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What, exactly, is the role of Congress? During another presidency of Donald Trump, it can be hard to tell. The authority to declare war, traditionally viewed as a crucial legislative power, has become a murky right of the presidential office in the years since the 9/11 attacks; Trump, in the past few months, has asserted even more of that power for his administration, authorizing strikes on vessels in the Caribbean Sea.

The authority over spending seems to have largely been stripped from Congress too; now, under the office of budget chief, Russell Vought, much of the ability to allocate government money has also shifted to the executive, with the White House asserting the authority to cancel legislatively approved expenditures and seeking to redirect the funds to other uses. It’s as if they’re passing any legislation, either; almost all bills must currently be packed into budget reconciliation bills, huge recurring must-spend comprehensive bills that can circumvent the senate obstruction. But when these fail to be approved – and more and more, they do not – the government just ceases operations. That is, big parts of the government shut down – and it’s not clear how many citizens notice. Currently, the federal government has been closed all month; there are no signs of it reopening in the near future. But the executive branch keeps on operating smoothly.

And so the question of dominance of Congress can seem rather moot. Why should Americans be concerned who has a majority in a institution that has largely rendered itself powerless?

In what way ‘oppose the president’ messaging could assist 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 attention of progressives across the country. Partly, it is a belated response to developments happening in other states: GOP-led states have long adopted dramatic partisan gerrymandering while large Democratic-controlled such as California, New York and Washington draw their maps via nonpartisan redistricting panels, an asymmetry that has led to 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 measure is clearly designed as a response to a mid-decade redistricting that was recently approved in the Lone Star State, which implemented boundaries that will provide the GOP an additional five seats in the state’s House representation next year; comparable redistricting moves are under way in states such as Missouri and Indiana. (The left in Virginia are also following California’s example in attempting to redistrict.)

The California initiative seems probable to be approved, as progressive electorate respond with fear and anger to the president’s autocratic centralization of power and look for ways to check his worst tendencies. But the proposition is not free from debate. Some opponents caution that the action could have unintended consequences, with blue states’ efforts to redistrict triggering a revenge cycle in which Republican-controlled states do even more to design their maps so as to eliminate any possibility of Democratic competitiveness. Different critics have questioned the measure on strictly ideological democratic grounds: a district that is created in such a manner that the outcome of the election is never really in doubt, they say, is one that cannot be said to be truly democratic: it implies, inevitably, that the influence of dissenting views is suppressed, and that the process of deliberation, discussion and persuasion that is supposed to characterize a healthy political system will be limited only to party primaries, if it happens at all.

It is valuable considering each of these criticisms on their own terms. The initial critique, that the measure will provoke conservatives to redraw their own maps in response, does not hold up as a logical argument: it does not make sense to say that the GOP will be compelled to act in undemocratic ways by Democrats’ measures when they are already engaging in such behavior in the absence of those steps. The Republican party, it can be noted, has not needed any motivation of revenge to redraw maps that secure long-term seats for their party: they have been willing to do this for their own benefit, in the complete lack of similar actions by the left, for a long time.

The second objection, I think, is more substantive, reflecting not just a tactical disagreement about how to confront the GOP’s anti-democracy shift, but a sort of sad wish for a different country than the one that the United States has turned into. It is true that in a better situation – in the world that the majority of Democrats, I think, yearn for and aspire to – Prop 50 would be unappealing to our values, and not required by our circumstances. It is not good to pack and crack disfavored demographics; it is not good for politicians to select their constituents, instead of the reverse; it is not good that elections are made noncompetitive. That these measures have become necessary in order to impede the autocratic advance of the president’s control and reduce the level of suffering he is able to inflict is unfortunate; it is a indication of how much we have declined from a state more like a representative government. But they are necessary. Only after the fight against the current administration’s ideology has been successfully concluded that we can lament what opposing it has made us.

If the legislative branch does not in reality have legislative, military or appropriations authority, what is it, precisely, that Prop 50’s five new blue house members will be sent to Washington to do? One aspect that Congress continues to retains is subpoena power, and the power to examine. Even in our era of sclerotic politics and legislative decline, it has utilized of that power to great effect. In the coming years, if the measure passes and California’s additional representatives are sworn in, they will become a member of a institution with the power to investigate the president, to televise their hearings into his conduct and to compel members of his close advisors to give evidence. It’s not nothing, and more importantly, it’s not something that any Republican would do.

• The columnist is a Guardian US columnist