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What, exactly, is the role of Congress? During another Trump administration, it can be hard to tell. The power to declare war, long considered a crucial congressional authority, has turned into a murky right of the executive branch in the time since the 9/11 attacks; Trump, in the past few months, has asserted additional of that power for himself, conducting strikes on vessels in the Caribbean Sea.

The power of the purse seems to have mostly been taken away from the legislative branch as well; now, under the office of budget chief, Russell Vought, a great deal of the ability to appropriate federal funds has also shifted to the presidency, with the administration claiming the authority to abort congressionally authorized spending and seeking to redirect the money elsewhere. It’s not like they’re passing any legislation, either; almost all legislation must currently be crammed into budget reconciliation bills, huge recurring must-spend omnibus legislation that can bypass the senate obstruction. But when those fail to be approved – and more and more, they do not – the government just shuts down. That is, big parts of the government shut down – and it’s not clear how many citizens notice. Currently, the federal government has been shut down all month; there are little indication of it reopening in the near future. But the presidency keeps on humming along.

And so the question of control of the House and Senate can seem somewhat irrelevant. Why should U.S. citizens care who holds a controlling share in a institution that has largely abolished itself?

How ‘screw Trump’ 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 next month, has captured the political imagination of liberals nationwide. In part, it is a delayed reaction to trends happening in other states: GOP-led states have for a long time embraced extreme partisan gerrymandering while big blue states such as California, New York and the Evergreen State create their maps via nonpartisan independent commissions, an asymmetry that has resulted in closely divided House control and a longstanding sense, by Democrats, that their party is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The California proposal is explicitly intended as a response to a mid-decade redistricting that was recently approved in the Lone Star State, which installed boundaries that will give the GOP an five more positions in the state House representation next year; similar boundary changes are in progress in states such as the Show-Me State and Indiana. (The left in the Old Dominion are likewise following the state’s example in seeking to redistrict.)

The state measure seems likely to be approved, as Democratic and liberal voters react with concern and frustration to the president’s autocratic consolidation of authority and look for methods to check his worst tendencies. But the proposition is not without debate. Some critics warn that the move could have unintended consequences, with Democratic-controlled states’ attempts to change districts setting off a retaliatory cycle in which Republican-controlled states do even more to draw their maps so as to foreclose any chance of opposition party success. Others have questioned the measure on more purely principled democratic grounds: a electoral area that is created in such a way that the outcome of the vote is not in question, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely representative: it means, inevitably, that the influence of dissenting views is muted, and that the process of deliberation, discussion and persuasion that is supposed to characterize a healthy political system will be limited only to primary elections, if it happens at all.

It is worth considering each of these criticisms on their merits. The initial critique, that the measure will spur conservatives to redraw their respective districts in retaliation, fails as a logical argument: it is illogical to say that the GOP will be made to act in undemocratic ways by the left’s measures when they are already engaging in such behavior without those steps. The Republican party, it can be noted, has not needed any incentive of revenge to redraw maps that secure long-term seats 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 significant, expressing not just a strategic difference about how to confront the Republicans’ undemocratic turn, but a kind of sad desire for a distinct country than the one that the US has become. It is true that in a better world – in the reality that the majority of Democrats, I think, desire and aspire to – the proposition would be distasteful to our values, and not required by our situation. 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 rendered uncontested. That these measures have become essential in order to impede the authoritarian advance of Trump’s control and lessen the amount of harm he is able to cause is sad; it is a indication of how far we have fallen from something more like a democracy. But they are necessary. It is only after the battle against Trumpism has been won that we can mourn what fighting it has made us.

If the legislative branch fails to in practice have legislative, war making or budgetary power, what is it, exactly, that the proposition’s five new blue representatives will be dispatched to the capital to do? One thing that Congress continues to holds is the authority to compel testimony, and the power to examine. Even in our time of sclerotic government and congressional atrophy, it has made use of that power to significant impact. In the coming years, if the measure passes and California’s new representatives are take office, they will find themselves a member of a body with the authority to probe Trump, to broadcast their investigations into his conduct and to force members of his close advisors to testify. It’s significant, and crucially, it’s not anything that any conservative would do.

• The columnist is a Guardian US writer