April 15 (UPI) — House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., delayed a vote Wednesday to renew the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act while he tries to gather more support for the bill.
Hard-line Republicans insist that the bill be amended to include a rule that requires warrants, but Johnson and President Donald Trump want the bill to be renewed “clean” for another 18 months.
FISA was first passed in 2008 and has a provision in Section 702 that allows warrantless surveillance of non-Americans outside the country to gather foreign intelligence. It forces U.S. companies to turn over communications data to intelligence agencies, and Americans’ data is often included incidentally.
Former President Joe Biden renewed the law in 2024 but added some reforms to it. That resolution was called the Reforming Intelligence and Securing America Act, and it amended the section to protect U.S. citizens from invasions of privacy.
FISA will lapse on April 20 if no bill gets passed.
Johnson has said that adding a warrant requirement would make the program “unworkable.”
“I’m for the clean [extension], but I’m open to whatever gets it done,” Axios reported House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, told reporters Tuesday.
The president hosted the FISA-skeptical lawmakers at the White House on Tuesday, but it didn’t change any minds. Some of the holdouts weren’t there.
Rep. Andy Biggs, R-Ariz., a leading advocate for the warrant addition, told Axios he wasn’t invited.
“I need to be talking to somebody at the White House. And they don’t really want me there. I guess I know too much about how this works,” Biggs said.
“Look, he’s the executive, we’re the legislative, and we’re going to see a little bit of conflict between those two today,” Freedom Caucus Chairman Andy Harris, R-Md., said Wednesday of Trump, Politico reported.
On Wednesday morning, CIA Director John Ratcliffe made a presentation to the House GOP Conference on the importance of the FISA law to his agency, Politico reported.
Four people in the meeting told Politico that some hardliners, including Rep. Michael Cloud, R-Texas, and Andrew Clyde, R-Ga., stood up to voice their concerns and that some were irritated that Ratcliffe “filibustered” until close to the end of the meeting to avoid taking difficult questions.
Some lawmakers — such as Rep. Anna Paulina Luna, R-Fla. — threatened to tank the bill unless the SAVE America Act is attached. The SAVE Act is designed to verify that all voters are American citizens. Critics say it will disenfranchise American citizens.
Other ultraconservatives are demanding the White House advance a ban on Central Bank Digital Currency. But Republicans and the president want a longer Section 702 extension in exchange, Politico reported.
Other hardliners want the CBDC ban passed separately.
It’s not clear if Johnson will bring the bill to another vote on Wednesday.