In a late-night vote, the House of Representatives approved a two-week extension for Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance (FISA) Act.

A bloc of 20 Republicans stopped a longer renewal of the controversial provision, Axios noted.

The longer-term renewal reportedly amounted to five years.

Journalist Nick Sortor spoke to Reps. Thomas Massie (R-KY) and Lauren Boebert (R-CO) after the vote.

Watch below:

Axios has more:

The revolt is a significant setback for House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) and the White House, who both pushed for a clean long-term extension of the surveillance authority.

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The House agreed by unanimous consent to extend FISA until April 30 after a group of Republicans blocked attempts to pass five-year and 18-month renewals of the program.

The short-term patch was a last-resort option for GOP leadership, who couldn’t muscle the longer extension despite an aggressive whip effort.

The program is set to lapse Monday.

Johnson was trying to pass a five-year extension of the national security tool with reforms after postponing an initial vote Wednesday.

“Last night between midnight and 2am, they tried to pass two bad versions of FISA… Both would have allowed Feds to unconstitutionally spy on Americans. We stopped both versions, but the fight isn’t over. Eventually, it was decided to give them two more weeks to fix FISA,” Massie said.

The Hill explained further:

Republican opposition to the amendment came not only from right-wing members who pushed for more substantial reforms and who had spent hours negotiating the package with leadership, but also from some House Intelligence Committee members who had pushed for a straight reauthorization of the program.

Soon after, a procedural vote to advance a clean, 18-month reauthorization of program racked up enough votes to fail moments later, but GOP leaders held the vote open as they hashed out a fallback option.

That procedural vote, which members of the House Freedom Caucus had long objected to, officially failed in a 197-228 vote, with 20 Republicans voting against it and four Democrats — Reps. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez (Wash.), Jared Golden (Maine), Josh Gottheimer (N.J.), and Tom Suozzi (N.Y.) — casting highly unusual votes to vote in favor of the rule, which is normally a test of party strength.

The House then brought up new legislation to extend the FISA authorization from April 20 to April 30, passing it by unanimous consent just after 2 a.m. and adjourning the House until Monday — canceling a day of previously-scheduled votes on Friday.

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“We were very close tonight,” Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) said walking off the floor in the wee hours of Friday morning. “There’s some nuances with the language and some questions that need to be answered, and we’ll get it done. The extension allows us the time to do that.”

 

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