Congress
House GOP leaders punt controversial FISA vote to April
House GOP leaders are punting a reauthorization vote for the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act that they had hoped to hold next week until mid-April, with a GOP hard-liner revolt over warrantless surveillance threatening to tank the legislation, according to three people with direct knowledge of the matter granted anonymity to discuss the conference dynamics.
GOP leaders are still dealing with a dozen or so Republican members who want reforms to the spy powers extension, as Speaker Mike Johnson is trying to pass a clean, 18-month extension without any changes. President Donald Trump has also asked for the clean extension.
Johnson and GOP leaders will instead work through the remaining issues over the upcoming two-week recess and try to put the extension on the floor the week of April 14, the people said.
Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.) and a group of ultraconservatives have warned GOP leaders that the reauthorization would fail if Johnson tried to push it through next week.
Another House Republican told Blue Light News there was “no way” a rule to advance a clean FISA extension would pass next week.
Johnson can lose only two votes on a rule to advance the measure, and already a handful of GOP hard-liners have told Blue Light News they would oppose it.
The FISA reauthorization deadline is April 20, and the delay leaves barely any time for the Senate to act.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is scheduled to give a classified briefing Wednesday to a group of House Republicans about the administration’s goals for military funding and another party-line reconciliation bill, according to three people granted anonymity to describe a private meeting.
The gathering will take place during the Republican Study Committee’s weekly lunch and be held in the House SCIF, underscoring the potentially sensitive nature of Hegseth’s planned presentation.
Lawmakers are expected to also press Hegseth on the agreement the Trump administration has reached with Iran to end the war.
Iowa Democratic Senate nominee Josh Turek has a narrow lead over GOP rival Ashley Hinson in a new internal poll of likely general-election voters.
Turek leads Hinson 47 percent to 45 percent in the poll, conducted by Global Strategy Group from June 8-11 among 1,000 likely general election voters. The poll shows that Republicans have a 10-point edge in voter registration (42 percent to 32 percent) and an electorate that voted for Trump by 9 points (50 percent for Trump to 41 percent for Kamala Harris).
But the polling also shows President Donald Trump’s favorabilities underwater across the electorate, with 45 percent favorable and 52 percent unfavorable. Among registered independents, Trump is upside down 28 points.
Turek is “significantly outperforming the state’s underlying partisan dynamics,” Global Strategy Group’s Matt Canter & Ramzi Ebbini write in a memo first obtained by Blue Light News. “Republicans maintain substantial advantages in voter registration and party identification, yet Turek enters the general election ahead of Republican Ashley Hinson, with stronger personal favorability ratings, overperforming a generic Democrat, and with clear opportunities to expand his coalition as more voters become familiar with him.”
Some Republicans have acknowledged a concern about Iowa.
“There are some issues there that we got to deal with — the biggest one is trade — trade and tariffs,” said a Republican close to the White House, granted anonymity to speak candidly about the obstacles.
In his early general election messaging, Turek has leaned into farmers’ frustrations.
“Josh Turek is winning this race because Iowans are sick and tired of multi-millionaire politicians like Ashley Hinson who sell out working families while they get rich,” Turek for Iowa campaign manager Brendan Koch said in a statement first shared with Blue Light News. “We will spend the next 134 days connecting with Iowans in every corner of the state and across the political spectrum to send a fighter for the working class to the U.S. Senate.”
House Republicans have eight days to prove Reconciliation 3.0 might actually happen.
The House returns Tuesday with only eight legislative days before they break again for the July 4 holiday. If members want a realistic chance at fulfilling their self-imposed timeline for advancing the legislation before the end of July — when they pause work again for another five weeks — they need to move fast.
That means assembling, and then adopting, a budget resolution — the first step in unlocking the filibuster skirting power of the reconciliation process. It took Republicans months to advance such a blueprint during their two earlier reconciliation efforts this Congress.
House GOP leaders are tentatively planning another senior-level reconciliation meeting for Wednesday, according to three people involved in the talks granted anonymity to discuss private plans.
Still, the House is coming back with several other moving items to deal with this week, including promised briefings on the president’s Iran deal and a major housing affordability package GOP leadership wants to clear as soon as Wednesday.
Reconciliation talks also come as President Donald Trump is expected to join the Senate’s GOP lunch Wednesday, where he’ll likely continue pushing the chamber to pass his SAVE America Act or attach pieces of the GOP elections bill to the party-line legislation (an idea one of the bill’s biggest backers, Sen. Mike Lee, spiked Sunday).
Republicans involved with Reconciliation 3.0 discussions also warn they need to reach a final agreement on how to pay for the bill as well as what policy items will be included before GOP leaders can try to advance any budget resolution.
At this point, however, many fiscal hawks and at-risk incumbents are largely unhappy about how the discussions are coming along.
“It’s fake pay-fors for defense spending no one has fully agreed to and no meaningful reforms,” said one House Republican granted anonymity to discuss private talks.
Back on the other side of the Capitol, GOP senators have been in no rush to start working on a third party-line bill, especially as they are consumed with other political fires — like trying to confirm Jay Clayton as director of national intelligence to speed up a FISA reauthorization (more on that below).
Rep. Morgan Griffith said he was confident if the right policies are included in the House plan the Senate would then take it up — although he, too, acknowledged the challenges of a short timeline.
“If we do it right, yeah,” Griffith said. “There’s some interesting things out there that are being discussed that could make it a real possibility.”
What else we’re watching:
— OBAMA’S FEROCIOUS IRAN CRITIC SOFTER ON TRUMP DEAL: Tom Cotton, the No. 3 Senate Republican and chair of the chamber’s Intelligence panel, is not alone among GOP defense hawks in finding himself in an awkward position trying to defend Trump’s Iran deal after lambasting President Barack Obama’s a decade before. But the combination of his prior ferocity toward the Iranian regime and his current leadership responsibilities have put him into an especially tight spot.
— FIRST IN IC: DEMS WANT MORE OF JACK SMITH’S REPORT: Senate Judiciary Democrats are asking a federal court to unseal part of former special counsel Jack Smith’s report about his investigation into Trump’s alleged mishandling of classified documents after his first term. The request from the Senators comes as the Judiciary Committee is poised to call Smith to testify about his Biden-era cases before the end of this Congress. Republicans in the House and Senate have been investigating Smith’s work, alleging it amounted to a weaponization of the federal government against the then ex-president.
Jordain Carney and Hailey Fuchs contributed to this report.
- Hegseth to brief House Republicans on White House goals for party-line package
- Monday’s Campaign Round-Up, 6.22.26: Why Trump backed both Republicans in a key S.C. race
- Trump tries dual endorsement in South Carolina as his pick for governor flounders in polls
- Fears of an ‘economic catastrophe’ helped push Trump toward an Iran deal
- In back-to-back reversals, the Trump administration folds under pressure
- Vance touts ‘successful’ first round of U.S.-Iran talks after Trump threatens new attacks
- Turek leads Hinson in Iowa Senate poll of likely general election voters
- Capitol agenda: House GOP races to make Recon 3.0 real
- A rising populist tide is threatening New York’s powerful incumbents
- Poll: Americans draw a new line in the betting bonanza sweeping over Wall Street — politics.
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