Late-night votes scuttle House push on surveillance authority

Ryan Tarinelli, CQ-Roll Call on Apr 17, 2026

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WASHINGTON — The effort by Republican leadership to reauthorize a powerful surveillance tool collapsed on the House floor early Friday, in a late-night vote over privacy protections that left the future of the renewal push in limbo.

Lawmakers were summoned back to the House chamber more than eight hours after floor action had first been scheduled Thursday on a measure that would reauthorize Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, as lawmakers considered an amendment that would extend the program for five years.

But the House voted 200-220 to reject the amendment to the reauthorization measure, a show of force from privacy advocates in both parties who have pushed for a warrant requirement for when FBI officials search for information on Americans swept up in the program.

The House then voted 197-228 on the rule for the legislation GOP leadership originally put on the floor, a measure to authorize the program for 18 months without changes.

The votes left the House without an apparent path to reauthorizing the Section 702 program, which is set to expire Monday. After 2 a.m. EDT Friday, the House by unanimous consent passed a stopgap extension of the program through April 30 with no changes, moving the action to the Senate.

“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,” Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., said after walking off the floor.

House GOP leadership faces holdouts from privacy hawks in their own party, who had delayed floor action on the topic for more than a day over long-held criticisms of a program that allows the FBI to search through Americans’ information without a warrant.

Talks behind closed doors Thursday led to the floor action on an amendment that sought to extend the authority for five years. It included provisions that stipulated criminal penalties for certain acts, such as willfully conducting an unauthorized search and disclosing classified information that contains American communications acquired under the act.

The language also would order the attorney general to issue new procedures that ensure the access of congressional lawmakers and staff to Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court proceedings.

It included a provision on warrants for searches, but Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., argued that provision was no change at all.

Raskin, in a floor speech, picked apart and tore into the specific language of the proposed amendment, noting that the language says the government “may seek a warrant” or “other appropriate order supported by a probable cause.”

“In other words, this provision, too, is meaningless. It just returns to exactly where we were,” Raskin said.

“The substance of this proposal is utterly appalling,” Raskin said on the floor, calling it a “five-year, dirty deal.”

Rep. Jim McGovern, D-Mass., slammed Republicans for introducing new language in the middle of the night, and then quickly forcing votes on it.

“Republican leadership just jammed us. Does anybody actually know what the hell is in this thing?” McGovern said on the House floor.

Key administration officials and President Donald Trump have lobbied for an 18-month extension of the authority with no changes. But GOP lawmakers who were critical of the authority floated several potential items they wanted passed through the reauthorization process.

That included installing a warrant requirement for when FBI officials search for information on Americans, and language from legislation that supporters say aims to close loopholes that permit the government to buy Americans’ data from companies without a warrant.

The erratic path toward a floor vote once again exposed deep rifts among the House Republican Conference when it comes to Section 702, particularly over the issue of privacy protections for Americans.

House leadership had scheduled a vote for Wednesday on a rule to set guidelines for floor debate. Rule votes are typically party line.

But the House later punted on the vote on the rule and adjourned that day without taking the vote, the clearest sign there was not enough support among privacy advocates within the GOP conference.

The following day, leadership abandoned a scheduled afternoon vote on the same rule, and the House floor remained stalled for several hours into the night as Republican leadership said they were still trying to find a path forward while negotiating with GOP holdouts.