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What, precisely, is the role of Congress? During another Trump administration, it can be hard to determine. The power to declare war, traditionally viewed as a vital legislative power, has turned into a murky right of the executive branch in the years since September 11; the president, in recent months, has asserted even more of that control for his administration, authorizing military actions on vessels in the Caribbean.

The power of the purse seems to have mostly been stripped from the legislative branch too; currently, under the office of management and budget director, Russell Vought, a great deal of the power to appropriate federal funds has also defaulted to the presidency, with the White House asserting the authority to abort congressionally authorized expenditures and seeking to redirect the money elsewhere. It’s as if they’re enacting any legislation, anyway; almost all legislation must now be packed into spending packages, massive recurring must-spend comprehensive bills that can circumvent the senate obstruction. But when these don’t pass – and more and more, they do not – the federal government just ceases operations. At least, big parts of the administration do – and it’s uncertain how many citizens notice. Currently, the federal government has been shut down all month; there are no signs of it reopening anytime soon. But the executive branch keeps on operating smoothly.

And so the question of control of the House and Senate can appear rather moot. Why should Americans be concerned who has a majority in a body that has mostly rendered itself powerless?

How ‘oppose the president’ messaging could assist California’s Prop 50 succeed

And yet Proposition 50, the Golden State’s redistricting referendum that could deliver five additional congressional positions to the Democrats if it is embraced by the electorate in a upcoming vote in the coming weeks, has seized the political imagination of liberals nationwide. Partly, it is a belated reaction to developments occurring in other states: GOP-led states have long adopted extreme biased redistricting while big blue states such as California, New York and the Evergreen State create their district lines via impartial redistricting panels, an asymmetry that has led to closely divided House control and a long-term feeling, by Democrats, that their political group is at a disadvantage. The state proposal is clearly intended as a countermove to a mid-term redrawing of maps that recently passed in the Lone Star State, which implemented maps that will give the GOP an five more seats in the state House representation in the upcoming term; comparable redistricting moves are under way in states such as Missouri and the Hoosier State. (Democrats in Virginia are also emulating the state’s lead in seeking to alter districts.)

The California initiative seems likely to be approved, as progressive voters respond with fear and anger to the president’s autocratic centralization of authority and look for ways to restrain his worst impulses. But the proposition is not without debate. Some opponents warn that the move could backfire, with Democratic-controlled states’ efforts to redistrict setting off a revenge cycle in which Republican-controlled states do additional to draw their maps so as to foreclose any chance of opposition party success. Others have questioned the measure on strictly ideological pro-democracy grounds: a district that is created in such a way that the outcome of the vote is never really in question, they say, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely representative: it implies, necessarily, that the influence of opposing views is suppressed, and that the process of debate, discussion and convincing that is meant to characterize a functioning democratic process will be confined only to party primaries, if it occurs at all.

It is worth taking each of these objections on their merits. The first critique, that the measure will spur conservatives to redraw their respective maps in response, fails as a causal argument: it is illogical to claim that the GOP will be compelled to act in antidemocratic ways by Democrats’ measures when they are already engaging in such behavior without those steps. The GOP, I would observe, has required no any motivation of revenge to redraw boundaries that guarantee long-term positions for themselves: they have been ready to do this for their own benefit, in the complete lack of Democratic reciprocation, for a long time.

The second critique, I think, is more significant, reflecting not just a tactical disagreement about how to address the Republicans’ anti-democracy turn, but a kind of sad desire for a different country than the one that the US has become. It is accurate that in a more ideal world – in the reality that the majority of Democrats, it is believed, yearn for and aspire to – Prop 50 would be unappealing to our values, and not required by our situation. It is undesirable to manipulate disfavored demographics; it is not good for elected officials to select their voters, instead of the other way around; it is not good that votes are made noncompetitive. That these measures have grown necessary in order to slow the authoritarian creep of Trump’s power and lessen the level of suffering he is able to inflict 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 fight against Trumpism has been successfully concluded that we can lament what opposing it has transformed us into.

If Congress does not in practice have legislative, military or appropriations authority, what is it, precisely, that the proposition’s additional five Democratic house members will be sent to the capital to do? One thing that Congress still holds is the authority to compel testimony, and the ability to investigate. Even in our era of sclerotic politics and congressional atrophy, it has made use of that authority to significant impact. In the coming years, if Prop 50 passes and California’s new Democrats are sworn in, they will become a member of a body with the power to probe Trump, to televise their investigations into his actions and to force associates of his inner circle to testify. It’s not nothing, and crucially, it’s not anything that any conservative would do.

• The columnist is a Guardian US columnist