House GOP punts vote on FISA spy powers amid last-minute scramble

House GOP leaders on Wednesday punted a key procedural vote on reauthorizing the U.S.’s foreign spy powers as they scramble to woo privacy-focused Republicans angling for a last-minute amendment.

Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) had aimed to get enough Republican support to push through on Wednesday afternoon a procedural rule vote to tee up debate on a “clean” reauthorization of Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), aiming to pass the underlying bill late Wednesday night.

The provision expires on April 20.

But he canceled that scheduled procedural vote as holdouts pushed for a late-stage amendment on warrant requirements — or other unrelated issues — as a condition of allowing the bill to move forward, a leadership source confirmed to The Hill.

“We would have to amend it on the floor or in committee,” Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas) said.

A notice from the Democratic Whip’s office said that legislative action on FISA could still happen on Wednesday. 

Section 702 allows the government to spy on foreigners located abroad, but it can sweep up the communications of Americans who speak with any targets being surveilled. That’s prompted critics to argue any information collected on Americans should only be accessed with a warrant.

Rule votes are typically party-line tests of the majority’s control of the House — and Johnson can afford to lose no more than two Republicans on the vote, assuming all members are present and voting. Democrats have said they will not help Republicans on the rule.

Far more than two members are signaling they will not vote for the rule without an agreed-upon amendment vote — despite President Trump explicitly pushing for an 18-month reauthorization of the FISA provision and urging Republican unity on the “test vote.”

President Trump on Wednesday indicated the bill could go back before the Rules Committee, once again calling on GOP members to unify in backing a clean extension of FISA 702 without amendments.

“I am asking Republicans to UNIFY, and vote together on the test vote to bring a clean Bill to the floor. We need to stick together when this Bill comes before the House Rules Committee today to keep it CLEAN!” he wrote on his social media platform.

If Johnson can’t get enough GOP support on the rule, he does not have a good fallback option. While FISA does have support from some Democrats, a number of them are lobbying against a clean reauthorization. It takes support from two-thirds of the House — requiring substantial support from Democrats — to fast-track the bill to the floor without a rule.

Three Rules Committee members who have championed reforms to Section 702 were noticeably absent from a Tuesday night meeting where the panel voted to bring a clean reauthorization to the floor: Republican Reps. Roy, Ralph Norman (S.C.) and Morgan Grittith (Va.).

Each in the group said while they wouldn’t stand in the way of the rule coming to the floor — which they could have done if they voted as a bloc in committee — they planned to oppose the rule in the hopes of amending the bill.

“One, the administration wants to keep the momentum going. I get that. If you notice all three of us who are going to vote against it in rules let it go to the floor, and if it has the changes, like the warrants, then we’re fine with that,” Norman said Wednesday morning.

“We all were working on trying to figure out what the next steps were, and so some of us had to be doing other things,” Roy said. “It was all done in good faith as a part of the overall effort and team to move the ball forward.”

“We’re happy to continue to have the dialogue to move things forward, but we need to see some continued reforms that build upon 2024 in order to protect citizens and to protect people from government collecting their data and targeting them with it,” Roy said.

“We had all kinds of things going on,” including “a few negotiations,” Griffith said when asked why he missed the vote.

Beyond a warrant requirement, other members have pushed for a variety of priorities being included in the bill. Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-Fla.) said she wants to see a bill to require proof of citizenship to vote, the SAVE America Act, to be included. And Rep. Warren Davidson (R-Ohio) has pushed to add an amendment that would block the government from buying data from private brokers who collect information such as cell phone location tracking.

CIA Director John Ratcliffe was in Wednesday morning’s conference meeting, making one last pitch to GOP members ahead of the scheduled vote.

It didn’t move the needle for key members.

“He’s a good friend and good man, but respectfully keep getting the same updates,” Roy said, adding the pitch hasn’t evolved beyond “we got to have this stuff to go after bad guys.”

“The pitch is to keep 702 and that we should all be frightened if we don’t keep 702,” said Rep. Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.). “Nobody’s asking that you abolish 702. We’re perfectly content if you’re looking at foreign persons without a warrant. The question is, what are you doing about U.S. citizens?”

Rep. Darren LaHood (R-Ill.), a member of the House Intelligence Committee, said many Section 702 critics have failed to articulate how a series of more than 50 reforms made to the program in 2024 haven’t addressed their concerns.

That included shrinking who could query the 702 database and requiring sign-off from a superior before reviewing any information collected on Americans. Congress also now has a greater oversight role in reviewing when information on Americans is accessed.

The reforms, coupled with a tech fix that ended the practice of immediately opting officers into searching the database, have seen searches of Americans drop 2.9 million in 2022 to just over 9,000 in the year after the last renewal of Section 702. 

“Nobody has been able to articulate why the 56 reforms have not worked, though, and no one has been able to say that in the last two years to cite an instance where a warrant requirement should have been brought forth,” LaHood said.

“The president wants a clean reauthorization, and if they want to go against the president and his national security team, I think that needs to be justified, and it hasn’t been appropriately justified,” he said.

“They think the president and Stephen Miller and the entire national security team have sold out,” he said. “They think Pete Hegseth is a sellout. They think Tulsi Gabbard is a sellout. They think General [Dan] Caine, John Ratcliffe,” he added, referring to the defense secretary and the director of national intelligence.

“That’s essentially what they’re saying, is they’re sellouts, which is ridiculous.”

 House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) supports a clean reauthorization — in a shift from his advocacy for more reforms in the past — and argued that reforms that were part of the last reauthorization were effective. But Jordan did not shut the door on a last-minute amendment.

“I’m open to whatever gets it done,” Jordan said.

Updated at 11:34 a.m.

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