Yesterday, 256 members of the House of Representatives voted to continue allowing the NSA and FBI to conduct unconstitutional searches on their constituents for another six years.

The spying programs, authorized under Section 702 of the 2008 FISA Amendments Act, were set to expire later this month. Before voting to extend and strengthen Section 702, the House shot down an amendment that would have required law enforcement to obtain a warrant before searching through Americans’ NSA data by a 50 vote margin.

The amendment would have closed what Senator Ron Wyden has called “a backdoor to the Fourth Amendment,” by ending the loophole in Secton 702 that allows for warrantless domestic spying by various federal agencies. The amendment also would have passed had 55 Democrats, including Minority Leader Pelosi, not voted against it.

While it may have been overshadowed in the news cycle by President Trump’s disgusting, racist remarks, this vote represents a significant failure by these 55 Democratic representatives not just to protect their constituents, but to uphold their oath to “support and defend the Constitution of the United States.”

If these 55 Democrats truly believe that the Constitution must be altered for the sake of national security, they should stand up and make that argument on the floor of the House, not hide behind stopgap extensions of a loophole in an unconstitutional law passed almost a decade ago.

While it is appalling and deeply concerning that so many Democrats reaffirmed their complicity in the continued violation of the Constitution, yesterday’s vote actually represents a much deeper problem in D.C.

Since September 11, 2001, Congress has spent over $500 billion on intelligence, allocating the funds through an opaque process known as a “black budget” that prevents the public from engaging in an informed debate to evaluate the effectiveness of various programs.

As we built this massive information gathering machine, Republicans and Democrats alike stayed silent, with a handful of exceptions. Year after year, representatives authorized and reauthorized expanding budgets for intelligence agencies without so much as a basic understanding of their effectiveness.

Then, in 2013, former NSA contractor Edward Snowden leaked documents that revealed the true extent of both foreign and domestic spying, pulling back the curtain that masked the institutionalization of our post-9/11 paranoia.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel called President Obama to demand he stop wiretapping her phone, and the American people were shocked to learn that the NSA collects millions of our texts, emails, and other forms of data.

In response, Senators Ron Wyden, Mark Udall, Richard Blumenthal, and Rand Paul introduced a bipartisan bill called The Intelligence Oversight and Surveillance Reform Act.

The bill would have reformed FISA courts, eliminated bulk collection of phone records, emails, and other data authorized by Section 215 of the Patriot Act. It also would have closed the loophole in Section 702 of the FISA Amendment Act that allowed for warrantless domestic spying.

Yet, just as public revelations of domestic surveillance failed to spark meaningful reform after the existence of Section 702’s precursor, Stellar Wind, was first reported by the New York Times in 2005, Snowden’s revelations failed to generate the momentum necessary to reform the programs he revealed.

Sufficient political will could not be found on either side of the aisle to reign in surveillance, and The Intelligence Oversight and Surveillance Reform Act never became law.

Yesterday’s vote by 55 Democrats in the House to uphold the status quo reminds us that bringing Congress back to the people in 2018 doesn’t just mean unseating Republicans, it means unseating Democrats who don’t defend the Constitution, or their constituents.

As part of my platform, I have proposed fundamental changes in the way we quantify, assess, and respond to threats to our national security. This includes ending any unconstitutional programs, and mandating increased transparency between intelligence agencies and Congress, as well as the American people.

It’s time for our representatives in Congress to demand answers of a surveillance apparatus that has been allowed to operate outside the constitution, and outside of the normal budget process. It’s time for our representatives in Congress to listen to their constituents, and uphold their oaths of office.