Negotiations between the Republican leadership and members of the House Freedom Caucus over the nation’s warrantless spying program dragged on into the eleventh hour late Thursday. But the compromises crafted in those closed-door discussions, which were led by House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA), completely collapsed on the House floor.
Johnson’s dazzling play to reauthorize Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) by five years ended in an excruciating defeat, as the bill failed after 20 Republicans joined Democrats in striking it down. One major reason it lost was that the warrant language baked into that measure not only would have codified existing law, but also would have made it easier for Section 702–acquired data to be used against Americans in criminal proceedings.
The 200-220 vote was called at 1:22 early Friday morning.
Two hours earlier, Rep. Jim McGovern (D-MA) had lambasted Johnson and intelligence hawks on the other side of the aisle over their “backroom deal,” proclaiming on the House floor that “Republicans threw it together on the back of a napkin in a back room in the middle of the night.”
McGovern wasn’t the only Democrat to denounce the lack of transparency from GOP leadership.
“This is an appalling Kafkaesque process leading to an absurd Orwellian result,” said Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD). “They say you shouldn’t look to see how the sausage gets made. This isn’t even sausage. This is a scrapple. It’s scrapple with dog food mixed inside of it.”
The other shoe dropped during the vote on a rule to consider a clean 18-month extension of Section 702. That rule also failed at 2:07 a.m. in a 197-228 vote. Reps. Jared Golden (D-ME), Josh Gottheimer (D-NJ), Tom Suozzi (D-NY), and Marie Gluesenkamp Perez (D-WA) broke with their party to support it. Suozzi was the only Democrat in the bunch who, earlier, did not vote in favor of the five-year extension that included the Speaker’s amendment, which in addition to the warrant language, included more punitive criminal penalties for FISA abuse, and expanded congressional access to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC).
“Outrageously, a handful of Democrats went along with Johnson’s scheme,” Hajar Hammado, senior policy adviser at Demand Progress, told the Prospect. “It’s simply unacceptable for them to be a part of Speaker Johnson’s ploy to hand over dangerous spying authority to Donald Trump and Stephen Miller.”
When all was said and done, the House unanimously agreed to a temporary, ten-day extension of Section 702. That measure has passed the Senate and now awaits President Trump’s signature.
“A significant bicameral, bipartisan coalition sent a resounding message that government surveillance must be reformed to protect Americans’ rights,” Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) said in a statement. “I have long said that protecting security and liberty aren’t mutually exclusive, and now the House and Senate have an opportunity to make much-needed reforms to Section 702 to protect both.”
As privacy advocates in Congress rally in the aftermath of Johnson’s FISA fiasco, the purported urgency of preventing the program’s expiration seems like an increasingly tough sell.
Section 702 will remain intact for at least another year, even if it lapses, as the FISC approved its annual recertification in March. At the time, it also ordered U.S. intelligence agencies to stop using tools that facilitate the collection of Americans’ commercial data. The Justice Department is appealing that ruling, according to The New York Times.
While it remains unclear whether Johnson will get his house in order, it appears that any amendments brought forth without meaningful reforms may face a similar fate as the other measures GOP leadership tried, and failed, to pass.
“In the dead of night, Speaker Johnson tried to pull one over on Congress and the American people with a fake compromise that actually would make it easier for the government to weaponize FISA data against Americans, but our coalition rallied and helped defeat it,” Hammado said. “He gambled that he could overcome the strength of our bipartisan majority demanding real privacy protections and in the end, he lost on everything.”
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