Trump praised Kushner at a White House summit on prison reform last week, where he endorsed the House’s First Step Act. While some prominent advocates of criminal-justice reform support the bill, including the National Urban League and Families Against Mandatory Minimums, others worry that Trump and congressional Republicans will claim a victory on the issue and stop there.

“We don’t want Congress to clap their hands and say they’ve fixed criminal-justice reform yet not have actually done anything to actually address the problem of mass incarceration,” said Inimai Chettiar, the director of the justice program at New York University’s Brennan Center for Justice.

In a press release, the Brennan Center urged the House to reject what it called the “Trump prison bill.” But Chettiar said she would support the legislation on the merits if it were paired with a sentencing-reform bill like the one Republicans and Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee advanced earlier this year. That proposal reduces mandatory minimums for many nonviolent drug crimes and gives judges more discretion in sentencing. “No one’s opposing anything in the First Step Act itself,” Chettiar told me. “It’s more that it’s not part of this broader package.”

In fact, Senate Democrats have quibbled with some parts of the bill, raising concerns that a new risk-assessment system for determining “good time” credits could exacerbate racial disparities in access to prison education and training programs. They’ve also said that the number of people who could be released early under new rules—as many as 4,000, proponents say—is likely overstated.

Still, the dispute among Democrats is largely about strategy rather than substance, leading Jeffries to warn his colleagues that they risk losing focus on the people who would most stand to benefit from even limited congressional action. “There are thousands of people who are incarcerated right now who will be helped immediately if the First Step Act becomes law,” Jeffries said. “They don’t care about politics. They need the help, and they need the help now.”

Despite Tuesday’s overwhelming vote in the House, the bill’s outlook in the Senate is murky at best. Senator Charles Grassley of Iowa, the GOP chairman of the Judiciary Committee, is siding with the Democrats demanding that prison reform only move forward with their legislation on sentencing. And even the narrower effort could face opposition on the right from the same Sessions allies, like Senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas, who led the charge against criminal-justice reform in the final years of the Obama administration.

The mounting opposition in the Senate, however, had little effect on lawmakers in the House. Nearly all Republicans heeded Trump’s call to support the First Step Act, and more than two-thirds of House Democrats sided with Jeffries in ignoring the pleas from their colleagues in the Senate to oppose it. Before the vote, the New York congressman suggested that Durbin, Booker, and Harris—all stalwart allies of his in the progressive movement—stick to their side of the Capitol. “If you don’t like the bill, kill it in your chamber,” Jeffries said. “Or,” he added, “improve it.”

We want to hear what you think about this article. Submit a letter to the editor or write to letters@theatlantic.com.