Conservative privacy hawks delivered a blunt verdict to House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) after weeks of wrangling over an extension of Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act: no deal.
The back-to-back losses suffered by Johnson on the floor early Friday morning were months in the making, as GOP divisions against an extension of a government spy tool without reforms boiled over into a full-blown revolt that forced leadership to pass a 10-day extension to buy more negotiating time.
Despite Johnson repeatedly expressing to reporters this week that a deal was “close” and that only minor reforms needed to be hashed out to finalize an agreement with GOP hardliners, the speaker still huddled in negotiations with holdouts and members of leadership late Wednesday evening as they tried to garner support for a framework agreement that would extend the surveillance authority for five years with warrant langauge and harsher penalties for abuses of the program.
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That framework ultimately failed on the House floor, 200–220, at 1:22 a.m. Then, a second vote on a “clean” 18-month extension failed 197-228 at 2:07 a.m. On the framework amendment, there were 12 Republican noes. On the 18-month “clean” extension, there were 20. Johnson can only lose two GOP votes on the floor, assuming all Democrats are present, given his slim control of the House.
While the failure of the long-term reauthorization was a blow to Johnson, it was also a blow to the White House, as President Donald Trump himself had repeatedly called on Republicans to pass the clean 18-month extension.
“I am working very hard with our Great Speaker, Mike Johnson, along with Chairman Jim Jordan and Chairman Rick Crawford, to get a clean extension of FISA 702 through the House of Representatives this week,” Trump said in a lengthy Truth Social post on April 15. “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!”
The president invited the GOP FISA holdouts to the White House earlier this week to whip their vote, and Trump’s Joint Chiefs Chair Gen. Dan Caine underlined the importance of the spy authority to lawmakers in a letter Monday. The White House Office of Legislative Affairs also sent documents supporting the spy program to House Republicans, including a CIA fact sheet showcasing how the tool has increased security.
Still, when asked if Trump supported the five-year framework put onto the floor by Johnson, a White House official told the Washington Examiner that while the White House was aware of the length of the extension, the administration “deferred to the House on what term was optimal for advancement.”
Heading into Thursday night’s meeting with GOP leadership, several Republicans told reporters that they weren’t sure if there was a deal. House Freedom Caucus Chairman Andy Harris (R-MD) said, “I don’t know, we’re gonna have another meeting though.”
On his way into Johnson’s office, all Main Street Caucus Chairman Mike Flood (R-NE) told the Washington Examiner he was “asked to come back,” but that he didn’t know if there was a deal on the table.
The apparent tight-lipped nature of the talks meant that details of the contours of the deal were sparse on Thursday evening, even as the House stood in recess hours past a scheduled procedural rule vote on an extension of the FISA program. The vote delay comes after Johnson had already twice postponed a vote on extending FISA amid the GOP divisions, including back in March, when Johnson had to scrap plans to hold a vote on the FISA extension and reschedule it for a mid-April vote.
But while leaving the meeting, there seemed to be differing opinions from members of whether there was a deal despite the weekslong talks.
Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH), who has in the past been opposed to the spy program but has stated he feels the 2024 reforms have worked as intended, told reporters he thought the meeting went “very good” and was “productive.”
But signs that there was discontent with the FISA framework quickly showed. Rep. Clay Higgins (R-LA) declined to talk to reporters about the meeting, saying he was “restraining” himself from giving “honest and candid answers.”
Harris told reporters after exiting the speaker’s office that there was “no agreement that everyone has agreed to.”
Higgins did not cast a vote on the five-year extension, but did end up voting yes on the 18-month extension. Harris, however, voted no on both.
Republican opposition to the five-year extension proposal of the program, which allows warrantless wiretapping of noncitizens overseas, came both from hardliners who believed the reforms in the framework did not go far enough, as well as Intel members who wanted a clean reauthorization.
Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) called it a “poor strategy” of GOP leadership to put the proposal on the floor to “call the bluff of those of us who aren’t gonna allow them to do a clean reauthorization.”
“The amendment they offered was just a placebo,” Massie said during a phone interview Friday with the Washington Examiner. “It wasn’t real. It’s kind of an insult to everybody’s intelligence to even put that on the floor.”
Rep. Keith Self (R-TX) said in a statement that “The two FISA reauthorization bills failed because they would have allowed the federal government to continue unconstitutionally spying on American citizens.”
“As Congress moves toward a long-term reauthorization, we need real reforms to Section 702 that actually protect the Fourth Amendment while also ensuring the U.S. can gather critical intelligence on terrorists and foreign adversaries,” Seif continued. “We can defend the Constitution and keep America safe. These aren’t mutually exclusive.”
Privacy hawks have been demanding reforms that build on changes introduced in 2024 to the program and add-ons in exchange for their support on any extension of Section 702. Those included adding a warrant requirement, restrictions on search queries, and enhanced penalties for privacy violations.
But the warrant requirement was quickly panned on both sides of the aisle. Rep. Jim McGovern (D-MA) said during debate on the House floor that the “so-called warrant requirement, and this draft that you just gave us, has nothing to do with section 702.”
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“It is already the law that if the FBI has probable cause, they can go to court and seek a warrant,” McGovern explained. “What we are trying to solve is a different problem. Section 702 takes in a massive amount of U.S. person information, and nothing in this bill stops the government from searching it, or requires them to go to a judge.”
Massie echoed McGovern’s dissatisfaction with the warrant requirement, saying it was “probably worse than nothing.”
There was also a GOP push during negotiations for an inclusion to ban a central bank digital currency, but it did not appear in the final framework.
Rep. Chip Roy (R-TX) said while he voted for the rule, the five-year framework put onto the floor by House leadership was “sorely lacking.”
“It was five years, it didn’t get to the level of reforms we needed,” Roy told the Washington Examiner. “Some of us wanted CBDC on it. And, I mean, I voted for the rule because I said I was going to try to help in all this, but it was sorely lacking. We told them this yesterday, today, said, ‘Guys just do a 30 or 60-day extension. Let’s do one. Get out here, right, and let’s go keep negotiating.’”
The 10-day extension will give Johnson and the White House some breathing room to find a solution to extending Section 702 of FISA. But Johnson will have a full plate when the House returns on Monday, with a second reconciliation bill, and funding of the Department of Homeland Security on the horizon.
Rep. Tim Burchett (R-TN), who was one of the no votes on the rule, told the Washington Examiner that the two-week extension was the “best we could do.”
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“I just hope we don’t wait till the last minute,” Burchett said. “We’re up here, but that’s just what we always do, we always wait until the last dadgum minute.”
The Washington Examiner has reached out to Johnson’s office for more information.