House conservatives are angry with their GOP colleagues for stripping out a warrant requirement from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) before passing the bill on Friday.
One conservative is so incensed, he’s vowing to travel to districts of some of his Republican colleagues to campaign against them, The Hill reported.
Much of the anger is aimed at House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., who pivoted from a critic of FISA to a champion of it.
At issue is that the House on Friday passed the extension of the controversial Section 702 of FISA without including restrictions on how the FBI uses the surveillance program. Johnson revised FISA to two years instead of the full five-year reauthorization in the hopes of assuaging his right flank.
It didn’t work. Conservatives demanded a warrant requirement to curb FBI abuses, but that measure failed 212-212; ties go down in the loss column.
“Every one of these members who voted against a warrant requirement, they are the deciding vote. They own it,” Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., said after the vote. “And some of them may see me showing up in their districts very soon to campaign against them and to stand for the Constitution.”
FISA, which passed 273-147, goes to the Senate on Monday after conservatives blocked its transmission Friday, according to The Hill. They’re hoping to drum up backlash against the 86 Republicans who voted to strip out the warrant requirement.
But the man in their crosshairs is Johnson.
“We’re very disappointed that when we sent Mike Johnson away from the Judiciary Committee, he departed from some of the views that he held deeply,” Gaetz said. “We made Mike Johnson Speaker so that the Speakership would be more like Mike Johnson, not so Mike Johnson could be more like the Speakership.”
Said Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., “He lost a lot of capital with that vote.”