Johnson faces tough road when bills that split GOP return to House

Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) notched a series of wins last week by muscling several key bills through the House, but the road ahead is littered with challenges as he must unify a fractured GOP when those priorities come back up in the weeks ahead.

Johnson defied the skeptics by rallying hard-line conservatives and GOP moderates behind an extension of the government’s foreign spying powers, an immigration enforcement package and legislation to reauthorize funding for agricultural and food programs.

But the victories are only temporary. Each of those issues is expected to return to the House before the July 4 break, forcing Johnson and his leadership team to confront the same internal divisions that almost killed the bills the first time around.

The gauntlet will arrive as GOP leaders in Congress and the White House are already grappling with rising consumer costs and the political fallout of an unpopular Iran war, which have tanked President Trump’s approval ratings heading into the summer campaign for November’s midterms. 

With the House up for grabs, GOP leaders are racing to demonstrate a united front behind Trump’s agenda. But the looming legislative calendar — featuring contentious topics that have splintered a GOP conference with little margin for defections — will challenge that effort. Indeed, last week’s legislative wins, rather than mending fences, seem to have exacerbated the internal tensions — particularly between leadership and House Freedom Caucus conservatives — in ways that could make the next round of votes at least as tough as the first.

Most controversial and pressing on Johnson’s agenda is another extension of Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), which allows the government to spy on foreigners abroad without a judicial warrant. Congress punted the expiration deadline for 45 days, but members of the far-right House Freedom Caucus and other privacy-minded conservatives are still clamoring to adopt a warrant requirement, to ensure that Americans’ communications are protected.

They also want a provision banning the creation of........

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