In the midst of one of his early morning social media snits, Donald Trump thumped out an all-caps “KILL FISA” insisting that the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act was used to spy on his campaign. Trump’s timing wasn’t coincidental, as Speaker of the House Mike Johnson had scheduled a rule vote on Wednesday to bring the FISA bill up for reauthorization.
It’s the kind of thing that should have gone along without an issue. During both tenures of former Speaker Nancy Pelosi, the number of rule votes lost was zero. Throw in former Speakers Paul Ryan and John Boehner and it’s still zero.
But today, as time for this routine vote approached, the most MAGA of MAGA began to peel away. First to slip from Johnson’s none-too-tight control was Rep. Matt Gaetz who announced that what he called “the national security state” had used the FISA courts to violate the law “more than 278,000 times.” Close behind was Rep. Anna Paulina Luna. And she didn’t leave any doubt about who was running the show.
Soon enough, more radical Republicans had broken away, and when it came time for the actual vote, Johnson lost. For the fourth time.
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