Speaker Mike Johnson is preparing to try again to reauthorize a controversial government spy power, one day after backlash from his right flank unraveled his plans.

The House Rules Committee is expected to convene on Thursday night to tee up legislation reauthorizing Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which allows the intelligence community to collect communications from foreign targets without a warrant.

Lawmakers have been warned that they could start voting as early as 8:30 a.m. on Friday, as Republicans look to bring the surveillance legislation back to the floor and, if they can get over that first hurdle, pass the bill on Friday.

The move comes after 19 House Republicans on Wednesday blocked the bill from floor debate, the latest in a near-constant showcase of angst among conservatives. This time, members on Johnson’s right rebelled against his handling of the surveillance fight just hours after former President Donald Trump urged them to “kill” the broader surveillance law.

It’s far from clear that Johnson’s latest gambit will get him the votes he needs, even as Congress barrels toward an April 19 reauthorization deadline without a clear plan. But the decision to try to bring the bill back to the floor comes after hours spent negotiating with his holdouts.

To try to assuage his nearly 20 GOP holdouts, Johnson shortened how long the foreign surveillance power would be extended from five years to two years — teeing up another fight over government wiretapping during a second Trump term, if the GOP standard-bearer wins in November.

A handful of those “no” votes indicated Thursday that they would now vote to help bring the bill to the floor. Others sounded notes of optimism about the changes, but didn’t explicitly commit to voting to get it to the floor.

Johnson is also expected to give Rep. Warren Davidson (R-Ohio) a separate vote on his legislation preventing data brokers from selling consumer information to law enforcement. That vote is expected to likely be next week, though Davidson declined to comment on Thursday on the development.

Trump teed off against the broader surveillance law this week, complicating the GOP’s debate, even as he conflated the issues at the center of the House’s fight. Supporters of reauthorizing the warrantless surveillance power were quick to note after Trump’s comments that he also flip-flopped on his surveillance positions during his presidency, including saying he would have preferred a permanent reauthorization when he signed the last years-long extension in early 2018.

Two GOP members suggested that Trump could clarify his position — though the former president has not yet done so. If he moves toward the House’s surveillance bill, that could help Johnson shore up his vote count.

GOP leadership is hoping to pass the surveillance bill on Friday, before Johnson is expected to appear with Trump at Mar-a-Lago. The bill is aimed at bolstering the transparency and oversight of the spy power, but doesn’t include a sweeping change backed by a bipartisan coalition of privacy hawks: Requiring a warrant before searching the foreign data that the program collects for information related to Americans.

The House is expected to vote on an amendment adding that warrant requirement to the bill. Meanwhile, the Biden administration, intelligence community allies and even Johnson himself are working hard to defeat it.

To meet his ambitious goal of passing a rule for debate and the entire bill on Friday, Johnson will need to flip all but two of his 19 holdouts after Democratic leadership ruled out helping.

Some House Democrats have flirted with voting to get the bill to the floor, arguing that the national security risks of further turmoil could outweigh their typical stance of making Republicans tee up the bill on their own. But the surveillance reauthorization bill also divides Democrats, including those on the Intelligence and Judiciary committees.

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries on Thursday shot down the prospects of a procedural bailout for Johnson, telling reporters that Democrats would not help bring up a stand-alone surveillance bill. Jeffries added that Johnson had not spoken to him about the idea.

“You’ve got Democrats who aren’t necessarily supporting this bill,” Rep. Jim Himes (D-Conn.) said, noting he had briefly spoken to Jeffries. “And then there’s the larger question that has been a question since Kevin McCarthy — which is, you know, at what point is, do the Democrats stop majority dysfunction? That’s a tough political question.”

Beyond the Hill, it is not clear if the White House will embrace the two-year reauthorization — even if it comes without deal-breakers like the warrant requirement.

An individual familiar with the administration’s thinking said officials are discussing whether to instead pressure the Senate to offer up a one-year clean reauthorization.

The individual, granted anonymity due to the ongoing nature of the debate, said the administration fears that two years wouldn’t be enough time to implement and assess the effectiveness of the reforms included in the base bill.

The DOJ and NSC did not immediately reply to a request for comment.

John Sakellariadis contributed to this report.

Speaker Mike Johnson and GOP Whip Tom Emmer tried to meet into the night with many of the 19 Republicans who tanked a key procedural vote on the reauthorization of a controversial surveillance program.

The defeat on the floor Wednesday was the fourth failed procedural vote in the last six months since Johnson took the speakership.

The issue at hand: A measure to reauthorize and change Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, allowing the intelligence community to gather and sort the communications of foreign targets without a warrant.

Johnson could bring the surveillance bill’s rule back up for a vote Thursday, but the outcome of those evening meetings with FISA critics are not yet clear.

The collapse of the FISA measure followed former President Donald Trump’s social media push for lawmakers to kill the bill. That adds to the growing list of congressional priorities that Trump has scuttled in recent months, from the bipartisan border agreement in the Senate to Ukraine aid and now FISA. Johnson’s trip to Mar-a-Lago on Friday will follow a bruising week in the House.

Key schedule squeeze to look out for: The joint meeting and speech from Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida. Members have to be in their seats in the House chamber before 10:30 on Thursday morning.

Speaker Mike Johnson hauled in more than $20 million during the first quarter of the year, his office will announce Thursday in a report shared first with POLITICO.

The Louisiana Republican has worked aggressively to meet high expectations of him on the fundraising circuit, and his high intake during his first full quarter in the job indicates success breaking through with high-dollars donors his party needs to hang onto the House majority this fall.

So far, Johnson has traveled to more than 20 states for fundraising and campaigning with GOP candidates since he won the gavel in October, according to his office.

“In less than six months as Speaker, we have hit the ground running to ensure House Republicans will have the resources necessary to win in battlegrounds across America — and we cannot slow down now,” Johnson said in a statement, while also thanking supporters of the House GOP’s efforts.

One of the party’s biggest worries when Johnson claimed the speakership was whether he could keep up the torrid fundraising pace of his predecessor, former Speaker Kevin McCarthy. Johnson’s persona may be less back-slapping than McCarthy’s, but his robust first quarter indicates that he’s making progress on that front. The speaker previously told POLITICO that he’s grateful for McCarthy’s help connecting him with thick-wallet donors.

But in a sign of a challenging election cycle to come for Johnson’s conference, the House Majority PAC — the super PAC dedicated to electing House Democrats — out-raised its GOP counterpart, the Congressional Leadership Fund, during the first quarter of the year.

Senate Majority PAC, a group aligned with Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, raised $39.3 million in the first three months of 2024 — about $15 million more than its GOP counterpart.

The group ended March with $92 million in the bank, according to numbers shared first with POLITICO.

SMP is the largest Democratic outside group focused on Senate races. It will spend tens of millions of dollars to protect Democrats’ narrow majority, facing a grueling map that includes three Democrats in states that former President Donald Trump carried. Republicans may need just one seat to gain control of the chamber.

The Senate Leadership Fund, a group aligned with Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, announced earlier this week it raised $24.4 million in the first quarter and ended March with $59.5 million in the bank.

“SMP continues to break records with our fundraising because Democrats are focused and motivated on holding the Senate,” SMP President JB Poersch said in a statement. “As out-of-touch, carpetbagging GOP candidates try and use their shady wealth to buy Senate seats across the map, these resources have never been more important.”

House Republicans on Wednesday brought down their own speaker’s third attempt to reauthorize a controversial spy power — a fresh blow to the perpetually embattled Mike Johnson.

Nineteen Republicans voted to block debate on legislation that would have made changes to Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which governs communications from foreigners outside of the United States that are collected without a warrant.

Johnson pushed forward with trying to bring the bill to the floor despite growing angst on his right flank and former President Donald Trump’s urging that Republicans “KILL” the larger surveillance law. Congress now has no clear path to extending an program that administrations in both parties have touted as vital to national security before its April 19 expiration.

Speaker Mike Johnson and former President Donald Trump are preparing for a Friday appearance together at Mar-a-Lago, according to two people with direct knowledge of the planning.

The side-by-side comes as Trump, now the GOP’s presumptive presidential nominee, continues cementing his influence over congressional Republican policymaking — and as Johnson grapples with the resulting effects on his legislative agenda. Earlier Wednesday, Trump urged GOP lawmakers to “KILL” a wiretapping bill that Johnson still hopes to clear by the end of the week, despite mounting conservative skepticism.

CNN first reported the plans for a Trump-Johnson appearance in Florida.

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene met with Speaker Mike Johnson as she continues to openly discuss her motion to vacate the chair.

Greene (R-Ga.) said following the meeting that Johnson made “a lot of excuses” and that the speaker gave her no guarantees on how he would proceed on foreign aid and a controversial surveillance program.

She said he floated the idea of a Cabinet of advisers though she wouldn’t commit to supporting that idea.

“I said ‘I’ll wait and see what his proposal is on that.’ Right now, he does not have my support, and I’m watching what happens with FISA and Ukraine,” she said after the meeting, referring to the reauthorization of the controversial surveillance program, known as section 702, currently before the House.

Before the speaking meeting, Greene also said she spoke with former President Donald Trump on Tuesday prior to the presumptive Republican nominee urging House Republicans to kill an extension of the surveillance tool.

There are a growing number of signs that Speaker Mike Johnson’s right flank could scuttle House debate on a bill reauthorizing a controversial government surveillance authority.

Johnson has warned opponents that if they fail again this week — which would be the third time one corner of his conference has derailed the legislation — the Senate could try to jam them with an extension that makes no changes to Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which targets communications by foreigners outside of the United States.

On Tuesday night, the Rules Committee voted to tee up the bill to the floor, along with votes on six amendments. The House is set to vote Wednesday to greenlight debate on legislation. Congress has until April 19 to reauthorize the wiretapping authority.

House Republicans will meet for a closed-door conference Wednesday, during which they are expected to debate the 702 bill. And if the measure makes it to the floor, it’s not actually expected to get a vote until Thursday. But it’s not clear that members of the Freedom Caucus and their allies will prevent the bill from coming to the floor, or if they are just venting their frustration at both the process and Johnson.

Aides involved with the debate believed at the start of the week that they would be able to get reauthorization legislation up for debate, and the intelligence community and its congressional allies were feeling increasingly optimistic about the chances of passing a bill this week.

But anger from the right at Johnson has grown over the last 24 hours as lawmakers reconvened in Washington for the first time in two weeks. And the Louisiana Republican can only lose two of his own members to get the bill to the floor.

The House will also get a closed-door briefing Wednesday from members of the intelligence community, giving them a chance to make the pitch directly to members on a spy authority they view as a critical national security tool.

Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) has already vowed to oppose the rule if it didn’t tee up an amendment vote on a proposal to prevent data brokers from selling consumer information to law enforcement. It is not expected to get an amendment vote as part of the 702 debate, but leadership has indicated it could come up as a separate standalone this week.

“Count on me to vote against proceeding onto that legislation unless we at least have the opportunity to get votes on the things that will fix the problem. If Speaker Johnson is unwilling to fix FISA we are left wondering what he is indeed willing to fix,” Gaetz said on his podcast on Tuesday.

Rep. Tim Burchett (R-Tenn.), who is not a member of the Freedom Caucus, said he’s “leaning against” voting for the bill to be brought to the floor, though he hadn’t totally made up his mind. Rep. Ralph Norman (R-S.C.), a member of the Rules Committee, predicted the resolution teeing up debate for the spy power would fail on the floor, pointing to the number of House Republicans wearing “no spy” buttons.

And another voice in opposition emerged overnight: Former President Donald Trump, who posted on his platform Truth Social, “KILL FISA, IT WAS ILLEGALLY USED AGAINST ME, AND MANY OTHERS. THEY SPIED ON MY CAMPAIGN!!!”

The House bill does contain changes to FISA overall that would address concerns Trump mentioned in his post, which do not directly involve section 702. And Johnson had tried to allievate some of Trump’s previous concerns in a Friday letter, writing: “Had these safeguards been in place when President Trump was running for election in 2016, I am confident the baseless attack against his campaign would never have been possible. With this bill’s enactment, we are ensuring that can never happen again.”