House GOP Dysfunction: Trump's Influence on Surveillance Bill Collapse
Originally Published 1 year ago — by Fox News
House Republican lawmakers are furious at 19 GOP colleagues who blocked a bill to renew a key surveillance tool, Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. The bill's failure is attributed to conservative privacy hawks' anger over the handling of the bill and the exclusion of an amendment mandating warrants for the purchase of U.S. citizens’ data from third-party data brokers. Speaker Mike Johnson faced a major setback as small factions of the House GOP’s majority have weaponized rule votes to kill their own party’s legislation as a form of protest against their leadership. The fight over Section 702 has put Speaker Mike Johnson in a difficult spot between the House Judiciary Committee and its allies, and the U.S. intelligence community and national security hawks in Congress.