The House of Representatives is set to vote Wednesday on renewing a spy power that grants the Trump administration warrantless access to thousands of Americans’ communications.
While uniting against President Donald Trump on many fronts, Democrats are split on what to do over the domestic spying power — and the party’s leadership isn’t giving much guidance, according to a congressional notice obtained by The Intercept.
In the notice laying out leadership’s advice on bills up for a vote this week, Democratic Whip Katherine Clark simply explained that the relevant top committee leaders were split. House Intelligence Committee Ranking Member Jim Himes supports a clean reauthorization of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, while Judiciary Committee Ranking Member Jamie Raskin wants further reforms.
Clark gave straight up-or-down recommendations on many other pieces of legislation, but not the spying law.
With leadership silent, progressive activists are trying to step into the void to pressure members. They say Trump’s disregard for the rule of law in his second term means that representatives should only vote for the law with reforms. Government officials have engaged a pattern of abuses at the Justice Department.
Centrists on two key committees, on the other hand, say that modest changes enacted in 2024 went far enough and Congress should give Trump the so-called “clean” reauthorization he has requested.
With Republicans themselves divided, the margin within the Democratic caucus could prove crucial.
Rather than advising members how to vote, however, Democratic leaders is stepping aside. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., has said that he personally supports reforms but has not signaled that he will pressure his caucus. (Jeffries’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.)
At what point can they just not be called “representatives” anymore? It seems like their ability to actually represent constituents atrophied and died a long time ago.
Or, at least keep the “representative” moniker, but put “Lobby” in front of it.
I feel like we need a lot more of them, so they can be responsible to a reasonably sized group of people.
Right now they represent so many of us they can just pretend to ignore us and only listen to the rich donors.
If there are a thousand reps it gets a lot more expensive to rig elections and buy votes.
back when they capped the House seats it was roughly 200k/seat, now it’s nearing 1m/seat
it should be noted that the cap was specifically put in place to hamstring a growing progressive movement from cities
You underestimate how rich the dark money donors are.
Yes, and, how cheaply politicians can be bought.
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=%3D"US"%2BPolitician%2B%241k%2Bbribe&chip-select=search&rpl=1&ia=web
You squash incremental progress with no alternative offered.
We can do this by just dissolving the Senate and the Electoral College actually. It’s not going to happen, but there is already a solution available.
The Senate does need to go, but that requires a constitutional amendment.
Electoral college requires one as well, or more action in a few states with that interstate compact.
The actual easy answer is a repeal of the 1929 permanent apportionment act.
That would mean that we could increase the size of the House.
The Senate would just continue to block progressive policy though. However, yes, repealing 1929 apportionment and packing the Supreme Court would go a long way and is more achievable short term.
thank you, hence my suggestion lol
They’re still representatives, it’s just that they represent capital rather than people.
These traitors see themselves as our leaders and the old “representative” label is just a tradition/formality, similar to “equal rights” or “rule of law”