Republicans at an impasse to advance FISA reauthorization before Thursday deadline

House and Senate Republicans delayed key procedural votes Tuesday to advance an extension of the federal foreign surveillance law that expires in two days.

Republican leaders are entangled with intraparty and cross-party dissatisfaction over reauthorizing the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.

The House is also trying to cram the FISA reauthorization into a packed congressional schedule for the week that includes adopting a budget resolution to unlock a filibuster-proof process for funding immigration enforcement, the farm bill reauthorization and an address from Britain’s King Charles III.

House GOP leaders worked late into the evening Monday to bring conservative hard-liners to support the reauthorization of FISA’s Section 702 but couldn’t close the deal without including certain measures in the legislation.

“After waiting around all night for Republicans to make a deal — with themselves — on a procedural rule for the week, Democrats showed up to the Rules Committee for an 8 a.m. meeting. Unsurprisingly, when we showed up, we were told there is still no deal,” said Rep. Jim McGovern of Massachusetts, the panel’s top Democrat.

The Rules Committee was expected to reconvene Tuesday afternoon and try to advance the procedural rule for the FISA reauthorization and other pieces of legislation awaiting floor action this week.

House Freedom Caucus members and several other Republicans have threatened to block the FISA reauthorization bill that Speaker Mike Johnson, Louisiana Republican, released last week.

The measure included modest changes to the surveillance law but lacked provisions that conservatives demanded, such as a judicial warrant requirement and bans on a Central Bank Digital Currency, collecting U.S. citizens’ data and using artificial intelligence as a means of snooping against Americans.

South Carolina GOP Rep. Ralph Norman, a member of the Freedom Caucus and the Rules panel, said Republican leaders have come up with a new proposal merging Mr. Johnson’s bill with one offered by House Intelligence Chairman Rick Crawford of Arkansas.

Mr. Crawford’s bill, the Reforming Intelligence and Securing America Act, was introduced on March 24 and has several proposed changes, including codifying into law an interagency national counterintelligence task force made up of security officials from various government agencies.

The bill also has a measure to use deception to neutralize foreign spies and counter foreign intelligence influence operations. Additionally, the legislation proposes to grant greater power to the counterintelligence director to work alongside DNI Tulsi Gabbard.

House Majority Leader Steve Scalise, Louisiana Republican, told reporters that leadership wants to hold the procedural vote on the rule for debating the FISA reauthorization, the farm bill and the budget resolution late Tuesday night.

The Senate also planned to hold a procedural vote Tuesday on the FISA reauthorization, with a starter bill for a clean three-year extension.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune, South Dakota Republican, said, “There’s an opportunity to add reforms for a three-year bill, and I think there’s potential there. We’re talking right now with our Democrat colleagues here, and we’ll see where that lands.”

Mr. Thune said the Senate discussions have focused on providing an alternative plan in case the House could not pass its latest reauthorization proposal.

“Hopefully, if we can land this, we could get a big vote here out of the Senate, which hopefully would provide some momentum in the House,” he said.

But because a firm Senate plan for adding guardrails to the law had not materialized, Democrats were not willing to vote to begin debate on the bill Tuesday morning.

“We would have had the vote today at 11 a.m, but they didn’t have the votes,” said Sen. Ron Wyden, Oregon Democrat. “And I’ve been doing this for a long time. This is the first time I’ve ever been part of a debate where they didn’t have the votes.”

Mr. Wyden, a longtime proponent for adding more privacy shields to FISA to protect against abuse of Americans’ data caught up in the foreign surveillance, said the ability to delay the vote suggests movement toward the changes he and others have sought for years.

“Things like AI and selling people’s location data and the like — we’re not going along with things that put people at risk,” he said. “We’re going to say you have security and liberty; they’re not mutually exclusive.”

Mr. Thune said a warrant requirement for querying Americans’ data is one of many issues involved in the bipartisan discussions.

“How that would get structured matters a lot,” he said. “You certainly don’t want to impede or impair the ability to gather information that’s vital to national security.”

Mr. Wyden said he’s open to hearing various ideas on how to structure a warrant requirement but is partial to his bipartisan proposal.

“If the government says that there’s a danger to America under my warrant system, the government can go get the warrant immediately so that Americans are protected and come back after the fact and settle up so there’s some accountability,” he said. “I think it’s consistent with protecting the country and protecting liberty.”