House Speaker Mike Johnson provided the deciding vote against an amendment that would have required the government to obtain a warrant (like the 4th Amendment requires) before it could spy on its own citizens. From Will Porter at antiwar.com:
An effort to force federal agencies to obtain warrants before snooping on Americans was narrowly shot down
US lawmakers have passed a bill reauthorizing the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), a law which allows the government to surveil American citizens without a warrant. A small group of Republicans previously blocked the vote but allowed it to proceed following a minor amendment to the law.
The two-year extension passed the House on Friday in a bipartisan vote of 273-147, with 126 Republicans and 147 Democrats supporting the bill, which will now proceed to the Senate. Though lawmakers also debated an amendment that would have forced federal agencies to obtain warrants before spying on Americans, it failed in a tie vote.
“This is how the Constitution dies… This is a sad day for America,” Republican Rep. Thomas Massie said after the amendment went “down in flames.” He noted that House Speaker Mike Johnson provided the tie-breaking vote to kill the warrant requirement.
Though Johnson was once a vocal critic of FISA’s Section 702 – which handed US intelligence agencies sweeping powers to spy on Americans in the wake of the 9/11 attacks – he quickly reversed course after his promotion to House speaker.
“When I was a member of [the House Judiciary Committee], I saw all of the abuses of the FBI – there were terrible abuses, over and over and over,” Johnson told reporters earlier this week, explaining his about-face.
