House finally passes surveillance bill after three stumbles

The House on Friday passed legislation reauthorizing a controversial government surveillance power — capping off a months-long debate marked by acrimonious GOP infighting.

The 273-147 bipartisan vote is a win for embattled Speaker Mike Johnson, who has struggled publicly to bridge the deep divides within his conference. But it also puts him at odds with some of his biggest conservative critics, 88 of whom opposed the bill, as he faces the threat of an ouster vote.

The bill still needs to get through the Senate and to President Joe Biden’s desk by the April 19 deadline for reauthorizing the spy power.

Friday’s vote comes just two days after 19 Republicans prevented Johnson from even bringing a bill to the floor to reauthorize Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which allows the intelligence community to collect the communications of foreign targets without a warrant.

Another dramatic turn came just ahead of the bill’s final passage, with a proposal to require warrants when searching foreign data collected by the surveillance program for information related to Americans failed on 212-212 tie.

The Biden administration and members of the Intelligence Committee waged an intense lobbying effort ahead of the vote; Attorney General Merrick Garland was calling members on Friday to urge their support for the bill and opposition to the warrant requirement, according to a person familiar with the conversations who was granted anonymity to speak candidly.

In a bid to get his holdouts on board, Johnson shortened the reauthorization period for the program from five years to two years — which caused heartburn in some corners of the Biden administration and would put the next wiretapping fight in a potential second Trump term, if the GOP’s standard-bearer wins in November.

Johnson will meet with Trump at Mar-A-Lago on Friday, with some GOP lawmakers expecting that he will formally bless the changes made to the bill. And GOP supporters of the bill invoked Trump as they pitched the legislation.

"We do include reforms of the FISA court process that would have overlapped with the Russian dossier and the Carter Page issue and the Trump campaign," Intelligence Chair Mike Turner (R-Ohio) told reporters.

The legislation, negotiated by leadership, makes changes to the Section 702 power as well as the broader surveillance law it is housed under in a bid to increase transparency and oversight, including requiring a higher level of approval for "sensitive" searches, reducing the number of FBI personnel with the ability to search the foreign data and increasing penalties for misleading the surveillance court.

But several conservatives opposed it in the end because of the warrant requirement’s failure on a dramatic 212-212 tie, as well as other amendments that broadened the program’s use.

"To me that was the whole ball of wax ... that warrant requirement," Judiciary Chair Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) said about why he opposed the surveillance bill.

Privacy advocates in both parties had long viewed the House’s debate as their best chance to get a warrant requirement added into the foreign wiretapping authority. Johnson sparked pierce backlash among some on his right after he came out against the warrant requirement — a position first reported by POLITICO.

Johnson, a former member of the Judiciary Committee, has defended his switch, saying he’s had access to more intelligence information since becoming speaker late last year.

But for his one-time allies on privacy matters felt like he stacked the deck against them.

“The Speaker of the House put his finger on the scale,” said Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas).

Trump also helped fuel the GOP backlash ahead of Wednesday’s failed vote to start debate by posting on social media that Republicans should “kill” the broader surveillance law.

Supporters of the surveillance law were quick to note that the former president conflated parts of the law in his post. In addition, Trump has flip-flopped in the past on surveillance fights, including backing a permanent reauthorization of Section 702 in 2018.

The surveillance fight has dogged Johnson for months and driven increasingly public divisions between two factions of his conference. He sparked frustration from all corners when he tried to bring competing bills from the Judiciary and Intelligence Committees to the floor in December — only to punt after his right flank threatened to upend the plan.

Then, in February he pulled legislation similar to what ultimately passed the House on Friday after members of the Intelligence Committee threatened to scuttle the bill because it would have teed up a vote on a proposal to prevent data brokers from selling consumer information to law enforcement. GOP leaders stripped language allowing that vote from the bill this month; instead they’re expected to give it a vote next week on the floor.

And the spy fight is just the first of two big policy tests Johnson is navigating this month — all with Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene’s (R-Ga.) threat to his job hanging over his head. Republicans expected that he will try to pass long-stalled Ukraine aid next week, though Johnson hasn’t yet said what that plan will look like.

“How he handles the [surveillance bill] process and how handles funding Ukraine is going to tell our entire conference how to handle the” possibility of an ouster vote, Greene said.