With a key funding deadline looming, Donald Trump has once again chucked a grenade onto the Senate floor.
Friday marks the cutoff for renewal of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), one of the key pieces of legislation giving the federal government the power to collect electronic data and records as part of efforts to fight terrorist groups and collect foreign intelligence from persons and groups operating on U.S. soil.
That legislation expires in 24 hours, and Republicans have jumped right into panic mode after Democrats shot down a last-ditch effort to temporarily extend the deadline. Republicans will need Democratic votes to pass the bill through the Senate, where it needs 60 votes, and possibly the House, where a faction of libertarian conservatives with privacy concerns wants the legislation to be reworked.
But Democrats are unwilling to authorize that kind of spying power when it could potentially be placed in the hands of Bill Pulte, Donald Trump’s pick to be his interim acting director of national intelligence, replacing outgoing DNI Tulsi Gabbard. Pulte’s complete lack of a background in national security or intelligence has enraged Democrats, who look to his record at the Federal Housing Finance Agency as evidence that he would use his position to target Democrats and other perceived foes of the president. At his current post, Pulte has done just that, launching investigations into top rivals of the president, such as Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), moves that generate negative headlines but have thus far failed to yield results.
On Thursday, House Speaker Mike Johnson unleashed on Democrats for holding the bill hostage, even as Republicans have given no assurances that the White House will cease efforts to politically humiliate or worse, jail, the same members whose votes Johnson, and Senate Majority Leader John Thune, now require. Democrats and dozens of Republicans on Friday shot down an attempt by Johnson to extend FISA for three weeks while debates continue on the Hill.
“When the bill went down, they applauded. They applauded it,” Johnson fumed after the vote Friday morning.
“That record and that video is going to live in infamy. I pray that we do not have a serious calamity on our shores over the next few weeks.”
Johnson, however, knows that House Democrats are not the real problem here. Even with dozens of Republicans voting against the same bill he just faulted Democrats for opposing, the FISA bill’s fate will remain the same until a deal is made to get Senate Democrats on board with an extension. The resistance to giving Pulte powers over a sweeping surveillance state is strong in the Democratic Senate caucus, and is being led by the senior Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, Mark Warner. Warner and his counterparts on the House Jusiciary and Intelligence committees, Reps. Jamie Raskin and Jim Himes, have all rejected the idea of providing any votes for a FISA extension of any kind without Pulte’s nomination being withdrawn, with the backing of leadership.
“Whatever the period of the extension would be, I could be supportive if the law is followed, and that means that the current Trump-appointed, Senate-confirmed number two director of national intelligence is the acting during that extension period,” Warner told reporters this week. “So, if we want to keep 702 alive, the administration simply needs to follow the law and keep [Adam] Lucas.”
Himes and Raskin said in a joint statement with Democratic leadership: “We cannot in good conscience vote for reauthorization without significant reforms to protect both national security and the constitutional privacy rights of Americans. Bill Pulte has no relevant national security experience. Consequently, his appointment is in defiance of the law that requires the Director of National Intelligence to have ‘extensive’ national security experience. The apparent motivation for his elevation is the demonstrated willingness of Bill Pulte to search government databases for alleged dirt on President Trump’s chosen political enemies.”
Lucas was Trump’s initial pick for the acting DNI role after the resignation of Tulsi Gabbard last month, but he suddenly reversed course to choose Pulte, his favored political operative, for the job. Lucas has more than two decades of experience in the intelligence community, per his official bio.
And Johnson also knows that the real loser in this trade is likely to be John Thune, the Republican Senate leader. While Johnson began cultivating a close relationship with Trump practically the moment he became leader of the GOP caucus, Thune remains a close ally of former Senate GOP leader Mitch McConnell, a rival of Trump’s. This dynamic is beginning to become more clear: The Senate majority leader was excluded, per Punchbowl, from a White House meeting last week as Trump tried to save his anti-weaponization DOJ “slush fund”, and Thune himself told reporters he hadn’t spoken with Trump directly about the FISA renewal situation.
In the end, it isn’t clear how the GOP will get out of this jam, save for the White House pulling Pulte’s pick. Were that to happen, Thune would likely be the one to take most of the blame from Trump, if not simply due to his lack of proximity and the realities of passing anything through the filibuster threshold.
The Senate leader opened up another barrage against Democrats on the Senate floor on Thursday ahead of the deadline, but for now Democrats don’t seem to be moved by threats or warnings of national security dangers being lobbed by Republicans.
Thune claimed on Thursday: “It’s striking how weak Democrats’ ostensible “reasons” have been for all of these actions. They’re blocking a critical national security tool because they don’t like the president’s temporary, short-term pick for acting – acting – DNI.”
“We were well on our way to reauthorizing it, with Democrat and Republican lawmakers here in the Senate working on an agreement. And then – as has happened more than once this year – Democrats backed out,” he added.
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