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What, precisely, is the role of Congress? During another Trump administration, it is difficult to determine. The power to declare war, long considered a crucial congressional authority, has become a unclear prerogative of the executive branch in the time since the 9/11 attacks; the president, in recent months, has claimed additional of that control for himself, conducting military actions on boats in the Caribbean Sea.

The authority over spending seems to have mostly been taken away from the legislative branch too; currently, under the leadership of budget chief, Russell Vought, much of the ability to allocate government money has likewise defaulted to the executive, with the administration asserting the ability to cancel legislatively approved expenditures and seeking to redirect the funds elsewhere. It’s not like they’re passing any laws, anyway; virtually all bills must now be packed into budget reconciliation bills, huge recurring must-spend comprehensive bills that can bypass the filibuster. But when these don’t pass – and more and more, they don’t – the federal government simply shuts down. That is, big parts of the government do – and it’s uncertain how many people are aware. Currently, the federal government has been shut down for the entire month; there are little indication of it reopening anytime soon. But the executive branch continues humming along.

And so the issue of dominance of the House and Senate can seem somewhat irrelevant. Why should Americans care who holds a majority in a institution that has largely rendered itself powerless?

How ‘oppose the president’ messaging may help California’s Proposition 50 prevail

And yet Proposition 50, the Golden State’s redistricting referendum that could provide five additional House seats to the Democrats if it is approved by voters in a upcoming vote next month, has seized the attention of progressives across the country. Partly, it is a delayed reaction to developments occurring in other states: GOP-led states have for a long time embraced extreme partisan gerrymandering while big Democratic-controlled such as California, the Empire State and the Evergreen State create their district lines via nonpartisan redistricting panels, an asymmetry that has resulted in closely divided control of the House and a longstanding feeling, by Democrats, that their party is at a disadvantage. The California measure is clearly intended as a countermove to a mid-decade redistricting that recently passed in the Lone Star State, which implemented boundaries that will provide Republicans an five more positions in the state’s House representation next year; comparable redistricting moves are in progress in states such as the Show-Me State and the Hoosier State. (Democrats in Virginia are also emulating the state’s example in seeking to alter districts.)

The California initiative seems probable to be approved, as progressive electorate respond with fear and anger to Trump’s authoritarian consolidation of power and look for ways to restrain his worst tendencies. But the proposition is not without controversy. Some opponents warn that the move could backfire, with blue states’ attempts to change districts triggering a retaliatory cycle in which Republican-controlled states do even more to draw their districts so as to foreclose any chance of Democratic competitiveness. Others have critiqued the measure on more purely ideological pro-democracy bases: a district that is drawn in such a way that the outcome of the vote is not in doubt, they say, is one that cannot be said to be truly democratic: it implies, inevitably, that the influence of opposing voices is muted, and that the procedure of deliberation, argument and convincing that is supposed to define a functioning political system will be confined only to primary elections, if it happens at all.

It is worth considering each of these objections on their merits. The first argument, that Prop 50 will provoke conservatives to redraw their respective maps in retaliation, fails as a causal point: it does not make sense to claim that the GOP will be made to behave in antidemocratic ways by Democrats’ actions when they are already engaging in such behavior in the absence of those actions. The GOP, it can be noted, has required no any incentive of retaliation to change boundaries that secure permanent seats for themselves: they have been willing to do this for their own benefit, in the complete absence of Democratic reciprocation, for years.

The second critique, in my view, is more substantive, reflecting not just a tactical difference about how to confront the Republicans’ undemocratic turn, but a kind of melancholic desire for a distinct country than the one that the US has turned into. It is accurate that in a more ideal world – in the world that most the left, it is believed, yearn for and aspire to – Prop 50 would be distasteful to our principles, and not required by our circumstances. It is undesirable to pack and crack disfavored demographics; it is harmful for politicians to choose their constituents, rather than the other way around; it is negative that votes are rendered uncontested. That these actions have become necessary in order to impede the autocratic creep of the president’s power and reduce the amount of suffering he is able 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 battle against the current administration’s ideology has been successfully concluded that we can mourn what opposing it has made us.

If Congress fails to in reality have lawmaking, war making or budgetary authority, what is it, precisely, that the proposition’s five new Democratic representatives will be sent to Washington to do? One aspect that the House and Senate still retains is the authority to compel testimony, and the power to investigate. Even in our era of sclerotic government and legislative decline, it has made use of that power to significant impact. In the coming years, if Prop 50 passes and California’s additional representatives are sworn in, they will find themselves a part of a institution with the power to probe the president, to televise their investigations into his conduct and to compel members of his inner circle to give evidence. It’s not nothing, and crucially, it’s not something that any conservative would do.

• Moira Donegan is a Guardian US writer