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What, exactly, is the role of the U.S. Congress? During another presidency of Donald Trump, it is difficult to determine. The authority to declare war, traditionally viewed as a crucial legislative power, has become a murky prerogative of the presidential office in the time since the 9/11 attacks; the president, in the past few months, has claimed even more of that control for his administration, conducting military actions on boats in the Caribbean Sea.

The power of the purse appears to be mostly been stripped from the legislative branch too; currently, under the office of management and budget director, Russell Vought, much of the ability to appropriate federal funds has likewise defaulted to the executive, with the administration asserting the ability to cancel legislatively approved expenditures and attempting to redirect the funds to other uses. It’s not like they’re enacting any laws, anyway; virtually all legislation must now be crammed into budget reconciliation bills, massive perennial must-spend omnibus legislation that can bypass the filibuster. But when these don’t pass – and increasingly, they do not – the government just ceases operations. At least, large sections of the administration shut down – and it’s uncertain how many citizens notice. Currently, the federal government has been shut down all month; there are no signs of it resuming operations anytime soon. But the executive branch keeps on humming along.

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

How ‘screw Trump’ rhetoric may help the state of California’s Proposition 50 prevail

And yet Proposition 50, the Golden State’s redistricting referendum that could provide five additional House seats to the Democratic Party if it is approved by voters in a upcoming vote in the coming weeks, has captured the attention of progressives across the country. Partly, it is a belated reaction to trends occurring elsewhere: GOP-led states have for a long time adopted dramatic partisan gerrymandering while big Democratic-controlled such as California, the Empire State and the Evergreen State create their district lines via impartial independent commissions, an asymmetry that has led to closely divided House control and a longstanding sense, by the left, that their party is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The state proposal is clearly designed as a response to a mid-decade redrawing of maps that recently passed in Texas, which implemented maps that will provide Republicans an five more seats in the state’s congressional delegation next year; comparable boundary changes are under way in states such as Missouri and Indiana. (Democrats in Virginia are also emulating the state’s lead in attempting to alter districts.)

The California measure seems likely to be approved, as progressive voters react with concern and frustration to the president’s authoritarian consolidation of authority and look for ways to check his most extreme tendencies. But Prop 50 is not free from controversy. Some opponents caution that the move could backfire, with Democratic-controlled states’ attempts to change districts setting off a revenge pattern in which red states do additional to draw their districts so as to eliminate any chance of Democratic competitiveness. Others have questioned the proposal on strictly ideological democratic bases: a electoral area that is created in such a way that the outcome of the election is not in question, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely democratic: it implies, necessarily, that the influence of dissenting voices is muted, and that the process of deliberation, argument and convincing that is supposed to define a functioning democratic process will be limited only to party primaries, if it happens at all.

It is valuable taking each of these objections on their own terms. The initial critique, that Prop 50 will spur conservatives to redraw their own maps in response, does not hold up as a logical point: it is illogical to claim that the GOP will be compelled to act in undemocratic ways by Democrats’ measures when they are already engaging in such behavior without those actions. The GOP, it can be noted, has not needed any incentive of revenge to redraw boundaries that guarantee long-term positions for themselves: they have been willing to do this for its own sake, in the total lack of Democratic reciprocation, for years.

The second objection, in my view, is more significant, reflecting not just a tactical disagreement about how to address the GOP’s undemocratic shift, but a sort of melancholic desire for a different country than the one that the United States has become. It is true that in a better world – in the world that the majority of Democrats, it is believed, desire and hope for – Prop 50 would be unappealing to our principles, and not mandated by our situation. It is undesirable to manipulate targeted demographics; it is harmful for elected officials to select their voters, rather than the reverse; it is negative that votes are made noncompetitive. That these measures have grown necessary in order to slow the authoritarian creep of the president’s control and lessen the amount of suffering he is able to cause is unfortunate; it is a sign of how much we have fallen from something more like a democracy. But they are required. It is only after the battle against the current administration’s ideology has been won that we can mourn what opposing it has made us.

If the legislative branch fails to in reality have lawmaking, military or budgetary power, what is it, exactly, that Prop 50’s additional five blue representatives will be dispatched to the capital to do? One aspect that Congress still holds is subpoena power, and the power to examine. Even in our era of sclerotic politics and legislative decline, it has made use of that authority to significant impact. In 2027, if the measure passes and California’s additional representatives are take office, they will become a member of a body with the power to probe Trump, to broadcast their hearings into his actions and to compel associates of his close advisors to testify. It’s not nothing, and more importantly, it’s not anything that any Republican would do.

• The columnist is a Guardian US columnist