Surveillance bill clears hurdle in House

Luke Broadwater and Charlie Savage

The House took a critical first step Friday toward reauthorizing a law extending an expiring warrantless surveillance law that national security officials say is crucial to fighting terrorism, voting to take it up two days after a previous attempt to pass it collapsed.

Grasping to salvage the measure before the law expires next week, Speaker Mike Johnson put forward a shorter extension — two years instead of five — in a move that appeared to win over hard-right Republicans who blocked the bill earlier this week.

On a party-line vote of 213 to 208, the House agreed to take up the new version of the legislation, which would extend a section of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act known as Section 702. That cleared the way for a debate Friday on proposed changes to the bill before a final vote on passage.

The preliminary vote Friday suggested the measure was back on track after former President Donald J. Trump implored lawmakers this week to “kill” FISA, complaining that government officials had used it to spy on him. Should it pass the House, the Senate would still have to clear it, sending it to President Biden for his signature.

Johnson’s two-year version of the bill was an attempt to mollify hard-right Republicans, who believe Trump would be president once again the next time the law expired. All 19 of them who voted to block the measure Wednesday switched their positions Friday to allow it to go forward.

On the House floor, Representative Michael Burgess, Republican of Texas and the chairman of the Rules Committee, praised the bill’s shorter envisioned reauthorization. He credited an influential member of the ultraconservative House Freedom Caucus, Representative Chip Roy of Texas, with the idea of cutting back the renewal to two years.

“That’s important,” Burgess said. “Reforms that are now incorporated in the new FISA reauthorization will be re-evaluated by the next Congress as to whether or not they’re actually working.”

Johnson also released a document moments shortly before the vote Friday morning touting the bill as “the largest intelligence reform package since FISA’s inception in 1978.”