House Republicans blame White House for Hill FISA mess

A messy GOP battle over a key government spy authority boiled over in the House this week — but the crisis was months in the making.

White House officials and Republican Hill leaders have tried to pressure GOP hard-liners into approving a clean, 18-month extension of Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act that President Donald Trump demanded. But amid a GOP rebellion on Capitol Hill, Speaker Mike Johnson Thursday afternoon punted a vote on the measure for the second day in a row.

The program expires Monday night. Senators went home for the weekend as Johnson continued to pursue a compromise with the holdouts for an extension as long as three years with reforms, and raced to hold a vote.

Now, the finger-pointing among Republicans is rampant and temperatures are running high.

A band of House ultraconservatives -- who have long been concerned that warrantless government surveillance of foreign individuals could sweep up data on Americans -- shot down Trump and GOP leaders’ long-held plans for the 18-month extension with no reforms earlier this week.

“A clean extension ain’t going to move on the floor,” Rep. Chip Roy of Texas, one of the head House GOP holdouts, warned earlier this week.

In interviews with more than two dozen Republican lawmakers and aides on Capitol Hill involved in the talks, many of whom were granted anonymity to speak freely about the contentious policy debate, the consensus is that the White House is largely responsible for the current breakdown as GOP factions snipe and assign blame.

“This is why we shouldn’t wait until the last minute on these things,” one House Republican fumed Thursday. A congressional GOP aide added, “The White House was too late to come to a decision. That was the original sin.”

A senior White House official disputed the characterization from some Hill Republicans that the administration had taken too long to plead their case. They pointed to a briefing in the Situation Room months ago with Republican lawmakers, during which “the president heard arguments on both sides of the issue.”

The official added, “We've had multiple briefings from senior officials, both on the House and Senate side, about the desirability of this program. Again, going back months ago.”

Trump told House Intelligence Chair Rick Crawford (R-Ark.) and House Judiciary Chair Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) that he wanted a clean extension, without reforms, in February. The president arrived at this position, a second White House official said, after “the administration completed a policy process through the interagency and advised POTUS that a clean extension was the best course and solicited views on length from the Hill.”

There was also coordination between the White House and Capitol Hill, according to three people familiar and the senior White House official: Johnson requested the reauthorization run for 18 months, and Trump agreed.

The administration succeeded in convincing Jordan, who had previously pushed for changes to Section 702, to publicly support a clean extension following a White House meeting on the subject.

But ultraconservatives on Capitol Hill were harder to convince, with some House Republicans correctly predicting two months ago they were going to have issues as the vote drew nearer. Trump has forced those hard-liners to cave in recent months on other fights, but the spy powers legislation was one area where members have not been as willing to relent.

While Trump officials made outreach to members at least two months ago, Hill engagement ramped up in the days leading up to the scheduled vote. That has included appeals to lawmakers from CIA Director John Ratcliffe, Deputy CIA Director Michael Ellis and Joint Chiefs Chair Gen. Dan Caine, according to five people. Ellis has made personal phone calls to members, according to two people familiar with the pressure campaign.

White House deputy chief of staff James Blair, White House Legislative Affairs chief James Braid and other legislative affairs officials have also been calling individual House Republicans and working through negotiation details, according to six other people with direct knowledge of the conversations.

Noticeably absent from this outreach is Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard. Her office plays a statutory role in overseeing Section 702 and has historically been a key proponent of the powerful spy powers.

Gabbard in early February expressed concerns to Trump about reauthorizing the statute without additional privacy guardrails, as POLITICO reported earlier Thursday, though her appeal appears to have been unsuccessful.

And while the administration’s position on Section 702 came into focus in February, there were signs earlier in the month that its position had not fully crystallized. Officials meeting with the Senate Intelligence Committee at that time refused to divulge the White House’s stance on extending the surveillance power and adding reforms, according to five people with knowledge of the meeting. The exchange frustrated Republicans and Democrats on the panel, who are generally supportive of the surveillance program.

Due to a quirk in the law, the administration will still be able to operate the program for nearly a year even if it is not renewed, and privacy advocates have argued that Monday is a false deadline. But without the law on the books, communications providers like Google and AT&T, which the government tasks to surveil foreign messages, could stop complying with those orders.

But White House officials want an extension codified now, all the same. They have been arguing in conversations with lawmakers that the country is at war and national security is paramount amid threats from Iran. Therefore, they say, hardliners should fall in line to back the clean extension without delay, according to five people involved in the conversations.

“The program is critical for the United States military to listen to the conversations of foreign terrorists abroad while we are engaged in a military operation in Iran. That's what we've been telling individuals, as well as the elevated threat levels around the world, as well as the threat from Mexican drug cartels,” the senior White House official said.

Two groups of House GOP hard-liners, after being summoned by Trump Tuesday night, met with officials at the White House. But some of the Republicans declined the invitation.“I’ve heard everything that the executive has to say on FISA,” Freedom Caucus Chair Andy Harris (R-Md.) said in an interview that evening. That meeting, however, marked a shift: Those House Republicans who went to the White House alongside GOP leaders — among them Roy and Reps. Keith Self of Texas, Byron Donalds of Florida, Clay Higgins of Louisiana, Morgan Griffith of Virginia and Warren Davidson of Ohio — took the opportunity to begin negotiations about a framework for a possible agreement around the use of warrants to access certain information.

The discussions included how the White House and GOP leadership needed to make good on a months-old promise to advance legislation that would ban a central bank digital currency. Enough House GOP holdouts late Thursday evening were threatening to still tank the procedural vote to advance the extension if the White House didn’t address the digital currency matter, according to four people with direct knowledge of the matter.

“Unless it's included, there’s enough votes to kill the rule,” Rep. Ralph Norman (R-S.C.) said in an interview Thursday afternoon. But other Republicans, White House officials and Senate GOP leadership are warning that attaching the measure directly would tank the FISA bill.

In exchange for making these concessions, GOP leaders and the White House have been pushing for a Section 702 extension that’s longer than 18 months and closer to three years.

The senior White House official also said Thursday the administration has “focused in on potentially having conversations about reforms to the program that we think would strengthen protections for American civil liberties … those conversations are ongoing.”

Jordan, meanwhile, has been helping build support for a clean extension by privately telling some Republicans that, if they can pass this 18-month clean extension now, they could potentially work on warrant reforms later, according to three people with direct knowledge of the discussions. That’s raised some eyebrows internally among House Republicans.

The House delays are leaving barely any time for the Senate to act. Majority Leader John Thune said in an interview Thursday that he’s already started having conversations with his own members about what they would need to clear a FISA extension Monday.

Ultimately, even if GOP leaders strike a deal on changes to the current proposed extension, it could risk support for reauthorization among key Democrats, who Republicans will need to pass the final legislation in a narrowly-divided House. While some House Democrats are expected to help Republicans get the final bill across the finish line — including top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, Rep. Jim Himes of Connecticut — Democratic leaders have so far declined to shore up the votes for any fast-tracked process.

“I am deeply skeptical of a straightforward extension,” House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries said Thursday, adding he told Johnson a few days ago there was “great Democratic skepticism” on a clean extension.

One Democratic Hill aide said Johnson and Trump did far too little to coordinate their pitch with Democrats, who carried a razor-thin vote to re-up the law in 2024.

“They never came to us,” the aide said.