US House vote on surveillance bill expected Friday after change

David Morgan
Updated ·2 min read
15
Members of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence arrive to a meeting on Capitol Hill in Washington
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By David Morgan

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The U.S. House of Representatives is expected to vote on controversial surveillance legislation on Friday, lawmakers said, two days after an initial attempt failed in the Republican-controlled chamber.

The chamber appeared poised to vote on passage of the modest overhaul of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA, after talks involving former President Donald Trump and nearly 20 of his hardline allies led House Speaker Mike Johnson to shorten the length of the surveillance authority to two years rather than five, according to multiple lawmakers.

But with Republicans holding a razor-thin 218-213 majority, Johnson would need near unanimous support from his own conference to pass the legislation and send it on to the Senate, if House Democrats oppose it.

A version of the bill with a five-year term foundered in the House on Wednesday after Democratic and Republican critics, including Trump, the Republican presidential candidate, said it gave the government too much power to spy on American citizens.

By Thursday, Republican leaders sounded upbeat about the legislation's prospects.

"The two-year sunset has a lot of appeal to a lot of people," House Majority Leader Steve Scalise told reporters.

Trump had strongly opposed the legislation early in the week. But his allies said the shorter two-year extension would allow the former president to amend FISA rules later, if he wins the White House in November.

"His opinion that the bill wasn't where it needed to be was influential. And I think that his opinion that this is getting closer to where it needs to be is helpful," said Representative Chip Roy, a prominent hardliner involved in closed-door negotiations.

The FISA law, enacted after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, allows the U.S. government to spy on foreigners without getting court approval. The government is not allowed to target U.S. citizens. But their communications may be inadvertently collected during the process.

Trump has feuded with U.S. intelligence agencies since the FBI investigated his 2016 presidential campaign for possible links to Russian intelligence. The Department of Justice concluded in 2019 that Trump's campaign did not coordinate with Russia, but also found that he ordered officials to obstruct the investigation.

(Reporting by David Morgan; writing by Paul Grant; Editing by Andy Sullivan, Chizu Nomiyama, Jonathan Oatis and David Gregorio)