The House just ditched a bill that would renew and expand the FBI's surveillance powers after Trump threatened to veto it

• The House of Representatives just canceled a vote on a controversial bill that would have renewed the Patriot Act and expanded the FBI's surveillance powers after President Donald Trump said he'd veto it.
• The bill drew backlash last week from progressives and civil liberties groups, who warned it would let the FBI conduct warrantless searches of Americans' web-browsing history.
• But Trump opposes the bill for another reason: He believes it gives the Justice Department too much power when investigating political candidates, like the FBI probe into his campaign's alleged ties to Russia.

The House of Representatives abandoned a plan to pass a reauthorization of the Patriot Act Thursday after President Donald Trump tweeted that he would veto the bill if it passes.

The bill, which faced mounting opposition from privacy advocates and civil liberties groups, lost needed support from Republicans after Trump's tweet. House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer said in a statement that most of the 126 Republicans who voted for an earlier version of the bill changed their minds after Trump's tweet.

"The two-thirds of the House GOP that voted for this bill in March have indicated they are going to vote against it now at the request of POTUS. I believe this to be against the security interest of the U.S.," Hoyer said.

—Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 28, 2020

The bill would have reauthorized key provisions of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which grants surveillance powers to the FBI that were initially passed via the Patriot Act after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. Those provisions expired more than two months ago.

An earlier draft of the bill had wide bipartisan support from both Democrats and Republicans, but initially faced backlash from progressives and libertarians who warned that it included language that would allow the FBI to collect information on Americans' web-browsing history without a warrant.

An amendment to explicitly prevent such web-browsing surveillance failed by one vote in the Senate. House lawmakers passed a similar amendment earlier this week, but critics warned that its language still left loopholes the FBI could exploit to access people's web-browsing history.

But Trump appears to oppose the bill for a different reason — it would reauthorize and expand the Justice Department's powers to investigate political candidates, like the FBI's recent probe into his campaign's alleged ties to Russia. With the canceled House vote, the future of the bill remains uncertain.

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