The same Democrats who denounce Trump as a lawless, treasonous authoritarian just voted to give him vast warrantless spying powers
Leading
congressional Democrats have spent the last year relentlessly
accusing Donald Trump of being controlled by or treasonously loyal to
a hostile foreign power. Over the last several months, they have
added to those disloyalty charges a new set of alleged crimes:
abusing the powers of the Executive Branch – including the Justice
Department and FBI – to vindictively punish political opponents
while corruptly protecting the serious crimes of his allies,
including his own family members and possibly himself.
The
inescapable conclusion from all of this, they have relentlessly
insisted, is that Trump is a lawless authoritarian of the type the
U.S. has not seen in the Oval Office for decades, if ever: a leader
who has no regard for Constitutional values or legal limits and thus
poses a grave, unique and existential threat to the institutions of
American democracy.
Reflecting
the severity of these fears, the anti-Trump opposition movement that
has coalesced within Democratic Party politics has appropriated a
slogan – expressed in the hashtag form of contemporary online
activism – that was historically used by those who unite, at all
costs, to defeat domestic tyranny: #Resistance.
One
would hope, and expect, that those who genuinely view Trump as a
menace of this magnitude and who view themselves as #Resistance
fighters would do everything within their ability to impose as many
limits and safeguards as possible on the powers he is able to wield.
If “resistance” means anything, at a minimum it should entail a
refusal to trust a dangerous authoritarian to wield vast power with
little checks or oversight.
Yesterday
in Washington, Congressional Democrats were presented with a critical
opportunity to do exactly that. A proposed new amendment was
scheduled to be voted on in the House of Representatives that would
have imposed meaningful limits and new safeguards on Trump’s
ability to exercise one of the most dangerous, invasive and
historically abused presidential powers: spying on the communications
of American citizens without warrants. Yesterday’s amendment was
designed to limit the powers first enacted during the Bush years to
legalize the Bush/Cheney domestic warrantless eavesdropping program.
The Intercept’s Alex Emmons on Wednesday detailed the history and
substance of the various bills pending in the House.
Although
the Trump White House and a majority of House Republicans (including
House Speaker Paul Ryan and House Intelligence Committee Chairman
Devin Nunes) favored extension (and even an expansion) of the current
law’s spying powers and opposed any real reforms, a substantial
minority of GOP lawmakers have long opposed warrantless surveillance
of Americans and thus announced their intention to support new
safeguards. Indeed, the primary sponsor and advocate of the amendment
to provide new domestic spying safeguards was the conservative
Republican from Michigan, Justin Amash, who, in the wake of the 2013
Snowden revelations, worked in close partnership with liberal
Democratic Congressman John Conyers to try to rein in some of these
domestic spying powers.
Despite
opposition from GOP House leadership and the Trump White House, Amash
was able to secure the commitment of dozens of House Republicans to
support his amendments to limit the ability of Trump’s FBI to spy
on Americans without warrants. The key provision of his amendment
would have required that the FBI first obtain a warrant before it was
permitted to search and read through the communications of Americans
collected by the NSA.
To
secure enactment of these safeguards, Amash needed support from a
majority of House Democrats. That meant that House Democrats held the
power in their hands to decide whether or not Trump – the President
they have been vocally vilifying as a lawless tyrant threatening
American democracy – would be subjected to serious limits and
safeguards on how his FBI could spy on the conversations of American
citizens.
Debate
on the bill and the amendments began on the House floor yesterday
afternoon, and it became quickly apparent that leading Democrats
intended to side with Trump and against those within their own party
who favored imposing safeguards on the Trump administration’s
ability to engage in domestic surveillance. The most bizarre aspect
of this spectacle was that the Democrats who most aggressively
defended Trump’s version of the surveillance bill – the Democrats
most eager to preserve Trump’s spying powers as virtually limitless
– were the very same Democratic House members who have become media
stars this year by flamboyantly denouncing Trump as a treasonous,
lawless despot in front of every television camera they could find.
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