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Bipartisan revolt upends vote to reauthorize FISA

It was clear for much of Wednesday that Democrats lacked the votes, with few, if any, Republicans willing to buck Trump and his veto threat. Without them, the House’s delicate coalition fractured and Democrats found themselves without the support to pass it on their own. The Congressional Progressive Caucus, which has roughly 100 members, formally opposed the bill, virtually guaranteeing that Democrats would need GOP votes.

“Frankly, I never expected to win this vote – FISA has always been bipartisan,” Hoyer said.

Pelosi and her leadership team sent lawmakers home for the night shortly after 9:30 p.m., after spending much of the day attempting to salvage the bill. As she left the Capitol, Pelosi was noncommittal about the fate of the FISA bill when the House returned on Thursday: “We’ll see.”

The House had passed its own bill to renew the surveillance powers in March with 126 Republicans voting in favor. The Senate also approved its version earlier this month on a 80-16 vote. But GOP support vanished this week after sudden opposition from Trump and the Department of Justice. Trump tweeted Wednesday night: „If the FISA Bill is passed tonight on the House floor, I will quickly VETO it.“

Pelosi had initially been adamant that the legislation would see a vote on Wednesday, with hundreds of House members flying in from across the country during a pandemic for the vote. But Pelosi and other Democrats ultimately decided to postpone the bill, avoiding potential headlines about the FISA bill collapsing on the floor.

„We’ll act upon it today one way or another,“ Pelosi told reporters earlier Wednesday, although she wouldn’t predict whether the measure would pass or what version of the legislation would be considered.

Pelosi and Hoyer were considering multiple plans throughout the day, including putting the Senate version on the floor knowing they didn’t have enough Democratic votes to pass the bill and dare Republicans, many of whom had supported the House bill, to vote in opposition.

Another idea was to forgo the potential flop on the floor and make a motion to go straight to conference, allowing the two chambers to reconcile the differences between the House and Senate bills.

Those plans changed after Pelosi and her whip team unsuccessfully tried to sway more of their fellow Democrats to support the Senate-passed version of the bill. For more than an hour, top Democrats unexpectedly called up other, non-controversial legislation on the floor to buy time as they twisted arms.

Leaving Pelosi’s office Wednesday night, Hoyer said they still hadn’t decided what they are going to do on Thursday, the last day the House is scheduled to be in session.

“Now the Republicans, because Donald Trump said no, apparently are going to cast what I think is a very unprincipled vote, damaging to national security,” Hoyer said. “And so we’re talking about what the consequences of that are.”

The House had initially planned to vote on a bipartisan amendment to restrict the collection of internet search history, but that new language ran into trouble late Tuesday, with the threat of a veto from President Donald Trump. Soon after, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy personally asked Hoyer to pull the bill.

Then there was a revolt from within the Democratic party itself, with a key senator forcefully coming out against the legislation. The opposition from Sen. Ron Wyden — a fierce supporter of privacy rights on the internet — quickly fueled angst among the party’s liberal wing, which had already been uneasy about the legislation.

And on Wednesday morning the Department of Justice formally came out against the legislation, a striking reversal given that Attorney General William Barr helped negotiate key privacy provisions in the bill, which passed the Senate earlier this month.

But Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.), who had drafted the new language on search histories, dismissed Barr’s comments on Wednesday morning, arguing that he has a “very expansive view of executive power.”

“He’s entitled to his view, but we’re the legislative branch,” Lofgren said at the Rules hearing. “We are the ones who decide what protections to put in place, and I think if we’re able to come together to accomplish that, it would be a service to the country.

The latest rupture began over a proposal by Wyden to block the FBI from collecting the web browsing data of Americans. Wyden’s plan failed by a single vote in the Senate, but Lofgren negotiated with House leaders to bring it up for a House vote when the chamber considered the broader bill.

But Lofgren also negotiated a deal with House Intelligence Chairman Adam Schiff to tweak the language to narrow the restrictions on the FBI, a deal that infuriated Wyden and left him and other progressives calling for the defeat of the measure.

Opposition from the left resulted in an unusual alliance with Trump allies who opposed the FBI’s request for FISA reauthorization over claims it was abused to monitor figures on Trump’s 2016 campaign.

Some proponents of the current FISA bill — including conservative Republicans who have long sought to rein in government surveillance powers — said that the fierce backlash demonstrated the potential power of the reforms.

“You can tell we’re getting to actual reform, not just by the allies, but by the opponents,” Rep. Warren Davidson (R-Ohio) said at a remote hearing of the Rules Committee on Wednesday. “I’d vote for it.”

Source: politico.com
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