Speaker Mike Johnson is staring down his right flank as he seeks to fulfill President Donald Trump’s demand to extend warrantless government surveillance powers long detested by the conservative hard-liners.
Johnson wants to put an 18-month extension of the spy law known as Section 702 on the House floor next week, seeking to advance it ahead of a two-week recess and its rapidly approaching April 20 expiration date.
He’s not planning to attach anything to the bill to bring ultraconservatives on board with the plan, according to three people granted anonymity to discuss private strategy. He’ll rely instead on the power of a White House endorsement for a “clean” extension to overcome threats from members like Colorado Rep. Lauren Boebert, who is renewing a long-running demand that intelligence officials seek judicial warrants before reviewing messages involving Americans.
“Warrants or bust,” Boebert said, adding that a clean bill “will not pass.”
Separately, Florida Rep. Anna Paulina Luna is demanding the House attach partisan elections legislation, the SAVE America Act, to the must-pass spy bill in a bid to force Senate action on it.
Johnson started making the hard sell Wednesday, inviting members to hear from CIA Director John Ratcliffe and FBI Director Kash Patel ahead of the expected floor consideration next week.
He expressed confidence in an interview Tuesday that skeptical members would come around on extending Section 702 on the White House’s terms.
“They’ll get there,” Johnson said.
But his path to doing so is far from clear. He’ll first need to unite Republicans behind a procedural measure teeing up floor consideration for the bill, and both Luna and Boebert say they will oppose that step, known as a rule.
“I’ll be a ‘no’ on the rule … and a ‘no’ on the bill if they don’t have SAVE America attached,” Luna said Tuesday. “And I’m not the only one. There’s other people.”
“There is no way a clean extension is getting through,” said another House Republican granted anonymity to speak candidly. “A rule for that will not pass next week.”
Another path for Johnson would be to try and skip the procedural vote and opt instead for a fast-track process, but that would require a critical mass of Democrats to join Republicans to get the bill past a two-thirds majority. GOP leaders are still exploring whether they can navigate the internal opposition and, if not, how many Democrats are willing to help.
The Republican hard-liners don’t think there are enough votes across the aisle to sidestep their opposition, with House Democrats split on whether to support the clean extension. Top party leaders have not yet taken sides on the matter, and members on key committees have diverged.
Rep. Jim Himes of Connecticut, the top Intelligence Committee Democrat, backs the 18-month extension, but many others in the caucus say they would need serious concessions to continue the spy program under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which targets overseas actors for warrantless surveillance but often collects communications involving Americans.
“Personally, there’s no way I will support a clean FISA extension,” said Rep. Ted Lieu of California, a member of Democratic leadership and the Judiciary Committee. “There’s no way I’m going to give the Trump administration this mass surveillance authority. It’s not just a Trump administration. It’s any administration.”
One Democrat who attended Wednesday’s briefing said the biggest problem is the “character” and “lack of trust” in the Trump officials pushing for the extension — including Patel, who once complained about surveillance practices of Democratic administrations.
“It’s like the boy who cried wolf,” the lawmaker added.
Several House Republicans also raised concerns directly to Patel and Ratcliffe during the briefing about the clean extension, according to three other people in the room.
But House GOP leaders and White House officials believe the easier path is to simply convince the Republican holdouts — especially since Trump wants the clean reauthorization.
“I think I can pass the rule,” Johnson said after the briefing Wednesday.
They face a tough sell with some members, who remember how Trump urged them to “KILL FISA” in 2024 because his campaign was “spied on” by the federal government. Beyond Boebert and Luna, more than a dozen other House Republicans are objecting to continuing the program as-is.
They include GOP Reps. Chip Roy and Keith Self of Texas, Warren Davidson of Ohio and Andy Ogles of Tennessee, who want to ensure Americans are not swept up in government surveillance without a warrant.
“They’re going to have to allow amendments, because there is a lot of appetite for reform,” Davidson said, adding that he would oppose the bill if it goes unchanged.
“There are indications that the warrantless approach is still not working,” added Self in an interview this week.
Asked if Trump will need to get personally involved in the lobbying campaign, Johnson replied, “I can handle it. We’ll get it done.”
House GOP leaders are privately arguing that a straight Section 702 reauthorization is justified given the rising threats to Americans amid the widening military conflict in the Middle East, according to four people granted anonymity to describe the whip effort.
Stephen Miller, the influential senior White House domestic policy adviser, has been a leading advocate within the administration for extending the program without changes, seeing it as critical to a variety of homeland security missions.
“This is what the president has asked for, makes the case for and that’s the play we’re going to run,” House Intelligence Chair Rick Crawford (R-Ark.) said in an interview. House Judiciary Chair Jim Jordan, who opposed an extension in 2024, is also now supporting the straight extension.
“We did a lot of good reforms last time, so that’s a good start,” Jordan said in a recent interview.
Rep. Andy Harris (R-Md.), chair of the ultraconservative Freedom Caucus also raised concerns about the White House-backed plan and suggested there will not be enough Republican support to tee up a final vote. An extension into late 2027 would be hard to swallow, he said — preferring a shorter punt just past November’s midterm election.
Despite the internal resistance, some in Johnson’s leadership circle believe they will need to attempt a vote on the straight 18-month extension next week regardless, given Trump’s backing for it.
If it does fail, Johnson & Co. will have to work on a backup plan to pass the bill once members return from recess April 14. That would leave only a few days to get the measure through the House as well as the Senate before the April 20 deadline.
Read the full article here
