House conservatives yesterday blocked a bill that would have reauthorized a controversial spying authority without requiring a warrant.
In a 193–226 vote, lawmakers voted not to advance Rep. Laurel Lee’s (R-Fla.) “Reforming Intelligence and Securing America” Act, which would extend the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act’s (FISA’s) controversial Section 702 for a period of five years. The warrantless surveillance power is due to lapse on April 19.
The failed rule vote represents another setback for House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.), who has already presided over a rarely-seen series of rejected rules.
These procedural votes normally advance along party lines. But rank-and-file Republicans have increasingly employed the tactic of blocking rules to pressure leadership.
Rep. Cory Mills (R-Fla.), who voted against the rule along with 18 other Republicans, said that its failure “isn’t a defeat for Johnson. It’s a victory for Americans.”
It’s the second such failure of a FISA reauthorization bill. In February, House leadership was forced to pull a vote on a similar bill that faced bipartisan opposition.
After the rule failed, leadership canceled the day’s remaining votes and Republicans held a conference meeting to try to make headway on the matter.
The issue has been an unusually difficult one for lawmakers to address.
While almost all lawmakers want to reauthorize the program for its foreign intelligence capabilities, concerns about abuses of the program have caused several lawmakers—led by House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) and Ranking Member Jerry Nadler (D-N.Y.)—to demand that a warrant be required to query Americans’ data.
Members of the House Intelligence Committee, meanwhile, have pushed against the warrant requirement. This camp, led by Chairman Mike Turner (R-Ohio) and Ranking Member Jim Himes (D-Conn.) they say would stall the process too much and pose national security risks.
Following the failure of the rule vote, House Republican leadership canceled another vote scheduled for later in the day and instead called a conference meeting.
Lawmakers leaving the meeting said that it had been productive inasmuch as the two camps were able to discuss the issue and explain their position. However, there was little in the way of an action plan leaving the meeting.
“Nothing’s been resolved,” Rep. Byron Donalds (R-Fla.) told reporters as he left the meeting.
However, several lawmakers said that different courses of action were considered.
The easiest of those would be simply to punt the issue by authorizing a temporary extension of the program as lawmakers seek to resolve their differences. Such a move would likely pass both chambers of Congress easily, but would only delay ultimate consideration of a reform package.
Another option, one likely to anger many Republican privacy hawks, would be for Johnson to seek to pass the bill through a suspension of the rules, a move that would rely heavily on Democrat support.
Finally, lawmakers are still negotiating on allowing the bill to be brought back up with an amendment vote on the warrant issue.
The one thing that was clear from the meeting is that the House is far from reaching a consensus on the controversial issue.
—Joseph Lord
NO DEAL AFTER MTG, JOHNSON MEET
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) talked with House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) on Wednesday (April 10) a few weeks after filing a motion to strip him of the gavel.
But no deal was reached in the meeting.
Greene has been frustrated over what she said is Johnson caving to the Democrats such as on funding the government. Greene filed what is called a motion to vacate after the House passed a $1.2 trillion bill to fund most of the government.
Additionally, Greene has warned Johnson not to put forth a bill to give assistance to Ukraine amid its war with Russia and legislation to reauthorize Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. Privacy hawks have called for reforms to that section that authorizes the United States to surveil foreign nationals abroad, alleging it has been abused to spy on American citizens in the United States.
Greene said she did not give Johnson “a red line.”
Johnson would not say if he will bring Ukraine aid to the floor, said Greene, even though Johnson previously said that he wants to help Ukraine.
Greene lamented that Johnson’s “leadership has been completely opposite” of former President Donald Trump’s policies.
Overall, she said, the meeting was “extremely open, honest, direct, and passionate at times.”
“He has not done the job that we elected him to do,” Greene said. “And I told him that.”
Ahead of the meeting, Johnson tacitly responded to the motion filed by Greene to strip him of the gavel. He warned that such an effort would bring “chaos in the House.”
“She’s [a] colleague. I’ve always considered her a friend; Marjorie and I don’t disagree, I don’t think, on any matter of philosophy. We’re both conservatives, you know, but we do disagree sometimes on strategy and with regard to what we put on the floor and when and those things,” Johnson told reporters.
He acknowledged Greene’s frustration with the appropriations for fiscal year 2024 but noted that the GOP does not have much leverage with its one-vote majority in the House, and it does not control the Senate or the presidency.
The motion to vacate “wouldn’t be helpful,” Johnson said. “It would be chaos in the House.”
Greene wrote a scathing letter to colleagues on April 9 regarding Johnson. She referred to her letter when speaking with reporters after her meeting with the speaker.
In it, she lamented Johnson’s breaking of his policies, such as allowing input from rank-and-file members, and passing legislation through regular order that includes allowing amendments to be brought up on the floor.
—Jackson Richman
TRUMP DOUBLES DOWN ON ABORTION STANCE
The nation was still reeling on Wednesday after the Arizona Supreme Court’s bombshell ruling allowing a near-total abortion ban to be enforced in the state.
The Civil War-era law bans all abortions in Arizona, except for those performed to save the life of the mother.
As reactions to the ruling continued to pour in, former President Donald Trump made waves with his response.
Asked if the court “went too far,” he replied: “Yeah, they did, and that’ll be straightened out.”
Abortion, Trump said, is “all about states’ rights” and allowing the people to decide for themselves.
“For 52 years, people have wanted to end Roe v. Wade, to get it back to the states. We did that, and now the states have it, and the states are putting out what they want. It’s the will of the people,” he said.
Trump later doubled down on that view by stating that he would not sign a federal abortion ban if given the opportunity as president.
But Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), in a rare break with the former president, said he thought that was the wrong approach.
“I think most Americans want to limit late-term abortions,” Graham said. “I think the pro-life movement is going to continue to advocate that late-term abortions are out of the mainstream of America and the world.”
The senator added that criticizing Democrats for wanting legal abortion “up to the moment of birth” without supporting any federal restrictions on the procedure “is probably not going sell to the pro-life community.”
Graham has often been an ally for Trump in the Senate. But now, it appears that friendship may be over.
“Many Good Republicans lost Elections because of this Issue, and people like Lindsey Graham, that are unrelenting, are handing Democrats their dream of the House, Senate, and perhaps even the Presidency,” Trump wrote on April 8 on Truth Social.
In another post, he added: “I blame myself for Lindsey Graham, because the only reason he won in the Great State of South Carolina is because I Endorsed him!”
—Samantha Flom and Stacy Robinson
BOOKMARKS
House speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) and former President Donald Trump will hold a joint press conference on April 12 over the subject of “election integrity,” reports The Epoch Times’ Jackson Richman. This has been a key issue for the GOP at least since 2020, which Trump has decried as stolen. The presser also comes as Johnson is looking to keep the gavel as Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) has filed a motion to oust him as speaker but has yet to bring it to the House floor.
In a piece for The Free Press, NPR senior business editor Uri Berliner blasted his employer for its left-wing bias. He said that the public station has lost trust with people and is catering to a very small segment of the U.S. population. NPR has come out against Berliner’s piece, but he is still employed with the outlet and his job does not seem to be in jeopardy.
Inflation increased in March, reports The Epoch Times’ Andrew Moran. This means an increase in the price of goods and services. This is higher than expected for the fourth consecutive month. This is not good news for President Joe Biden ahead of the election.
New York Yankees legend Mariano Rivera, one of the greatest closers in the history of baseball, endorsed Donald Trump for president, reports The Epoch Times’ Lorenz Duchamps.
The Epoch Times’ Allan Stein profiles a rancher in how he is dealing with the crisis at the Southern Border. Jim Chilton told Stein, “It’s not fun out here.” He used to not mind helping those who crossed such as providing them fresh water to drink. But under the Biden administration, he has drawn the line as the cartels have patrolled the routes toward the U.S.-Mexico border.
Young athletes are being diagnosed with POTS, a rare disease, reports The Washington Post’s Ariana Eunjung Cha. The rate of people being diagnosed with POTS has drastically increased since the COVID-19 pandemic.