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What, exactly, is the role of Congress? During another Trump administration, it is difficult to determine. The authority to declare war, long considered 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 asserted additional of that control for his administration, authorizing military actions on boats in the Caribbean.

The authority over spending seems to have largely been stripped from Congress as well; now, under the leadership of budget chief, Russell Vought, much of the power to allocate government money has likewise defaulted to the executive, with the White House claiming the authority to cancel congressionally authorized expenditures and attempting to redirect the funds elsewhere. It’s as if they’re passing any laws, anyway; virtually all bills must currently be packed into budget reconciliation bills, massive perennial essential comprehensive bills that can circumvent the senate obstruction. But when those don’t pass – and increasingly, they don’t – the government simply shuts down. That is, large sections of the government do – and it’s not clear how many people are aware. At present, the federal government has been shut down for the entire month; there are no signs of it resuming operations in the near future. But the executive branch continues humming along.

And so the issue of control of Congress can seem somewhat moot. Why should U.S. citizens be concerned who holds a controlling share in a body that has largely abolished itself?

In what way ‘screw Trump’ rhetoric could help the state of California’s Proposition 50 succeed

And yet Proposition 50, California’s redistricting referendum that could deliver five more congressional positions to the Democratic Party if it is approved by voters in a upcoming vote next month, has seized the political imagination of progressives across the country. In part, it is a belated reaction to developments happening in other states: Republican-controlled states have for a long time adopted dramatic biased redistricting while large Democratic-controlled such as the Golden State, the Empire State and the Evergreen State draw their district lines via nonpartisan redistricting panels, an asymmetry that has led to narrowly split House control and a long-term feeling, by Democrats, that their political group is at a disadvantage. The California measure is clearly designed as a response to a mid-decade redistricting that was recently approved in the Lone Star State, which installed maps that will give the GOP an five more seats in the state’s House representation next year; similar redistricting moves are in progress in states such as the Show-Me State and the Hoosier State. (The left in the Old Dominion are likewise emulating California’s lead in seeking to alter districts.)

The California initiative seems probable to pass, as progressive electorate react with fear and anger to the president’s authoritarian consolidation of authority and look for ways to check his worst tendencies. But the proposition is not free from debate. Some critics caution that the move could backfire, with Democratic-controlled states’ attempts to redistrict setting off a retaliatory cycle in which Republican-controlled states do even more to draw their districts so as to foreclose any possibility of Democratic competitiveness. Different critics have questioned the proposal on more purely ideological pro-democracy bases: a district that is created in such a manner that the outcome of the election is never really in question, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be truly representative: it means, inevitably, that the influence of opposing voices is muted, and that the procedure of debate, discussion and convincing that is meant to characterize a healthy democratic process will be limited only to party primaries, if it occurs at all.

It is valuable considering each of these criticisms on their own terms. The initial argument, that the measure will spur the right to alter their own maps in response, fails as a logical argument: it does not make sense to claim that Republicans will be made to behave in undemocratic ways by the left’s actions when they are already engaging in such behavior without those actions. The Republican party, I would observe, has required no any motivation of revenge to change maps that guarantee permanent positions for their party: they have been ready to do this for its own sake, in the complete absence of Democratic reciprocation, for years.

The other critique, in my view, is more substantive, reflecting not just a tactical difference about how to confront the GOP’s anti-democracy turn, but a sort of melancholic desire for a distinct nation than the one that the United States has turned into. It is accurate that in a better situation – in the reality that most the left, it is believed, yearn for and aspire to – the proposition would be unappealing to our values, and not required by our circumstances. It is not good to pack and crack targeted demographics; it is not good for politicians to select their constituents, rather than the reverse; it is negative that votes are made uncontested. That these actions have become necessary in order to slow the authoritarian creep of Trump’s power and reduce the level of suffering he is able to cause is unfortunate; it is a sign of how far we have declined from something more like a democracy. But they are necessary. It is only once the fight against Trumpism has been successfully concluded that we can mourn what opposing it has made us.

If Congress does not in reality have lawmaking, military or budgetary authority, what is it, precisely, that the proposition’s additional five blue house members will be dispatched to the capital to do? One aspect that Congress continues to holds is subpoena power, and the ability to investigate. Even in our era of stagnant government and legislative decline, it has utilized of that authority to significant impact. In the coming years, if the measure is approved and the state’s new representatives are take office, they will become a member of a body with the authority to investigate Trump, to broadcast their hearings into his actions and to compel associates of his close advisors to testify. It’s significant, and more importantly, it’s not something that any conservative would do.

• Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist