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What, precisely, is the role of the U.S. Congress? During another Trump administration, it is difficult to determine. The authority to declare war, long considered a vital congressional authority, has become a murky right of the executive branch in the years since the 9/11 attacks; Trump, in recent months, has asserted additional of that control for himself, authorizing military actions on vessels in the Caribbean Sea.

The power of the purse seems to have largely been taken away from the legislative branch as well; currently, under the office 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 administration claiming the authority to abort legislatively approved spending and seeking to redirect the money to other uses. It’s as if they’re passing any laws, either; virtually all legislation must currently be crammed into budget reconciliation bills, massive perennial essential omnibus legislation that can circumvent the filibuster. But when those don’t pass – and more and more, they do not – the government simply ceases operations. That is, big parts of the administration do – and it’s not clear how many citizens are aware. Currently, the federal 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 question of control of Congress can seem rather moot. Why should U.S. citizens be concerned who has a majority in a body that has mostly abolished itself?

In what way ‘screw Trump’ rhetoric may assist the state of California’s Prop 50 succeed

And yet Proposition 50, the Golden State’s redistricting referendum that could provide five more congressional positions to the Democrats if it is approved by the electorate in a special election in the coming weeks, has captured the attention of progressives across the country. Partly, it is a delayed reaction to trends happening in other states: Republican-controlled states have for a long time embraced extreme partisan gerrymandering while big blue states such as the Golden State, the Empire State and the Evergreen State draw their district lines via nonpartisan independent commissions, an asymmetry that has led to narrowly split control of the House and a long-term feeling, by Democrats, that their party is at a disadvantage. The state proposal is clearly designed as a countermove to a mid-term redrawing of maps that recently passed in Texas, which installed boundaries that will give Republicans an five more positions in the state congressional delegation next year; comparable boundary changes are under way in states such as Missouri and Indiana. (Democrats in the Old Dominion are likewise following California’s example in attempting to alter districts.)

The California initiative seems likely to be approved, as progressive voters respond with fear and anger to Trump’s autocratic consolidation of authority and look for ways to check his most extreme tendencies. But Prop 50 is not without controversy. Some critics warn that the action could backfire, with blue states’ efforts to change districts setting off a retaliatory cycle in which red states do even more to draw their districts so as to foreclose any chance of opposition party success. Others have questioned the measure on strictly ideological pro-democracy grounds: a electoral area that is created in such a way that the result of the vote is never really in doubt, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely democratic: it implies, necessarily, that the influence of opposing views is suppressed, and that the procedure of deliberation, discussion and persuasion that is meant to characterize a healthy democratic process will be limited only to party primaries, if it occurs at all.

It is worth considering each of these criticisms on their merits. The first argument, that Prop 50 will spur the right to redraw their respective districts in response, fails as a logical point: it is illogical to say that Republicans will be compelled to act in undemocratic ways by Democrats’ actions when they are already engaging in such behavior without those actions. The GOP, it can be noted, has not needed any motivation of retaliation to change maps that secure permanent seats for their party: they have been ready to do this for their own benefit, in the complete absence of Democratic reciprocation, for years.

The other critique, in my view, is more substantive, expressing not just a strategic disagreement about how to address the GOP’s undemocratic turn, but a sort of melancholic desire for a different nation than the one that the United States has turned into. It is true that in a more ideal situation – in the reality that the majority of the left, I think, desire and hope for – Prop 50 would be unappealing to our principles, and not required by our circumstances. It is not good to pack and crack targeted population groups; it is not good for politicians to select their voters, rather than the reverse; it is negative that votes are rendered noncompetitive. That these actions have grown necessary in order to impede the authoritarian creep of Trump’s power and reduce the amount of suffering he is able to inflict is unfortunate; it is a sign of how far we have fallen from a state more like a representative government. But they are necessary. It is only once the fight against the current administration’s ideology has been won that we can lament what opposing it has transformed us into.

If Congress does not in reality have legislative, military or appropriations authority, what is it, precisely, that the proposition’s five new Democratic house members will be dispatched to Washington to do? One thing that Congress still holds is the authority to compel testimony, and the ability to investigate. Even in our time of stagnant politics and legislative decline, it has utilized of that authority to significant impact. In 2027, if the measure passes and the state’s additional representatives are take office, they will find themselves a part of a institution with the power to probe Trump, to televise their hearings into his actions and to compel members of his close advisors to testify. It’s significant, and more importantly, it’s not anything that any conservative would do.

• The columnist is a Guardian US columnist