Speaker Mike Johnson is planning to hold a vote next month on a stand-alone bill to reauthorize a controversial spy power, he told POLITICO in an interview Thursday.

It appears to be the first time Johnson has specified a timeline for bringing back up a floor vote on a bill to reauthorize Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. He’s already had to punt on the legislation two times, given deep divisions within his own ranks, and Republicans acknowledge persistent splits over the issue haven’t faded.

Congress has until April 19 to extend or make changes to the foreign surveillance power, which targets non-citizens outside of the United States but has come under fire because of its ability to sweep in American information.

“The current plan is to run FISA as a standalone the week after Easter,” Johnson said during an interview at the GOP retreat at the Greenbrier resort in West Virginia. That timing would put a vote the week of April 8, when the House is slated to return from a two-week recess.

That commitment runs contrary to some fears that Johnson might attach a short-term extension of Section 702 to a government funding bill that leaders hope to clear next week. That possibility has caused significant heartburn for privacy hawks, who are hoping to make changes to the current law before reauthorizing.

During the interview, the speaker said his current plan is to stick with legislation that was negotiated by leadership and members of the Judiciary and Intelligence committees.

Under that deal, Republicans on the two committees were expected to get amendment votes on their biggest priorities that weren’t included in the bill. But Johnson pulled the bill after Republicans on the Intelligence Committee threatened to block it from getting to the floor, citing two amendments proposed by privacy hawks. Those sticking points haven’t been resolved.

“The current deliberation is how to handle the two major amendments that are still pending,” Johnson said, referring to the two amendments.

One of those proposals would require a warrant, with some built-in exceptions, before searching the data for any information related to Americans — a higher standard that security advocates argue would neuter the authority. The second amendment would prevent data brokers from selling consumer information to law enforcement.

Senate Commerce Chair Maria Cantwell isn’t ruling out an eventual vote on the House-passed TikTok bill that could eventually ban it from app stores. But she’s still considering possible changes to the text.

Cantwell (D-Wash.) said she hopes to move legislation “soon,” though she indicated she would prefer “more robust” legislation, like her own alternative proposal she unsuccessfully tried to add to a defense bill last year. That legislation would have empowered the Commerce Department to ban foreign-owned apps like TikTok. Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo has publicly backed that proposal.

“We were trying something a little more robust and long term, but we’ll consider this and hopefully we’ll figure out how to get the American people something that minimizes data collection and protects them,” she told reporters.

“We want something that’s constitutional that could do the job,” Cantwell said. “We haven’t heard from everybody.”

Asked about some of her former aides who are now lobbying on behalf of TikTok, Cantwell laughed: “I didn’t even know that.”

Cantwell indicated she hasn’t yet spoken to Majority Leader Chuck Schumer following the overwhelming bipartisan House vote on the TikTok bill, which would force the Beijing-based ByteDance to either sell it or face a ban from app stores. She also wanted to speak with the leaders of the Senate Intelligence Committee — Sens. Mark Warner (D-Va.) and Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) — both of whom have said they support the House bill.

The Senate confirmed Dennis Hankins to become ambassador to Haiti, as the Caribbean nation faces a crisis of gang violence and a vacuum of elected leadership.

The Senate voted 89-1 to confirm Hankins. John Kennedy (R-La.) was the only vote against.

A 38-year U.S. foreign service veteran, Hankins has worked in Sudan and Congo and served as ambassador in Mali and Guinea. He is currently a foreign policy adviser in the National Guard Bureau at the Pentagon.

Haiti is viewed as one of the toughest diplomatic postings. Earlier this week, the U.S. dispatched an elite unit of Marines to help secure the U.S. Embassy in Haiti as the country faces a turbulent political transition and widespread violence at the hands of powerful gangs. Nonessential embassy staff were airlifted out of Haiti last weekend.

Biden nominated Hankins back in May 2023 after the embassy had already been without a Senate-confirmed leader for 19 months.

The last ambassador, Michele Sison, ended her tour of duty in October 2021 after three years. And the former Special Envoy to Haiti Daniel Foote resigned in 2021 after disagreement with what he called the Biden administration’s “inhumane” deportation policy on Haiti.

This is the second time in recent months that the Senate has moved to confirm an ambassador as a nation erupted in crisis. Ambassador to Israel Jack Lew was confirmed with a tight margin on Oct. 31, weeks after the Oct. 7 Hamas attack.

WHITE SULPHUR SPRINGS, West Virginia — The head of the House GOP campaign arm has some advice for Republicans who aren’t sure how to handle Donald Trump in battleground districts: “embrace him.”

Rep. Richard Hudson (R-N.C.) isn’t personally pressuring anyone to do so, saying in an interview with POLITICO that candidates need to decide how to handle their own individual races. But generally, he said boosting the GOP’s presumptive presidential nominee is a winning strategy across districts.

“I was one of the first people that endorsed Trump this cycle, and I’m proud to run with him. I think he’s a net positive everywhere for us. So if somebody asked, I tell them, ‘embrace him, he’s our nominee.’ I mean, he’s wildly popular everywhere right now. He’s winning every battleground state,” Hudson said.

Top GOP leaders, including the House Republican Congressional Committee chair, have been bullish about their chances of retaking the majority at the annual GOP policy conference this week at Greenbrier Resort in West Virginia. They’ve cited President Joe Biden’s low polling numbers in battleground states and his struggles to address the influx of migrants at the border.

Hudson declined to say how many seats he predicts Republicans will win, calling such a question a “gotcha” if they fall short — likely remembering the embarrassment former Speaker Kevin McCarthy suffered after estimating the House GOP would win more than 60 seats in 2022, a “red wave” forecast that never materialized.

Both Hudson and Speaker Mike Johnson have so far avoided making any such grand claims, apart from projecting they will retain control of the chamber. Instead, Hudson merely said he thought they’d be fighting Democrats for “somewhere between 25 and 30 seats.” Johnson has said he believes as many as 37 races are in play this cycle.

To help win those seats, Hudson said the party needs to handle the abortion issue differently. In presentations to members and candidates, Hudson has recommended they clearly state their position on the matter, arguing that it was a “mistake” for the party to stay silent on it last cycle and allow Democrats to define their abortion stances.

“Last cycle, Democrats spent over $500 million telling voters what their voting position was. And Republicans kept quiet on it, and looking back on that — that was a big mistake,” Hudson said.

After doing some polling and hosting focus groups in battleground districts, he said Republican leaders concluded: “We don’t have a policy problem, we have a branding problem.”

“We have a wide variety of positions on this that range from states rights to some reasonable limits on abortion. So, we’re kind of across the spectrum, just like the American people are,” Hudson said.

House Republican leaders spent a reported $40,000 in January to replace the official pin given to all members to show they had been sworn into the 118th Congress — a midterm expense driven by a confluence of factors, including that members on both sides of the aisle didn’t like the color.

Behind the decision to throw out the pin issued to 435 lawmakers: politics. Republicans believed that the outgoing Democratic majority of the 117th Congress picked the bright green color in honor of the Green New Deal, a progressive policy conservatives revile.

“I heard some guys and gals grumbling that it’s an environmental tribute or something like that — which, hey, I like the color green, I have a lot of John Deere equipment in that color,” said Rep. Doug LaMalfa (R-Calif.), a rice farmer who serves on the committees on Agriculture and Natural Resources.

“But those of us in resource-based districts get really tired of how big environment groups are already kicking our heads in over how bad we are. … I think there’s some fatigue about the environment being used as a weapon.”

Those suspicions were echoed by more than a half-dozen other lawmakers, who were granted anonymity to share details of private conversations. It turns out the suspicions were right.

Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.), who was chair of the House Administration Committee in the previous Congress, helped choose the pin design for the current Congress. The committee has jurisdiction over developing and issuing the pins.

She told E&E News she had, in fact, picked green for its environmental connotations.

“The first time I was chair of the committee, I asked kind of too late and was told, ‘It’s already been done, the sergeant-at-arms did everything,’” said Lofgren, referring to the House’s chief law enforcement officer. “So the next time I was chair, I decided I was going to ask in advance to be involved.”

She said the pins typically “all look kind of boring, and the other thing is, they’re either red or blue, and it’s like, OK, we divide up the country as red and blue — why don’t we do something that is not red and blue, but is neutral, right? And I thought, something that is a symbol for a clean environment. So I thought, green.”

Lofgren is now the ranking member on the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology and a co-sponsor of a nonbinding resolution expressing federal support to institute a Green New Deal.

Rep. Chellie Pingree (D-Maine), the ranking member on the House Interior-EPA Appropriations Subcommittee, upon learning of Lofgren’s motivations, said, “That makes me like it even more.”

Some ditched pins altogether

Pingree still wears the green pin, as does Lofgren and many other lawmakers.

While House members are required to wear official pins to move freely about the Capitol, gain access into restricted areas, and walk onto the House floor to vote and participate in legislative business, they don’t technically have to wear the pins issued at the start of the current Congress.

The pin they choose just have to have been issued by Capitol law enforcement, and long-serving lawmakers have an assortment to choose from in their personal collections.

According to current House Administration Chair Bryan Steil (R-Wis.), the problem with the green pin was that members weren’t wearing it — or any pin.

“I know a lot of members weren’t wearing them, and that puts a challenge on the police force,” Steil said in an interview, adding it was “a decision by the sergeant-at-arms” to change the color to something more members would want to display, for whatever reason — for politics or personal preference or otherwise.

Unlike Lofgren, Steil intimated he wasn’t closely involved in the redesign process but that he thought the new, dark blue pins “look great.”

This explanation — that it was the sergeant-at-arms’ decision to acquire new pins — at least partially contradicts previous assumptions that the House GOP majority had followed a year of historic congressional dysfunction by spending a massive amount of money on accessories based on a style preference.

“Every Congressional session we get a new pin — it’s our ID on the floor for the next 2 years. Today we’re getting a new pin, half way through the term because the @HouseGOP didn’t like the color,” Rep. Sean Casten (D-Ill.) tweeted at the time. “Big congrats to them on their first tangible accomplishment of the 118th.”

A representative from the House sergeant-at-arms did not return multiple requests for comment for this story, or for confirmation that the pin switch cost $40,000, as previously reported by Semafor and The New York Times.

‘I’m proud of my green one’

Rep. Joe Morelle of New York, now the top Democrat on the House Administration Committee, could not confirm Steil’s explanation because he said Democrats were not consulted about the decision.

Still, Morelle said, he did frequently have to tell colleagues last year not to wear “counterfeit pins” — badges individual members had had made by a third party they liked better for whatever reason.

“There were a number of members who had self-styled pins that they were wearing that hadn’t been issued by the House,” he said. “I encouraged a number of them not to wear pins that were not issued by the sergeant-at-arms, for security reasons.” Morelle did not specify whether these were Democratic or Republican colleagues, or both.

Pingree also said she heard rumors of “somebody who manufactured a bunch of pins on their own and were handing them out to people — one of my colleagues … someone who went somewhere and got their own pins because they didn’t like the green.”

Yet even with the distribution of new pins, complaints have persisted. Some lawmakers have questioned the quality control on the pins, saying they are flimsily made. Others are still incensed about the decision to issue replacements on principle.

Rep. Scott Peters (D-Calif.), when encountered recently in a Capitol Hill hallway, was visibly angry and shaking his lapel on which his green pin remained fastened. He said he “earned” his pin with each election to the House, and has, for every Congress, named his pin for the opponent he defeated.

In the 118th Congress, that name was “Corey” for Republican challenger Corey Gustafson.

“I feel very strongly we should stick by our security traditions,” he said. “I’m proud of my green one.”

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer is calling for new elections in Israel, describing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government as an “obstacle to peace” amid his country’s ongoing war in Gaza.

Schumer, the highest-ranking Jewish official in U.S. history, urged Israel to “do better,” citing the estimated tens of thousands of Palestinian civilian casualties caused by the Netanyahu government’s military offensive aimed at neutralizing the terrorist group Hamas.

The New Yorker said Israel “must make some significant course corrections” as the conflict nears the half-year mark, according to excerpts of remarks his office released ahead of his Thursday floor speech on the matter.

“The Netanyahu coalition no longer fits the needs of Israel after Oct. 7,” Schumer said in floor remarks. “The world has changed — radically — since then, and the Israeli people are being stifled right now by a governing vision that is stuck in the past.”

As progressive Squad member Summer Lee fights through a tough Pittsburgh-area primary, she is getting a volley of centrist super PAC opposition spending.

The Moderate PAC, which aims to support centrist Democrats, is running a television ad against Lee, one of the eight members of the Squad, in Pennsylvania’s 12th District. The spot, first shared with POLITICO, accuses Lee of having an “extreme socialist agenda.” Ty Strong, the PAC’s president, said it is supported by a $270,000 buy.

The group supports Lee’s challenger, Democratic Edgewood Borough Council Member Bhavini Patel. Its ad emphasizes Patel being a first-generation college student raised by a single mother.

This is the first outside spend of the race on the airwaves. Earlier this week, Patel started running her first television ad, which went after Lee for wanting to “dismantle” the Democratic Party and “undermine” President Joe Biden.

That ad was backed by a $60,000 buy, according to ad tracker AdImpact. Lee, who is in her first term, is not yet on air but is a strong fundraiser who will be able to. (She had about $1.2 million on hand at the end of 2023, according to her most recent campaign finance disclosures.)

Pennsylvania’s primary is on April 23. Squad members have been bracing for massive spending against them from outside groups like the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, which has vowed to drop $100 million this cycle to oust progressives for their support for Palestinians amid the Israel-Hamas war.

Moderate PAC is a much smaller, less-established entity, formed last cycle, and its strength this year remains to be seen.

In 2022, it spent around $750,000 in support of Democratic Maine Rep. Jared Golden, and more than $15,000 backing Rep. Don Davis in North Carolina. The anti-Lee spot is Moderate PAC’s first expenditure of the cycle, Strong said.

The group reported receiving just $35 last year, according to filings with the Federal Election Commission. It received $1 million in 2022 from GOP megadonor Jeff Yass. Strong said the ad is funded by donations raised recently in Lee’s district.

Rep. Cory Mills has returned to Washington after staging an independent rescue mission in Haiti to evacuate 10 Americans stuck in the unstable and violent situation unfolding in the Caribbean nation.

The 10 Americans had worked at an orphanage in the Haitian capital, Port-au-Prince. The rescue was coordinated with Rep. Lisa McClain (R-Mich.), and among those rescued was author Mitch Albom. The orphanage, Have Faith Haiti, is operated by A Hole in the Roof Foundation, a nonprofit founded by Albom.

“I have to extend my deepest gratitude to him and his team for getting our Michiganders home safely,” McClain posted about Mills’ (R-Fla.) operation.

Mills blames the Biden administration for what he called “a clear pattern of abandonment” of Americans abroad in crisis zones.

The White House did not immediately comment in response to Mills’ criticism.

Mills has now gained a reputation for staging these missions after bringing more than 90 Americans back from Israel in the wake of the Oct. 7 Hamas attack and an overland rescue of an American family from Afghanistan after the Taliban took control in 2021.

Mills served in Iraq with the 82nd Airborne Division before winning his House seat in 2023.

“I have conducted rescue/ evacs of Americans multiple times when Joe Biden has deserted them,” he posted on social media.

On Wednesday the U.S. dispatched an elite unit of Marines to help secure the U.S. Embassy in Haiti as the country faces a turbulent political transition and widespread gang violence in the absence of a new leader. Marines, who routinely provide security at diplomatic sites, helped airlift nonessential embassy staff out of Haiti over the weekend.