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What, precisely, is the role of the U.S. Congress? During another presidency of Donald Trump, it is difficult to tell. The power to initiate armed conflict, long considered a vital legislative power, has become a murky prerogative of the presidential office in the years since September 11; Trump, in recent months, has asserted additional of that control for his administration, conducting strikes on boats in the Caribbean Sea.

The authority over spending seems to have mostly been stripped from the legislative branch too; now, under the leadership of budget chief, Russell Vought, much of the power to appropriate government money has likewise defaulted to the presidency, with the administration claiming the ability to abort legislatively approved expenditures and attempting to move the money to other uses. It’s not like they’re passing any laws, anyway; almost all legislation must now be packed into spending packages, huge perennial must-spend omnibus legislation that can bypass the filibuster. But when these fail to be approved – and more and more, they do not – the federal government just ceases operations. That is, big parts of the government shut down – and it’s uncertain how many people notice. Currently, the government has been shut down all month; there are no signs of it resuming operations anytime soon. But the presidency keeps on operating smoothly.

And so the issue of control of Congress can seem somewhat irrelevant. Why should U.S. citizens be concerned who has a majority in a body that has mostly rendered itself powerless?

How ‘screw Trump’ messaging could assist the state of California’s Proposition 50 prevail

And yet Proposition 50, California’s redistricting referendum that could deliver five more congressional positions to the Democrats if it is approved by voters in a upcoming vote next month, has captured the political imagination of liberals across the country. Partly, it is a belated reaction to trends occurring in other states: Republican-controlled states have long embraced extreme partisan gerrymandering while large blue states such as the Golden State, the Empire State and Washington draw their maps via impartial redistricting panels, an imbalance that has resulted in narrowly split control of the House and a longstanding sense, by Democrats, that their party is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The California proposal is explicitly intended as a countermove to a mid-term redrawing of maps that recently passed in the Lone Star State, which implemented maps that will provide Republicans an additional five positions in the state congressional delegation next year; comparable boundary changes are in progress in states such as the Show-Me State and the Hoosier State. (Democrats in the Old Dominion are also following the state’s lead in attempting to alter districts.)

The state initiative seems likely to pass, as progressive electorate react with concern and anger to Trump’s autocratic centralization of power and look for methods to check his most extreme tendencies. But the proposition is not free from controversy. Some opponents caution that the move could backfire, with Democratic-controlled states’ attempts to redistrict setting off a revenge pattern in which red states do additional to draw their districts so as to foreclose any possibility of Democratic competitiveness. Others have questioned the measure on more purely ideological pro-democracy grounds: a district that is created in such a manner that the outcome of the vote is never really in question, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely democratic: it means, necessarily, that the influence of opposing views is muted, and that the procedure of deliberation, discussion and persuasion that is supposed to characterize a healthy democratic process will be limited only to primary elections, if it happens at all.

It is worth taking each of these objections on their merits. The initial argument, that the measure will spur conservatives to redraw their respective districts in retaliation, does not hold up as a logical argument: it is illogical to claim that Republicans will be compelled to act in undemocratic ways by Democrats’ actions 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 redraw maps that secure long-term seats for themselves: they have been willing to do this for its own sake, in the total lack of similar actions by the left, for years.

The second critique, I think, is more substantive, reflecting not just a strategic difference about how to address the GOP’s anti-democracy turn, but a sort of sad wish for a different nation than the one that the United States has become. It is true that in a better world – in the reality that the majority of the left, I think, desire and hope for – Prop 50 would be distasteful to our values, and not required by our circumstances. It is undesirable to manipulate targeted demographics; it is harmful for politicians to select their voters, rather than the reverse; it is not good that elections are rendered noncompetitive. That these actions have grown necessary in order to slow the autocratic creep of Trump’s power and lessen the amount of suffering he is able to cause is unfortunate; it is a sign of how much we have declined from a state more like a democracy. But they are required. Only after the fight against Trumpism has been successfully concluded that we can lament what opposing it has transformed us into.

If the legislative branch does not in reality have legislative, military or budgetary power, what is it, exactly, that the proposition’s additional five blue house members will be sent to Washington to do? One aspect that Congress still holds is the authority to compel testimony, and the power to examine. Even in our era of sclerotic government and legislative decline, it has utilized of that authority to great effect. In 2027, if Prop 50 is approved and California’s additional Democrats are take office, they will become a member of a institution with the power to investigate Trump, to televise their hearings into his conduct and to force members of his inner circle to give evidence. It’s significant, and crucially, it’s not something that any Republican would do.

• The columnist is a Guardian US columnist