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What, exactly, is the role of Congress? During another Trump administration, it can be hard to tell. The authority to initiate armed conflict, long considered a vital legislative power, has turned into a murky prerogative of the executive branch in the years since September 11; Trump, in the past few months, has asserted additional of that control for himself, authorizing military actions on boats in the Caribbean Sea.

The authority over spending seems to have largely been stripped from the legislative branch too; currently, under the office of budget chief, the OMB director, much of the ability to allocate government money has also defaulted to the executive, with the administration asserting the authority to cancel legislatively approved spending and attempting to redirect the funds to other uses. It’s not like they’re passing any laws, either; virtually all legislation must currently be packed into spending packages, huge perennial must-spend omnibus legislation that can bypass the senate obstruction. But when those fail to be approved – and increasingly, they do not – the federal government just shuts down. That is, big parts of the administration shut down – and it’s not clear how many citizens notice. Currently, the government has been closed for the entire month; there are no signs of it resuming operations in the near future. But the presidency continues operating smoothly.

And so the question of dominance of the House and Senate can appear somewhat moot. Why should Americans care who holds a majority in a institution that has mostly abolished itself?

How ‘oppose the president’ rhetoric could help the state of California’s Proposition 50 succeed

And yet Prop 50, the Golden State’s redistricting referendum that could provide five additional House seats to the Democrats if it is approved by the electorate in a special election in the coming weeks, has seized the political imagination of progressives nationwide. Partly, it is a delayed reaction to trends happening elsewhere: Republican-controlled states have long adopted dramatic partisan gerrymandering while large Democratic-controlled such as California, the Empire State and Washington draw their maps via nonpartisan independent commissions, an asymmetry that has led to narrowly split control of the House and a longstanding sense, by Democrats, that their party is at a disadvantage. The state measure is explicitly intended as a countermove to a mid-term redrawing of maps that recently passed in Texas, which implemented boundaries that will provide Republicans an five more seats in the state congressional delegation next year; comparable boundary changes are in progress in states such as the Show-Me State and the Hoosier State. (Democrats in the Old Dominion are also emulating California’s lead in attempting to alter districts.)

The state initiative seems likely to be approved, as progressive voters react with concern and anger to the president’s autocratic centralization of power and seek methods to restrain his worst impulses. But Prop 50 is not without debate. Some critics caution that the move could have unintended consequences, with Democratic-controlled states’ efforts to change districts triggering a revenge cycle in which red states do even more to design their districts so as to eliminate any chance of Democratic competitiveness. Different critics have critiqued the measure on strictly ideological pro-democracy bases: a electoral area that is drawn in such a way that the result of the vote is not in doubt, 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 process of deliberation, argument and convincing that is meant to define a functioning democratic process will be confined only to primary elections, if it happens at all.

It is valuable taking each of these objections on their merits. The initial argument, that the measure will spur conservatives to redraw their respective maps in retaliation, does not hold up as a causal argument: it does not make sense to claim that Republicans will be compelled to behave in undemocratic ways by the left’s actions when they are already doing so in the absence of those steps. The GOP, it can be noted, has not needed any motivation of retaliation to redraw maps that secure long-term positions for their party: they have been ready to do this for its own sake, in the complete lack of Democratic reciprocation, for a long time.

The second objection, in my view, is more significant, reflecting not just a strategic disagreement about how to confront the GOP’s undemocratic shift, but a sort of sad wish for a different country than the one that the US has turned into. It is true that in a better situation – in the reality that the majority of Democrats, I think, desire and hope for – the proposition would be unappealing to our values, and not required by our situation. It is undesirable to pack and crack disfavored demographics; it is harmful for politicians to select their voters, instead of the reverse; it is not good that elections are made uncontested. That these actions have grown necessary in order to impede the autocratic advance of Trump’s control and reduce the level of harm he is able to inflict is sad; it is a indication of how far we have fallen from a state more like a representative government. But they are required. It is only after the battle against the current administration’s ideology has been successfully concluded that we can mourn what opposing it has transformed us into.

If the legislative branch does not in practice have legislative, military or budgetary power, what is it, exactly, that the proposition’s five new blue house members will be sent to the capital to do? One thing that Congress continues to retains is the authority to compel testimony, and the power to examine. Even in our time of stagnant politics and congressional atrophy, it has utilized of that authority to significant impact. In the coming years, if the measure passes and the state’s new Democrats are take office, they will become a member of a institution with the authority to probe the president, to broadcast their investigations into his actions and to compel associates of his inner circle to give evidence. It’s significant, and more importantly, it’s not anything that any Republican would do.

• The columnist is a Guardian US writer