Democrats’ measures when they are already engaging in such behavior without those steps. The Republican party, I would observe, has not needed any motivation of retaliation to change maps that secure permanent positions for themselves: they have been ready to do this for its own sake, in the total absence of Democratic reciprocation, for a long time.

The second objection, in my view, is more substantive, reflecting not just a strategic disagreement about how to confront the Republicans’ anti-democracy shift, but a sort of sad wish for a distinct country than the one that the United States has turned into. It is accurate that in a more ideal world – in the reality that the majority of the left, it is believed, yearn for and hope for – the proposition would be distasteful to our values, and not mandated by our circumstances. It is not good to pack and crack targeted demographics; it is harmful for elected officials to choose their constituents, rather than the other way around; it is negative that votes are rendered uncontested. That these actions have grown necessary in order to slow the autocratic advance of Trump’s control and lessen the level of suffering he is capable to inflict is sad; it is a sign of how far we have fallen from something more like a representative government. But they are required. It is only after the fight against Trumpism has been won that we can mourn what opposing it has transformed us into.

If Congress fails to in practice have lawmaking, military or budgetary power, what is it, exactly, that Prop 50’s five new Democratic representatives will be sent to Washington to do? One aspect that Congress continues to holds is the authority to compel testimony, and the ability to investigate. Even in our time of stagnant politics and congressional atrophy, it has made use of that power to significant impact. In the coming years, if Prop 50 passes and the state’s additional Democrats are sworn in, they will become a member of a body with the authority to probe the president, to televise their hearings into his conduct and to force members of his inner circle to give evidence. It’s significant, and more importantly, it’s not anything that any Republican would do.

• The columnist is a Guardian US writer