MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:
A high-profile Democrat accused of sexual assault is just one of the things Congress will have to contend with after a two-week break. Among other pressing issues for this week's return to Washington is a Department of Homeland Security that's still technically shut down, the future of the war on Iran and expiring spy powers. NPR congressional reporter Eric McDaniel is here in the studio to tell us more. Good morning, Eric.
ERIC MCDANIEL, BYLINE: Hey, good morning.
MARTIN: OK. So we just heard about the California Representative Eric Swalwell dropping out of the California governor's race. What about the House? What's his future looking like there?
MCDANIEL: Well, some of his colleagues in the House, including at least half a dozen Democrats, are threatening to kick him out if he doesn't voluntarily resign. They could, in fact, pair this with action against a couple embattled representatives all at once. Swalwell, as you heard early in the program, denies wrongdoing. He apologizes to his wife for mistakes. Suffice it to say, a huge fall from grace for one of the Democratic Party's most visible Trump attack dogs.
MARTIN: And certainly more to come on that story. So let's turn to the war in Iran. Peace talks between the U.S. and Iran ended without any substantive agreement. President Trump says now that the U.S. military will blockade Iranian ports that use the Strait of Hormuz. How is Congress reacting to that?
MCDANIEL: Well, hawkish Republicans say they're not particularly surprised, that they never expected Iran to negotiate in good faith with the United States and that failed talks should have been kind of the baseline expectation. Democrats are incensed over President Trump's threat to end Iranian civilization last week, as well as some more inflammatory comments. More than three dozen Democrats have called for him to be removed from office. This week, they'll have more show votes on the war, which is a reminder that Congress, in fact, has the constitutional power to declare war and was never asked by the White House to approve this campaign at all. Those votes, though, are expected to fail. But they're designed to put Republicans on record about this war, which remains hugely unpopular with the American public.
MARTIN: And as if that weren't enough, the keystone authority of American spy powers has to be renewed this week. Will you tell us about that?
MCDANIEL: Sure. This is kind of a fun one to cover. It's called FISA Section 702. FISA meaning the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. The government collects calls, texts, emails of more than 300,000 foreign nationals located outside of the United States each year without a warrant. The information they collect amounts to something like 60% of the president's daily intelligence briefing, so it's really important for the U.S. intelligence program.
The controversy is that those foreign nationals, of course, sometimes talk to people in the U.S. Privacy advocates, including Democrats and Republicans, say reviewing those communications in this big, old file cabinet of FISA information should require a specific court order with evidence of possible crooked behavior. They say it's what's required by the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution, which, of course, enshrines privacy protections for folks in the U.S. and Americans everywhere. The FBI and intelligence agencies say, well, that would be dangerous. Thousands of warrant asks could jam up the courts, slow things down. All that to say, they have to litigate this. And it expires in a week next Monday.
MARTIN: And they also have the longest agency shutdown ever to fix.
MCDANIEL: Right. Good point. This is the Department of Homeland Security. You've been hearing about it for months now. Republicans are proposing a two-track approach here to get it open. The first is a short-term bipartisan thing to reopen the whole agency minus some immigration enforcement money. That makes sure folks like airport security get paid, though Trump bypassed Congress to pay them already. Constitution, again, says that's Congress' job to figure out.
Then there's this longer-term project to fund the whole agency for the rest of Trump's term, another three years, that Republicans will have to do alone. The issue here is that Republican leadership have proposed this plan, but Speaker Mike Johnson was against it before he was for it. Before they left town, he called it a joke. And now he has to convince all the skeptics in House rank and file that, I guess, he's no longer kidding around.
MARTIN: OK. That is NPR's Eric McDaniel, who's going to be busy. Eric, thank you.
MCDANIEL: Thank you.
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