So much for June 1. Congress thought they had eleven more days to deal with the Patriot Act reauthorization issue. Operationally, the Department of Justice advised members earlier today, they have about … forty-eight hours. Give or take, as National Journal’s Dustin Volz reports:

The Patriot Act provisions that have allowed the National Security Agency to vacuum up Americans’ phone records officially expire on June 1. But the Obama administration says the NSA must begin preparing to end its bulk-telephone-spying program as soon as Friday.

A Justice Department memo circulated among congressional offices Wednesday and obtained by National Journal said Congress needs to fully settle its differences over the expiring spy provisions this week in order to avoid an operational interruption to the NSA’s mass-surveillance program, which was exposed by former intelligence contractor Edward Snowden two years ago.

“After May 22, 2015, the National Security Agency will need to begin taking steps to wind down the bulk-telephone-metadata program in anticipation of a possible sunset in order to ensure that it does not engage in any unauthorized collection or use of the metadata,” the memo states.

This might puzzle a few people, who will rightly ask why it takes the NSA to wind down surveillance. Can’t they just stop when the deadline hits, or perhaps just a few hours before the deadline? The DoJ says that the court order allowing the continued Section 215 operation is to blame:

Further, the February 26, 2015 Court order renewing the authority for the NSA’s bulk telephone metadata program, which expires at 5:00 pm on June 1, 2015, directs the government to file any proposed renewal application no later than Friday, May 22, 2015, if the government seeks to renew the authorities granted in the order prior to their expiration under the order.

Needless to say, this throws a huge wrench in political strategies surrounding the reauthorization. Those strategies already looked confused, but they all relied on having all of the next week to maneuver, especially for those who want a blanket reauthorization. The NSA hawks wanted to vote down the House reform measure and force them to take the issue up again, but there’s not much chance of getting to a floor vote in the Senate at all on this new timeline.

The Hill says this makes it much more likely that the NSA will have to stand down on Section 215 operations, at least for a while. A significant portion of Congress would have no problem with that at all, but the White House and Mitch McConnell want full reauthorization. The Senate has a bill on its agenda that will extend 215 operations under more restrictions, but the path to 60 votes on it looks murky, or at least it did until now.

Given that this may be the path of least resistance — actually, the only realistic path to keeping those operations going for the time being — perhaps the pressure of the new deadline will push waverers into throwing in with the House bill for continuity’s sake. Whether or not this late-hour notification of the shorter deadline was intended for that purpose is difficult to say. The White House wanted what McConnell thought he could deliver, but after watching the conflicting moves on Capitol Hill, perhaps half a loaf started looking a lot more appetizing than it did before.