The House is one step closer on Friday to reauthorizing a major U.S. spying program considered crucial to national security.
After the hard-line Republicans took a swing at House Speaker Mike Johnson on Wednesday, failing a routine procedural vote on the bill, the House approved the rule on Friday morning – initiating debate, consideration of amendments, and a final vote. All Republicans voted in favor of the rule.
The measure would renew Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which expires on April 19.
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Section 702 allows the U.S. government to collect electronic communications from non-U.S. citizens located outside the country without a warrant.
It has come under scrutiny among some lawmakers on both sides of the aisle and civil liberties groups because it sometimes results in the collection of data on Americans who are in contact with these surveilled individuals. An amendment was offered by Arizona Republican Andy Biggs to add a warrant requirement to see data on Americans, but it narrowly failed in a 212-212 vote.
Earlier this week, FISA’s path appeared uncertain as 19 hard-line Republicans voted against the party leadership in voting on the procedural rule after former President Donald Trump weighed in on the issue at the last minute. In a message posted on his social media platform, Trump wrote: “KILL FISA.”
House Republicans met Wednesday and Thursday night to regroup, and the House Rules Committee voted 8-4 Thursday night to advance the FISA bill, setting it up for a vote in plenary on Friday.
The committee approved a new version of the FISA bill that would reauthorize it for two years. The previous version would have done this for five years.
House Majority Leader Steve Scalise predicted Friday morning that the House will pass FISA — adding that it will be a victory for Johnson.
“We’re going to keep moving forward and the Senate is going to have to do its job,” Scalise said of FISA.
Some of the GOP members who voted in favor of voting on the rule Wednesday have indicated they will support the new plan.
“I’m very grateful for the responsiveness to some of our requests,” said Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Florida.
“We just bought President Trump a kickback. The previous version of this bill would have kicked the reauthorization beyond Trump’s presidency. Now President Trump gets a kickback to fix the system that victimized him more than anyone else in America “, Gaetz added.
Gaetz said he has received “absolute assurance” from President Johnson that next week the House will vote on a privacy bill from Rep. Warren Davidson, R-Ohio.
Texas Rep. Chip Roy said he is “optimistic” they are moving in the right direction on FISA and Virginia Rep. Bob Good said “going from five to two years is a good thing.”
The White House issued a statement Thursday that the administration “strongly supports” the reauthorization of FISA Section 702, warning that without it they would be deprived of “an accurate view of the threats Americans expect their government to identify,” such as terrorist threats, fentanyl supply chains, critical infrastructure threats and more.
MORE: The FISA program that helped oust Zawahiri is expiring. Authorities are sounding the alarm.
However, the White House expressed strong opposition to the proposed warrant change.
“The amendment would prohibit U.S. authorities from reviewing critical information that the Intelligence Community has already lawfully collected, with exceptions that are extremely narrow and impractical in practice,” the White House argued.
Despite opposition from the White House, the Congressional Progressive Caucus publicly supported him, along with many far-right Republicans.
The Progressive Caucus said the amendment would target abuse and “codify” protections for Americans’ Fourth Amendment rights. It was introduced by Arizona Republican Andy Biggs, Washington Democrat Pramila Jayapal, New York Democrat Jerry Nadler, Ohio Republican Jim Jordan and California Democrat Zoe Lofgren.
The change is one of six changes being considered before final approval of the FISA reauthorization.
ABC News’ Molly Nagle and Alexandra Hutzler contributed to this report.
House clears hurdle in reauthorizing FISA spying program after previous GOP setback originally appeared in abcnews.go.com
