House Republicans are in chaos again as conservatives derail a key surveillance bill

WASHINGTON — A band of hard-right agitators, backed by former President Donald Trump, revolted against GOP leaders Wednesday, blocking renewal of a powerful surveillance program that is set to expire next week and throwing the GOP-led House into chaos once again.

Nineteen conservatives broke with Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., and his leadership team and voted down a "rule"; the vote was 193-228. It's yet another example of a minority of Republicans using the otherwise procedural vote to prevent the House from debating their own party's legislation.

It was the seventh time this Congress — and the fourth under Johnson — that Republicans have taken down their own rule, according to a review by NBC News.

Given the party's minuscule margin, Wednesday's Republican revolt effectively derailed — for now — carefully crafted compromise legislation to reauthorize Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.

After the vote, Johnson scheduled a special closed-door meeting of House Republicans for later Wednesday afternoon, but there was no breakthrough after more than an hour. It's unclear whether Congress will be able to renew 702, which the administration says is a critical national security tool, before it expires on April 19.

"We will regroup and reformulate another plan," Johnson told reporters. "We cannot allow Section 702 of FISA to expire. It's too important to national security."

One option now is that the Senate could send the House a clean, short-term extension of FISA with no reforms. "It's a fact — if FISA goes down we'll likely extend current FISA. Stupid," said moderate Rep. Don Bacon, R-Neb., a member of the Armed Services Committee. "They'll end up with the worst option."

The current FISA tool allows the