Speaker Johnson’s Woes Grow After GOP Holdouts Block FISA Bill

WASHINGTON—House Speaker Mike Johnson’s tenuous grip on the gavel was dealt another blow Wednesday, after a handful of holdout Republicans egged on by former President Donald Trump derailed passage of a critical but controversial national-security spying law.

The procedural vote related to renewing the law, known as Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, failed with 193 in favor and 228 opposed. The failed vote plunges the fate of the surveillance power into uncertainty a week before it is due to expire.

Democratic and Republican administrations have said the Section 702 program is vital to protecting Americans from terrorists, hackers and other foreign threats. But the law has animated critics on the left and right for years for how it allows the collection of some American communications without a warrant, and lawmakers have been fighting for months over the program.

Johnson (R., La.) has urged passage of the legislation, saying that changes to the law would prevent certain abuses. But the morning of the vote, Trump inveighed against the proposal.

“KILL FISA, IT WAS ILLEGALLY USED AGAINST ME, AND MANY OTHERS. THEY SPIED ON MY CAMPAIGN!!!” Trump said on Truth Social.

The statement was seen as helping to tip sentiment against the proposal.

“When Trump puts out a statement like that, people get scared,” said Rep. Max Miller (R., Ohio) of House Republicans. “They’ll vote no, and then they can have an easy weekend” in their home districts “as opposed to getting grilled,” he said.

FISA grants spy agencies broad authority to collect communications from U.S. technology firms to hunt for national-security threats living overseas. There is no evidence that the specific law at issue, Section 702, has been used to spy on Trump or any of his campaigns.

A different section of the law that isn’t due to lapse was used to obtain wiretaps on Trump’s 2016 campaign staffer Carter Page, a move that a Justice Department inspector general later sharply criticized after a litany of errors regarding the surveillance application were uncovered.

The setback for GOP leadership comes as Johnson, who took over as speaker following the ouster of Kevin McCarthy (R., Calif.) last year, now faces an effort from within his own party to remove him as well.

Ahead of the vote, Johnson met with top critic Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R., Ga.), who filed a motion to remove Johnson last month but has yet to take the next step of forcing a vote. Greene and other dissidents have soured on Johnson over federal spending and efforts to provide more funding to Ukraine. With a narrow 218-213 majority, Johnson can only afford to lose a handful of votes on any legislation assuming no Democratic backing.

“He does not have my support, and I’m watching what happens with FISA and Ukraine,” said Greene following the meeting. Greene has warned Johnson against reauthorizing FISA without including a requirement that a warrant be obtained before searching the data of Americans swept up by FISA surveillance.

Greene said she reiterated to Johnson her public criticism in a “honest, direct and passionate” manner. She said Johnson asked her if she would be interested in joining a kitchen cabinet group of advisers, and she said she would need to see more details.

In a meeting with House Republicans Wednesday morning, Johnson argued for renewing and reforming FISA, calling the spying program vital to understanding the threats against the U.S. and to counter adversaries. Johnson told members that he had spoken with Trump on Tuesday night, according to a lawmaker in the room. Johnson didn’t specify the topic, but the lawmaker took Johnson’s comments as designed to show that the speaker wasn’t on the outs with Trump.

Absent congressional action, the law will expire in April. But Johnson may have an out, as some experts say the law could potentially continue for another year due to how and when the secretive court that oversees the program grants annual approval for the categories of intelligence collection it allows. Those annual certifications were recently granted by the FISA Court, according to Biden administration officials.

“It is wholly not a substitute for keeping this statute on the books,” a senior administration official said Friday during a press briefing. Allowing the law to expire would “introduce irresponsible uncertainty” and would likely invite legal challenges, the official said.

With the law set to expire on April 19, Johnson had already been facing an uncertain path forward even before Trump’s missive. Johnson has repeatedly sought to strike a compromise between two factions within his own party who are deeply at odds over the spying law—as are Democrats—only to postpone votes to avoid a potentially brutal showdown on the House floor.

The rule that failed Wednesday would have allowed votes on six amendments, including a bipartisan one that would prohibit warrantless searches of Americans’ communications in the FISA 702 database, “with exceptions for imminent threats to life or bodily harm, consent searches, or known cybersecurity threat signatures.”

Section 702 of FISA allows the U.S. to track the electronic communications of terrorists, spies and hackers overseas that route through U.S. technology firms like AT&T and Alphabet. Though intended to collect conversations from suspected national security threats located overseas, the program ensnares an unknown volume of private communications that belong to Americans, such as when someone is communicating—wittingly or not—with a surveilled suspect.

The Biden administration has for over a year been aggressively lobbying lawmakers in both parties to renew the surveillance power. National security officials say it is their most important tool used to disrupt terrorist plots, fend off nation-state cyberattacks and glean insights into the ambitions of China, Russia and other adversaries.

Reviews of the program over the years have found repeated faults in how American data has been accessed by analysts at the Federal Bureau of Investigation, prompting a series of internal procedural changes designed to improve compliance. The House bill codifies those changes and adopts some other privacy measures, but critics say that absent a warrant requirement it does too little to protect Americans from intrusive surveillance.

The 702 program contributes to 59% of all intelligence delivered to President Biden in his daily brief, officials have said. For example, FBI officials disclosed to reporters earlier this year that Section 702 was instrumental to identifying Chinese hackers’ entry into U.S. critical infrastructure, which officials warned could lead to crippling cyberattacks that threaten American lives in the event of a conflict with Beijing over Taiwan.

Siobhan Hughes contributed to this article.

Write to Dustin Volz at [email protected] and Lindsay Wise at [email protected]