Video Screengrab / CSPAN
CV NEWS FEED // The House voted Friday to renew the federal government’s authority to surveil Americans without a warrant. Minutes earlier, an amendment to require a warrant for the surveillance failed in a tie vote.
The Republican-controlled chamber ultimately voted 273-147 to renew Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) for two additional years.
The section is set to expire on August 19 and the Democratic-controlled Senate must also vote to approve it before that deadline.
The pro-privacy amendment was proposed by Rep. Andy Biggs, R-AZ. It failed in a stunning 212-212 vote. As The Hill noted, “In the House, a tie loses.”
Also according to The Hill, Biggs’ amendment “would have added a warrant requirement for Americans’ data swept up in foreign surveillance.”
Biggs is the former chair of the conservative House Freedom Caucus whose 41 known members all voted for the amendment.
Both votes were unusual as they were not along party lines. Significant numbers of both Republicans and Democrats stood on both sides of the amendment’s debate with a seemingly unlikely coalition of conservatives and left-wing “progressives” in support.
As FOX News outlined, “National security hawks and members of the intelligence community have called [FISA Section 702] a critical tool for preventing another 9/11-style attack.”
“However, critics, including both conservatives and progressives, have been seeking to limit its scope after reported instances of abuse to collect data on Americans,” FOX added.
Just under 60% of Republicans who voted supported the amendment: 128 members of the House Republican conference voted in favor and 86 voted against it.
On the Democratic side, the situation was the mirror image as exactly 60% of voting Democrats opposed Biggs’ amendment: 84 voted in favor and 126 voted against it.
The Hill reported that the amendment “had emerged as the central disagreement in the FISA debate, pitting privacy hawks on the Judiciary Committee — who were in favor of the provision — against members of the Intelligence Committee and the White House, who opposed it.”
“Approval of the amendment would have raised serious questions about the FISA bill’s fate in the Senate and White House,” The Hill elaborated.
Following his amendment’s failure, Biggs took to X (formerly Twitter) writing: “86 Republicans voted with Joe Biden and the Uniparty to allow the FBI to continue spying on Americans without a warrant.”
“The Swamp is deep,” he emphasized.
“We needed a few more Democrats,” Biggs told host Joe Concha during an appearance on the FOX Across America podcast Wednesday afternoon.
“But you know what we really needed?” the congressman asked. “We needed a few more Republicans who actually believe that you shouldn’t be surveilled by your federal government without a warrant.”
Rep. Thomas Massie, R-KY, a Republican lawmaker who supported Biggs’ amendment also had harsh words for his colleagues on the other side.
“This is how the Constitution dies,” he wrote on X. “This is a sad day for America.”
Massie also leveled his criticism toward House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-LA, who opposed the amendment.
“The Speaker doesn’t always vote in the House, but he was the tie breaker today,” the congressman indicated. “He voted against warrants.”
Rep. Chip Roy, R-TX, another pro-amendment Republican, struck a more optimistic tone.
Roy acknowledged that while his side “lost the warrant amendment by one vote” and the FISA reauthorization bill passed, his camp “forced ANOTHER vote Monday before” the measure can head to the Senate for a vote.
In addition, Roy highlighted the fact that the House only voted to reauthorize FISA for two years – and not five years as originally proposed.
Again from The Hill:
After eleventh-hour negotiations between the GOP holdouts and leadership on Thursday, Johnson agreed to change the FISA reauthorization from five years to two years, keep a vote on the warrant requirement amendment and hold a vote in the near future on a separate data privacy bill, which was enough to get the hard-liners to agree to open the legislation up for debate.
FOX recounted that seconds after the bill to reauthorize FISA Section 702 passed the house, Rep. Anna Paulina Luna, R-FL, “raised a procedural measure objecting to the final vote count, which was then countered by the bill’s sponsor, Rep. Laurel Lee, [R-FL], and House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Turner, [R-OH].”
“Now, the House must vote on whether to reconsider passage of Section 702 on Monday, shortening the Senate’s timeline to consider the bill,” FOX added.
Like Biggs and Roy, Luna is a Freedom Caucus member.
“We will not stand idly by as we lose our country,” she wrote on X Friday afternoon. “Those voting for this have NO right to spy on Americans.”
“They authorized a massive expansion of the surveillance state and will have to confirm their vote on Monday,” Luna added. “You cannot sacrifice liberty and privacy with a fear campaign.”
During the debate on the House floor which took place earlier Friday, House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan, R-OH, emphatically defended Biggs’ amendment.
“The Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board [PCLOB] created by the 9/11 Commission Act of 2007 says that our amendment is consistent with what should happen,” Jordan said.
“Our amendment is consistent with the majority recommendation of that board,” he stressed.
On the other hand, Turner claimed during the floor debate that if the amendment passed, “Communist Party in China, Hezbollah and Hamas get to fully recruit in the United States.”
Author and policy director Rachel Bovard criticized the Intelligence Committee chairman’s assertion on X.
“House Intel Committee refuses to acknowledge that Americans have rights that foreigners don’t,” wrote Bovard. “And that is the crux of this entire debate.”
CBS News reported that “[a] specific area of concern for lawmakers is the [Federal Bureau of Investigation’s (FBI)] use of the vast intelligence repository to search for information about Americans and others in the U.S.”
“Though the surveillance program only targets non-Americans in other countries, it also collects communications of Americans when they are in contact with those targeted foreigners,” CBS continued:
In the past year, U.S. officials have revealed a series of abuses and mistakes by FBI analysts in improperly querying the intelligence repository for information about Americans or others in the U.S., including about a member of Congress and participants in the racial justice protests of 2020 and the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol.
