Thread by @RepThomasMassie

🧵 Many people have been misled today.

There was not a vote on the FISA bill.

There was a vote on a resolution that would have allowed FISA, as well as 6 amendments to it, including a warrant requirement amendment, and three other pieces of legislation to come to the floor.

On partisan procedural votes like this, Democrats reflexively vote no and Republicans typically vote yes.

19 Republicans voted with all the Democrats to stop everything from coming to the floor today, including the warrant amendment to FISA.

Many of us who are adamantly opposed to warrantless surveillance voted for the resolution, wanting to get a recorded vote on warrants, and recognizing the Speaker can otherwise suspend the rules and bring anything to the floor without a resolution, like he did with the omnibus.

Tactically, whether the 19 did the best thing or not is TBD.

They may have just stopped our only chance to have a vote on whether the government needs a warrant to spy on you.
That vote might not have passed, but everyone would have had to go on the record for the world to see.

So what we had was a difference of tactics, with members like Jim Jordan, MTG, Warren Davidson, myself, and other defenders of the Constitution parting ways with those who saw an opportunity to temporarily throw a wrench in things by voting with Nancy Pelosi and Adam Schiff.

Now that the rules resolution for the bill + amendments has failed, the swamp could:

1) suspend the rules to pass a worse FISA

2) make concessions and improve the rules for the bill

3) say they don’t need a new bill to keep FISA going, or

4) let the senate move first on FISA

Here’s the speech I gave on the floor today, encouraging folks to vote for the resolution to bring the warrant requirement amendment to the floor today, and to vote against FISA if that amendment did not pass. The resolution to allow this did not pass.