Before President Donald Trump threw his latest hand grenade into congressional negotiations over a key domestic spying law, two factions of Senate Democrats seemed to believe they were on the verge of a breakthrough.
Privacy advocates thought they had their best chance in years of passing reforms, including a warrant requirement for searching American communications collected abroad.
Centrists allied with U.S. intelligence agencies, meanwhile, thought they were close to renewing Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act with only minor tweaks.
Then Trump, who had once already thrown the renewal process into chaos, announced on Wednesday that he wouldn’t sign it unless Congress passed an unrelated voter suppression bill.
Claiming that Democrats were poised to walk away from a spy law compromise, Trump said that “to add a slight bit of intrigue but, for the Good of the Nation, and the People of our Country, I will not approve FISA without THE SAVE AMERICA ACT going along with it.”
