Repealing the call records program had been considered relatively low-hanging fruit by reform advocates—not least because it’s no longer operational. The National Security Agency announced a year ago that it had shut down the program after a series of compliance mishaps (during which many millions of innocent Americans’ phone records were accidentally collected). Lawmakers in both parties have expressed bewilderment about why they should reauthorize a program the NSA doesn’t use.

But in recent hearings, Trump administration officials have argued that the government should retain the authority in case it needs it later. In early November, an NSA official told the Senate Judiciary Committee the agency feared losing a “tool in our toolbox” that could prove “valuable moving forward.”

Thanks to House Democrats, those fears are allayed for the moment.

The late-game maneuver irked some advocacy groups, which have argued that Democrats’ broader complaints about the Trump administration—its white nationalist advisers, hostility to immigrants, disregard for the Constitution, and disdain for the press—should compel them to prioritize surveillance reform, too.

“Democrats are actively arguing that Donald Trump is unfit for office,” said Sandy Fulton of Free Press. “They’ve repeatedly acknowledged that he’s a threat to our most vulnerable communities. And yet they’re going to give him the Patriot Act?” Democratic leaders want to isolate the debate about intelligence from the debate about Trump’s fitness for office, Fulton explained. “They want to have these two conversations separately. But that doesn’t make sense. They should be the same conversation.”

A CPC spokesperson defended its members’ support of the continuing resolution. While acknowledging the caucus would have “preferred a clean CR without the 215 extension,” she said, “the top priority for the Progressive Caucus is to ensure major surveillance reform is included in any ultimate reauthorization.” The extension will help this goal, she argued: “Without a short extension that allows us to obtain these major reforms, we would end up in a much worse position.”

Jayapal, the CPC co-chair, denied that this was a situation of Democratic leadership bearing down on progressives. “That happens pretty often,” she said, laughing. “So I actually know what that feels like. This wasn’t one of them.”

According to Jayapal, negotiations between members of the Judiciary Committee and the NSA-friendly House Permanent Subcommittee on Intelligence (HPSCI) were going well. “Almost every single thing in our letter has been addressed, but not quite to our level of satisfaction,” Jayapal said. “We’re still pushing really hard, and we need this extra time to be able to finish that.” Without HPSCI’s buy-in, she said, “there’s no point in marking up a bill … because that is often where we run into problems.”

But some advocates say the best way to get buy-in from the intelligence committee is a show of strength. It would only have taken a few dozen progressive defections to kill the continuing resolution, after which the leadership would have been forced to strip the Patriot Act from the bill and schedule another vote on funding the government. “Self-identified progressives should have thrown a monkey wrench into the Orwellian machinery,” said Solomon. “Putting up a fight now would have opened up possibilities for rolling back key aspects of the surveillance state.”

Jayapal disagreed. If the House had not passed the extension, she said, the GOP-led Senate would have sent over a clean reauthorization bill (with no reforms), and she worries moderate Democrats might have gone along with it—especially if faced with the alternative of allowing the provisions to expire altogether. “You could go through and name any strategy for me, and I would tell you why it would fail,” she said.

As for allowing the Patriot Act to sunset, Jayapal told me, “There was no scenario in which this thing was going to expire.” Eighteen years after 9/11, raising the specter of “the next attack” still has political potency. “We already heard that from the Senate,” Jayapal said.

These views represent competing visions for how progressives should wield power in Congress. Jayapal’s pragmatic streak has often contrasted with the more openly confrontational approach of Ocasio-Cortez or Tlaib. While members of the Squad have seemed to relish fights with top Democrats, Jayapal has advocated for sticking to principles, while finding ways to work collaboratively with leadership.

“In my ideal world, we wouldn’t have the Patriot Act. Period,” Jayapal said, “but that’s not where we are. So we’ve got to fix these things, and they need to be substantive, real changes. That’s what we’re working on.”

This article was originally published by "New Republic" - -  

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