Johnson faces political gauntlet as legislative fights collide

Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) is barreling toward a brutal end-of-the-month crunch, juggling a slate of high-stakes legislative fights with intensifying calls for one of his members to step down and growing unease within the GOP as the Iran conflict nears the 60-day mark.

The Speaker and his leadership team are scrambling in search of deals to reauthorize the government’s spy powers and reopen the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), while staring down a looming deadline on President Trump’s war powers in Iran. They’re also facing increasing pressure from within their own ranks to expel Rep. Cory Mills (R-Fla.), who’s facing a series of allegations related to campaign finance and sexual misconduct. 

Each of those issues has divided the GOP and left Johnson struggling to thread a political needle for the sake of advancing the party’s agenda heading into November’s elections. And they’re all coming to a head before May 1.

Most pressing on Johnson’s agenda is securing buy-in from hard-line conservatives on the renewal of Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), which allows the government to spy on foreigners abroad without a warrant. The House passed a short-term extension of the section last week, pushing the expiration from April 20 to April 30, after a deal between GOP leadership and members of the House Freedom Caucus crumbled in the middle of the night. But the two sides don’t appear any closer to a deal as the new deadline quickly approaches. 

“FISA stands for FOREIGN Intelligence Surveillance Act for a reason – it is NOT supposed to be used DOMESTICALLY to spy on our own citizens. FIX FISA,” Rep. Keith Self (R-Texas), a member of the House Freedom Caucus, wrote on the social platform X on Monday.

Johnson has downplayed the clash, saying the pushback revolves merely around “nuances with the language” while vowing to iron out those differences before the 30th.

“We’ll get it done,” he said last week. “The extension allows us the time to do that.” 

Yet the GOP critics are showing no signs of backing down. While President Trump has been pushing for a clean, 18-month extension of Section 702, privacy-minded conservatives have been pushing for a........

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