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What, precisely, is the role of the U.S. Congress? In the second presidency of Donald Trump, it can be hard to determine. The authority to declare war, traditionally viewed as a vital legislative power, has become a murky right of the executive branch in the years since the 9/11 attacks; the president, in recent months, has asserted additional of that power for himself, authorizing military actions on vessels in the Caribbean.

The authority over spending seems to have mostly been taken away from the legislative branch too; now, under the leadership of management and budget director, the OMB director, a great deal of the ability to appropriate government money has also shifted to the executive, with the White House asserting the authority to abort congressionally authorized spending and attempting to move the money elsewhere. It’s not like they’re enacting any legislation, anyway; almost all legislation must now be packed into budget reconciliation bills, massive recurring essential comprehensive bills that can circumvent the senate obstruction. But when these don’t pass – and more and more, they do not – the government just ceases operations. At least, big parts of the administration do – and it’s uncertain how many people are aware. Currently, the government has been closed all month; there are little indication of it resuming operations anytime soon. But the executive branch continues humming along.

And so the issue of control of the House and Senate can seem somewhat irrelevant. Why should Americans care who holds a majority in a body that has largely abolished itself?

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

And yet Proposition 50, the Golden State’s redistricting referendum that could deliver five additional House seats to the Democratic Party if it is embraced by the electorate in a upcoming vote next month, has captured the attention of liberals across the country. In part, it is a belated reaction to developments happening elsewhere: Republican-controlled states have for a long time adopted extreme biased redistricting while big Democratic-controlled such as California, the Empire State and Washington create their maps via nonpartisan independent commissions, an asymmetry that has resulted in closely divided House control and a longstanding feeling, by the left, that their party is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The state measure is clearly intended as a countermove to a mid-decade redistricting that recently passed in Texas, which implemented maps that will provide Republicans an additional five seats in the state congressional delegation in the upcoming term; comparable boundary changes are under way in states such as Missouri and the Hoosier State. (The left in the Old Dominion are likewise emulating the state’s lead in attempting to alter districts.)

The California initiative seems likely to pass, as progressive electorate respond with fear and frustration to Trump’s authoritarian centralization of power and seek methods to restrain his most extreme impulses. But the proposition is not without debate. Some opponents warn that the move could have unintended consequences, with Democratic-controlled states’ efforts to redistrict triggering a retaliatory cycle in which Republican-controlled states do even more to draw their districts so as to foreclose any possibility of opposition party success. Others have critiqued the measure on strictly principled democratic grounds: a district 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 truly democratic: it means, necessarily, that the power of opposing views is suppressed, and that the procedure of deliberation, argument and convincing that is meant to characterize a functioning democratic process will be limited only to party primaries, if it happens at all.

It is valuable taking each of these criticisms on their merits. The first argument, that Prop 50 will provoke the right to redraw their own districts in response, does not hold up as a causal argument: it does not make sense to say that the GOP will be made to behave in undemocratic ways by Democrats’ measures when they are already doing so without those actions. The Republican party, I would observe, has not needed any motivation of retaliation to change maps that secure permanent positions for their party: they have been ready to do this for its own sake, in the complete lack of similar actions by the left, for a long time.

The other critique, I think, is more significant, reflecting not just a strategic difference about how to confront the GOP’s anti-democracy turn, but a kind of melancholic desire for a distinct country than the one that the United States has become. It is true that in a better world – in the world that most 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 manipulate targeted demographics; it is not good for politicians to choose their constituents, rather than the other way around; it is not good that votes are made uncontested. That these measures have become necessary in order to slow the authoritarian creep of the president’s power and reduce the amount of suffering he is capable to inflict is unfortunate; it is a indication of how far we have fallen from something more like a representative government. But they are necessary. Only after the battle against Trumpism has been won that we can lament what fighting it has transformed us into.

If the legislative branch fails to in practice have lawmaking, war making or budgetary power, what is it, exactly, that the proposition’s five new Democratic representatives will be dispatched to Washington to do? One aspect that the House and Senate continues to holds is the authority to compel testimony, and the ability to investigate. Even in our time of sclerotic politics and congressional atrophy, it has utilized of that authority to great effect. In 2027, if the measure passes and California’s new representatives are sworn in, they will find themselves a member of a body with the power to investigate Trump, to televise their investigations into his actions and to force members of his close advisors to testify. It’s significant, and more importantly, it’s not something that any Republican would do.

• The columnist is a Guardian US columnist