With help from some Democrats, Speaker Mike Johnson on Wednesday pushed through an extension of a controversial spy program — paired with some reforms — after weeks of fierce back-and-forth debate within the Republican conference over the surveillance authority.
In the end, 42 Democrats joined most Republicans to pass the extension over opposition from 22 Republicans.
“It’s not perfect, and we were trying to get improvements that were necessary,” said Rep. Brad Schneider, one of the Democrats who voted for the extension. “But I have deep understanding of what this does in keeping Americans safe, and it’s important that it doesn’t expire.”
The battle over extending the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA, had become a mirror of Republicans’ slim margins and internal fractures. That surveillance law is the key authority that allows the U.S. to spy on its adversaries’ communications, but privacy hawks in both parties and chambers have insisted that more safeguards are needed to ensure Americans’ data does not get swept up in warrantless searches.
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The tension between the two groups — lawmakers who want to get the expiring law extended as soon as possible to prevent a national security blindspot and those who want to use the opportunity to reinforce protections against spying on Americans — led to weeks of late nights and failed votes as leadership aimed to strike some kind of deal, all with the threat of Thursday’s looming deadline of the FISA authority expiring.
Johnson’s five-vote margin made appeasing everyone, or nearly everyone, paramount.
“It’s like herding cats,” said Rep. Ralph Norman, a Republican who had been pushing for more reforms. “It would be difficult in any situation, particularly if the roles were reversed and Democrats had a one- or two-seat lead. It’s just, you got to get unanimity.”
FISA itself has been controversial at past junctures when it’s come up for reauthorization. The last extension, in 2024, passed along razor-thin lines with a bipartisan coalition against it — despite a long list of added reforms.
“One of the most complicated things around here is FISA,” said Rep. Darin LaHood, a member of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. “With a tight governing majority, it’s a complicated issue. It’s a misunderstood issue.”
Most Democrats, citing distrust of the Trump administration’s hold on America’s intelligence apparatus, were never inclined to support the extension without reforms. Rep. Jamie Raskin, the top Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, said before the vote that the changes in the extension were not strong enough because they require self-reporting that, in his view, the Trump administration is not likely to do.
“This bill is a three-year permission slip and blessing for the Trump administration and the next administration to keep abusing the sweeping FISA Section 702 surveillance authority to spy on American citizens’ private communications and to violate the privacy rights of the people,” Raskin said on the House floor. “We depend now on this system, on [FBI Director] Kash Patel, to be the check and balance against Kash Patel.”
To get the bill on the floor to begin with, Republican leaders had to corral holdouts during a procedural vote earlier in the day.
But 22 Republicans ultimately did not roll over to support the extension. Instead, a group of Democrats, including several members of the Intelligence Committee, broke with their party to extend the authority.
Schneider said that while he supported the extension because he trusted veteran Intelligence Committee Democrats who also backed it, he wants to continue to work on safeguards.
“Measurable but modest,” Schneider said of the reforms in this bill. “Not anything near what we would have liked, but there were some reforms. And you know, you look at Jim Himes, the ranking member on the Intelligence Committee, was a yes. Mike Quigley, Intelligence Committee, was a yes. People who are seeing the output from FISA every day, and the people in the administration who see the output every day and know that it’s necessary to keep the American people safe.”
The measure now heads to the Senate, but with an added provision that would ban development of a central bank digital currency, something hard-line conservatives have been clamoring for but could become a poison pill in the Senate.
When asked about whether adding that provision would make the extension untenable in the Senate, Senate Majority Leader John Thune told reporters Wednesday that an extension was likely, but it might be a short-term one while the chamber works out the digital currency issue.
“I’ve said they shouldn’t gum it up with other stuff, because they’ll have to, they’ll be getting it back if they do that,” Thune said.
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