Hard-line conservatives are turning up the pressure on fellow Republicans who voted Friday to remove a proposed warrant requirement for domestic communications caught in foreign surveillance operations.
This provision – proposed as an amendment to a larger bill renewing a key section of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) – was defeated in the House by a vote of 212 to 212, with 86 Republicans and 126 Democrats voting against . Under House rules, a tie vote fails.
The result infuriated conservative supporters of the mandate, who accused his opponents in both parties of strengthening the “deep state” while undermining constitutional freedoms. Their anger was aimed directly at fellow Republicans, including Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.), who voted against the mandate requirement and in favor of the final FISA package.
Some hard-liners said they were prepared to travel to GOP districts to campaign against those who rejected the amendment.
“Each of those members who voted against the term requirement has the deciding vote. They own it,” Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) said after the vote. “And some of them may very soon see me showing up in their districts to campaign against them and defend the Constitution.”
Although the broader FISA plan passed the House easily — the bipartisan vote was 273 to 147 — hard-liners demanding new mandate protections immediately blocked its transmission to the Senate. The move will have no bearing on the fate of the underlying bill, which the House is expected to send to the upper chamber when lawmakers return to Washington on Monday.
But the weekend delay is intended to draw attention to Friday’s floor action, stir up conservative voters who might support the additional mandate protection and put pressure on Republicans who have voted against the measure this week.
“This is not coming from the House, so everyone needs to go home and respond to their constituents in the next 72 hours on why they are siding with the intelligence agencies, the deep state, and the swamp of the rights and freedoms of America’s people,” said Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas).
“It was the choice today,” he continued. “And every single person in this body, no matter if you’re a Republican or a Democrat, voted against an amendment to protect Americans, to protect them with an arrest warrant, and they have to respond to that.”
Reauthorizing the nation’s spying powers under warranty has been a headache for months for Johnson, who had sharply criticized FISA Section 702 as a member of the Judiciary Committee, but he changed course after taking the president’s gavel.
Section 702 authorizes the nation’s intelligence agencies to spy only on noncitizens living abroad. But during these operations, the government frequently intercepts the communications of Americans in contact with the foreigners under surveillance.
Privacy advocates from both parties — including many members of the Judiciary Committee — argue that it is unconstitutional for the government to learn of these communications without obtaining a warrant from a judge.
“Current law allows the government to collect sensitive and personal information about private citizens without a warrant. This is blatantly unconstitutional,” said Rep. Andrea Salinas (D-Ore.).
Still, supporters of Section 702 — including those on the Intelligence Committee — say it is one of the government’s greatest national security weapons. The new mandate requirement, they warn, would put the country at much greater risk.
“They now want to enforce — something we’ve never done in U.S. law before — a search warrant against a database of legally collected data,” said Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick (R-Pa.), a member of the House of Representatives. intelligence panel. “That’s like saying a police department can’t go into its own evidence locker without getting a warrant – even if everything in there has already been collected via a warrant.”
Johnson defended his move from 702 critic to 702 champion, saying he simply received more information about the nature of the program after becoming president.
“When I was a member of the judiciary, I witnessed all the abuses by the FBI — there were terrible abuses, over and over again,” Johnson told reporters earlier in the week. “And then when I became president, I…had a confidential briefing from another perspective on this, to understand the need for Section 702 of FISA and its importance to national security.”
This explanation has done little to appease Johnson’s conservative critics, who accuse him of abandoning his constitutionalist roots.
“We are very disappointed that when we removed Mike Johnson from the Judiciary Committee, he departed from some of the views he deeply held,” Gaetz said. “We nominated Mike Johnson for President to make the presidency more like Mike Johnson, not to make Mike Johnson more like the presidency.”
Still, Gaetz — who led the effort to remove former Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) from office last year — said he was not ready to launch the same attack on Johnson.
“I think a motion to overturn now would almost certainly put the House back in Democratic hands, and that’s why I won’t support it,” he said.
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) — a staunch critic of FISA — has already introduced a motion to overturn it, although she has not said what might compel her to force a vote on it.
Whatever the ultimate reaction to Johnson’s support for FISA, its immediate effect was to ruffle the feathers of conservative agitators already unhappy with the President’s handling of the office.
“The majority’s desire was to have a warrants provision, and he was on the other side,” Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.), another FISA critic, said Friday. “There are no red lines here. I just think he lost a lot of capital with this vote.
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