The News
Speaker Mike Johnson looks on track to finally put a bill reauthorizing one of the government’s key spy tools on the House floor, after 19 members of his own party blocked it from moving ahead earlier this week.
The House Rules Committee on Thursday night advanced revised legislation renewing Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which is set to expire next week. The bill was tweaked to only extend the government’s intelligence gathering powers for two years, instead of the original five — a move intended to win over conservative skeptics who wanted to see deeper changes to the law, by ensuring that they’ll get another crack at reforming it under Donald Trump if he returns to the White House.
The House is now set to vote on a rule allowing debate over the bill Friday morning. If it passes, that will set the stage for a final vote on the underlying legislation.
Section 702 allows for the government to monitor foreigners located outside the United States, but has come under attack from a left-right coalition of civil libertarians and conservative populists because its tools sometimes sweep up Americans’ communications. Trump himself is an aggressive critic of the FISA, which played a role in the FBI’s investigation into the connections between Russia and his 2016 presidential campaign. Earlier this week, he posted to Truth Social that Republicans should “KILL FISA.”
This will be the fourth time Johnson attempts to bring FISA reauthorization to the floor. So far, the shorter sunset period seems to be winning over at least some opponents. Three of the 19 GOP holdouts told Semafor they’d now vote to move the reauthorization bill to the floor. Rep. Tim Burchett, R-Tenn., was a “maybe” as of early Thursday afternoon.
Not everyone is ready to reverse course. Some Democrats and Republicans are still demanding an amendment that would impose a new warrant requirement on Section 702 to “protect the civil liberties of Americans.” Members of the hard-right House Freedom Caucus were specifically pushing Arizona Rep. Andy Biggs’ warrant amendment and a bill to prohibit the sale of data from Ohio Rep. Warren Davidson.
“No,” Ralph Norman, R-S.C., told Semafor when asked if the two-year sunset was enough for him to vote on the rule. “The warrants and the Davidson amendment on the data collection has to be in the bill.”
Virginia Rep. Bob Good, who chairs the Freedom Caucus, said Thursday afternoon that there were still “ongoing conversations with the speaker” about the bill.
Kadia’s view
There’s likely another big reason why Republican holdouts are having a change of heart. If the House fails to pass its own bill, it might end up getting jammed with a clean FISA reauthorization passed by the Senate — which would negate all the work both parties have put into reforming the intelligence bill.
A House member also told Semafor the speaker’s decision to allow at least one amendment vote curried favor with many of the holdouts. Based on my conversations, it wouldn’t be surprising to me if most of the Freedom Caucus ultimately let this bill get to the floor.