House leadership’s attempt to kick off debate on legislation to reauthorize the nation’s warrantless surveillance powers is on thin ice after at least two Republicans announced Wednesday that they plan to oppose a procedural vote.
The announcements come as the House is racing to renew Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) before it expires on April 19. Reauthorization of the spy powers has emerged as a bitter battle on Capitol Hill, with factions quarreling over whether a warrant requirement should be added to the measure.
The rule vote is scheduled for 1:30 p.m. Wednesday.
Reps. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) and Tim Burchett (R-Tenn.) have said they plan to vote against the rule governing debate for the FISA bill, voicing concerns about the absence of a warrant requirement.
“We must preserve the Constitution and the Bill of Rights!” Burchett wrote on the social platform X, flagging a post that said he would vote against the rule.
Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-Fla.), meanwhile, also suggested she would vote against the rule, writing on X: “We are killing FISA. As written, it won’t make it off the floor.”
Luna’s post came after another from Trump on his own social media service calling for lawmakers to “kill FISA.”
Depending on attendance at Wednesday’s vote, opposition from the trio could be enough to tank the rule. Republicans can only afford to lose two members on any party-line vote. Rep. Donald Payne Jr. (D-N.J.) is expected to miss Wednesday’s vote after suffering a cardiac episode, but even with his absence, Republicans can still get by with only two defections.
Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) made the case for the FISA bill Wednesday morning, highlighting the reforms the legislation makes to section 702.
“We’re enacting sweeping changes, over 50 reforms — 56 to be exact — to the program that are in the base text that will stop the abuse of politicized FBI queries,” he told reporters.
“It’s critical we address these abuses because we don’t want to be able to use or to lose Section 702 of FISA; it’s a critically important piece of our intelligence and law enforcement in this country,” he later added.
“We can’t allow a critical tool like this to just expire and go out of use, so we think the House will take the right steps,” Johnson said.
Gaetz, Burchett and Luna have opposed the bill over various concerns, including a desire to force the government to secure a warrant to review information collected on Americans who are communicating with the foreign targets being surveilled.
But tanking the rule vote could ultimately endanger an amendment many right-wing conservatives have rallied around.
The rule includes a House floor vote on the warrant amendment — a vote that would not come to fruition if Republican leadership works with Democrats to bring the bill to the floor under suspension, which requires a two-thirds vote.
Rep. Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.), a major champion for the warrant requirement amendment, also said he was mulling voting against the rule, even though it would be the only pathway forward for his priority.
“We want the warrant requirement, and I think that’s critical,” he said.
But he complained privacy hawks like himself did not get consideration of other amendments they wanted.
“So those types of things really caused me to kick this around and mull it over.”
Votes on rules — which govern debate for legislation — are typically mundane processes in which members of the majority party vote “yes” and those in the minority party vote “no.” But conservatives this Congress have tanked rule votes to express their displeasure with leadership, or to prevent bills they oppose from coming to the floor.
Though Section 702 of FISA only allows for surveillance of foreigners who are located abroad, their contacts with those in the U.S. are swept up in the process.
Intelligence agencies have the ability to query the 702 database to review those communications. Leaders say it is key to be able to see both sides of a conversation to monitor potential threats.
Proponents of the base FISA reform bill, as well as the intelligence community, have said a warrant requirement would essentially gut the bill and block law enforcement from responding to threats in real time.
“It takes weeks to obtain traditional FISA warrants,” a senior administration official told The Hill in a statement.
“Court pre-approval of queries would cause dangerous delays and harm our ability to disrupt threats. Extreme proposals to require probable cause before running a U.S. person query would gut the basic value of the tool because queries are critical at early stages before the government knows enough about the threat to meet probable cause.”
Other lawmakers are also mulling voting against the rule. Rep. Andy Ogles (R-Tenn.) told The Hill he is on the fence.
“I had six amendments to fix FISA, they were all germane and yet all six died in the Rules Committee. We either have an open rule or we don’t,” he said. “It’s time for Speaker Johnson to lead and fix FISA because we know innocent Americans are being spied on by their own government.”
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) told reporters Wednesday morning she is considering voting against the rule.
“I don’t think it’s fair for the FBI to be able to spy on the American people,” she said.
As the opposition to the rule rolls in, some Republicans are predicting that the procedural vote will fail on the floor.
“We’re gonna have a debate. I don’t know if it’ll go to the floor. I suspect it will. We’ll have a debate and I suspect the rule will fail,” Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas), a critic of the FISA bill, said Wednesday on Glenn Beck’s radio show.