Earlier this week, the House voted overwhelmingly in favor of the USA Freedom Act, which takes some small steps towards limiting the NSA‘s surveillance efforts. And, in fact, as Rep. Justin Amash has pointed out, many of the no votes actually came from people who felt USA Freedom doesn‘t go nearly far enough (which is true). As we mentioned at the time, the fight now moves to the Senate, and the opening gambit is that Senator Mitch McConnell has pushed out a „short term“ reauthorization, that would just renew Section 215 through July 31st, supposedly to give the Senate more time to „debate“ this issue. This is as opposed to his original bill that renewed it through 2020.

But there‘s a fight being set up here. A whole bunch of Senators have said that they won‘t, under any circumstances vote for any renewal bill, short or long: