FISA reform jeopardized as tough critics oppose House proposal

A bill that would implement sweeping changes to Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act could be dead on arrival in the House as a handful of hard-line Republican members have come out against the legislation, threatening to tank the measure.

The House is set to vote on whether to advance the FISA reform proposal on Wednesday afternoon, a procedural vote that would allow lawmakers to debate its provisions before teeing it up for a vote later this week. However, some hard-right Republicans have said they will vote against the rule, killing the bill before it can even be considered.

Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) was the first to say he would vote against the rule, a move that has become weaponized by House conservatives over the last year to stall action on the floor whenever they disagree with GOP leadership. Advancing a rule is a procedural move that is typically voted on along party lines and rarely fails on the House floor.

“I do think that I’ll have colleagues who will join me to try to get as much as we can to protect civil liberties in the Constitution,” Gaetz said on Wednesday.

Things became more complicated for House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) after former President Donald Trump publicly opposed the FISA proposal, prompting some of his closest allies in Congress to reconsider their position.

“It helps,” Gaetz said. “I mean, President Trump’s right. He was the principal victim of FISA abuse, and so it’s appropriate that he would have an opinion on the subject.”

While other members, such as Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) and Chip Roy (R-TX) have not come out publicly to say they would vote against advancing the proposal, the pair said it was under consideration. Roy even went so far as to say he believes the bill may not even make it to the floor.

“I don’t know if it’ll go to the floor. I suspect it will,” Roy told conservative radio host Glenn Beck on Wednesday. “We’ll have a debate, and I suspect that the rule will fail, but we will see what happens.”

Thanks to Republicans’ slim majority, Johnson can only afford to lose two votes or the legislation will fail. Three Republicans — Gaetz, as well as Reps. Tim Burchett (R-TN) and Anna Paulina Luna (R-FL) —have already said they’d vote against the rule. Democrats are also expected to vote against it, putting Johnson in a math crunch.

However, Johnson told reporters the plan remains unchanged, expressing confidence the House will pass the FISA reauthorization. The surveillance law is scheduled to expire on April 19.

“We can’t allow a critical tool like this to expire,” Johnson said. “So we think the House will take the right steps.”

The fight over government surveillance reform has been years in the making after Trump signed into law a six-year reauthorization with mild reforms in 2018.

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In the lead-up to Section 702’s expiration, the Judiciary and Intelligence committees introduced competing proposals with a slate of new reforms that primarily involved tightening restrictions on the FBI’s use of the surveillance program.

Although the two committees largely agreed on most of the reforms, they have remained deeply divided on whether to require FBI agents to obtain warrants when using Section 702 to search data belonging to U.S. persons. The Intelligence Committee opposes warrant requirements, which has split the conference on whether to back the proposal.