The failed vote led to weeks of bipartisan resistance to clean reauthorization of the surveillance program authorized under Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. The 702 program obviously allows wiretaps of communications belonging to foreigners abroad, but it is also known to intercept vast amounts of Americans’ emails, texts, phone calls and other data—private messages that the FBI and other agencies routinely access without a warrant.
Congressional authorization for the program expires on Tuesday. The White House and GOP leadership have spent weeks pushing for a “clean” reauthorization, while the House Freedom Caucus, a bipartisan coalition of Republicans and progressive Democrats, has demanded that the FBI obtain warrants before searching Americans’ messages and that Congress impose restrictions on the government buying Americans’ personal data from commercial brokers.
A handful of Democrats, led by Congressman Jim Himes of Connecticut, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, have joined the White House in lobbying against new restrictions.
House Republicans rebelled twice in the small hours of Friday morning, ultimately sinking the bill. Shortly after 1 p.m. ET, a dozen Republicans joined nearly every Democrat in killing the leadership-backed amendment, which would have extended Section 702 for five more years.
The amendment included a provision that originally required a duplicate warrant. It would have prevented government officials from “intentionally” targeting the communications of Americans without a warrant – conduct that is already prohibited by law. It also offered the government a warrant path if agents have probable cause to suspect that the subject is an agent of a foreign power – an authority that is already independent of the Section 702 program and adds nothing functionally new to the law.
The final blow came just after 2 p.m., when 20 Republicans voted again to block the original version of the bill, which calls for a shorter 18-month extension. Those 20 votes were drawn almost entirely from the House Freedom Caucus and the liberal wing of the party, including Maryland’s Andy Harris, the caucus chair; Thomas Massey of Kentucky; Chip Roy of Texas; Warren Davidson of Ohio; and Lauren Boebert of Colorado.
In a rare defeat on a procedural vote that typically occurs along party lines, GOP leaders moved with only a 10-day extension, pushing the fight to the end of the month. The House’s failure leaves the Senate to decide what happens next, starting with whether to approve an extension next week.
The collapse of the vote followed a weeks-long effort by the Trump administration to persuade Republicans, who objected to the FBI’s warrantless access and its documented history of querying that data for political purposes. Trump hosted Freedom Caucus holdouts at the White House on Tuesday in an attempt to close the deal. Meanwhile, Democrats were urged on Monday by two former senior Biden officials to support the extension, according to a person familiar with both events.
The FBI has used Section 702 data to conduct warrantless interrogations of US senators, 19,000 donors to congressional campaigns, Black Lives Matter protesters and both sides of the January 6 Capitol attack, according to declassified court rulings and government transparency reports.
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