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House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., is one step closer to averting a lapse in a controversial surveillance program after GOP privacy hawks fell in line to back a procedural measure amid weeks of infighting.
House lawmakers approved a test vote teeing up a three-year extension of Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) for a vote on final passage as early as Wednesday evening. The procedural measure also includes a Senate-passed budget resolution funding immigration enforcement for the rest of President Donald Trump’s term and mammoth agriculture and nutrition legislation known as the farm bill.
GOP leadership held the vote open for more than two hours as they worked to flip dozens of conservative holdouts. Every Republican ultimately voted yes during the marathon session.
Johnson could afford to lose just two GOP defections given House Republicans’ razor-thin majority. Every Republican voted for the measure.
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The successful procedural vote came after a sustained lobbying campaign from the Trump administration and Republican leadership to sell GOP privacy hawks on an extension of the spy law.
“This is by far the most collaborative effort that I’ve seen on FISA, and we’ve had a number of these kinds of fights,” Rep. Warren Davidson, R-Ohio, a leading FISA skeptic, told reporters earlier this week. “So I think it’s a very collaborative work product, and that’s why I say I support it.”
“It’s not to say I don’t think there’s other reforms that I would support, but I think this is a good win, and we should focus on a broader set of reforms that apply way beyond the scope of 702,” the Ohio Republican added.
House conservatives also appeared to soften their opposition after leadership included language permanently banning central bank digital currencies (CBDC) in the procedural measure.
GOP privacy hawks have long pushed for adding a CBDC ban to a legislative vehicle, casting it as a necessary effort to ward off government surveillance.
But Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., has warned that any FISA renewal bill with CBDC language is “dead on arrival” in the Senate.
“They know that,” Thune told reporters Tuesday, referring to House Republicans.
The Senate could also move to pass a rival FISA plan and force the House to swallow it ahead of Thursday’s deadline to extend the spy law.
“FISA is critical to our national defense and our national security,” Sen. Mike Rounds, R-S.D., told Fox News. “If we lose FISA, we lose the ability to defend this country the way that it should be defended. We use that information to find out what the bad guys are doing, where they’re at, what they’re looking to attack, what their strategies are.”
“I know we’ve got folks out there that are concerned about protecting Americans and so forth,” Rounds added. “We really need them to take a look at the other side of this, which is, are you going to hurt Americans?”
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Johnson is also seeking to clear the Senate budget resolution funding immigration enforcement and the farm bill before the end of the week.
Leadership has scheduled votes on both measures, but it is not clear if House Republicans will support either bill without modifications.
Rep. Anna Paulina Luna, R-Fla., secured an amendment to strip out controversial pesticide language from the farm bill, arguing it would block lawsuits against some pesticide manufacturers.
“On behalf of all the moms and dads that aren’t in office, I am not going to be bullied into supporting a bill that is providing protections and immunity to corporations that are responsible for giving children and adults cancer,” Luna wrote on social media. “This is literally above party affiliation.”
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Trump has urged House Republicans to quickly pass the Senate’s budget blueprint to fund immigration enforcement.
“It is imperative that Congress immediately fund DHS and its critical operations to protect the Homeland,” the White House Office of Management and Budget wrote in a memo to Hill offices on Tuesday that was obtained by Fox News Digital. “Failure to pass the budget resolution will jeopardize paychecks for the DHS personnel that keep the Homeland safe.”
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