House urged to cancel vote on NSA spying after Trump tweets

Insisting that "everybody knows" that Trump has concerns with "other parts" of FISA than what the House voted to renew Thursday, Ryan defended Trump's familiarity with FISA despite the President's contradictory tweets. Among them was a requirement that officials get warrants in most cases before hunting for and reading emails and other messages of Americans swept up under the program.

"House votes on controversial FISA ACT today", he tweeted.

Trump attempted to clean up the confusion surrounding his tweet later Thursday morning, writing, "With that being said, I have personally directed the fix to the unmasking process since taking office and today's vote is about foreign surveillance of foreign bad guys on foreign land".

He later reversed course, after reports that he spoke to House Speaker Paul Ryan, and tweeted support of the bill, telling lawmakers to "Get smart!"

House bills in 2014 and 2015 included restrictions, but the language was removed by the Senate. The programs target people outside the U.S., but do collect the communications of Americans who communicate with the targets of spies overseas. Wednesday night, White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders urged the House to reject the alternate proposal and "preserve the useful role FISA's Section 702 authority plays in protecting American lives".

The Administration strongly opposes the "USA Rights" amendment to the FISA Amendments Reauthorization Act, which the House will consider tomorrow.

" I will tell you this, the Bill of Rights is something worth filibustering over, and the idea we should have a judicial warrant before searching an American's records is worth filibustering for", Paul said. The key votes in support of the GOP House leadership effort came from Democrats, including Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and House Intelligence Committee Ranking Member Adam Schiff (D-CA).

Critics contend that the extension will be used by government agencies to spy on Americans without warrants.

The House has passed a bill to reauthorize a key foreign intelligence collection program with an important tweak: It requires the Federal Bureau of Investigation to get a warrant if it wants to view the contents of Americans' communications swept up in the process.

But civil liberties advocates on the right and left say they fear Americans are getting snared in the collection and they have demanded new protections before they agree to renew the law, which will expire January 19 unless Congress acts.

US President Donald Trump meets with representatives from PhRMA, the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, in the White House. They say the law has already thwarted several terrorist plots against the USA, including a planned attack on the New York City subway system.

The so-called 702 authority was put in place after the 9/11 attacks. For example, it could be used to find evidence that an American citizen isn't paying his or her taxes or has committed a minor drug offense, according to the ACLU and other civil liberties groups. About two-thirds of the Republicans voted against the amendment and about two-thirds of the Democrats voted for it, so it wasn't really a "party line" vote, but the Democrats could have pushed it through had they all supported it. Ron Wyden (D-OR) have sponsored an amendment in the Senate similar to Amash's amendment.

"It's a Democrat hoax that was brought up as an excuse, for losing an election", he said.

The amendment, proposed by Michigan Republican Justin Amash, would have required that the government get a warrant before looking through a surveillance database for information on Americans.