House overturns Senate's $500k perk for seized phone records

• It's the second time the House has voted to overturn the measure, but the repeal has been stalled in the Senate, where Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) has refused to bring it up for a vote.
• The repeal will be attached to a package of six government funding bills, forcing the Senate to either accept it or shut down the government.
• Parts of the government will shut down Jan. 30 if the Senate does not pass the package.

Catch up quick: The lawsuit provision was enacted after a group of GOP lawmakers learned that their phone records were seized by former Special Counsel Jack Smith as part of his probe into the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol.

• The legislation allows senators, and only senators, to retroactively sue the federal government for hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars.
• It was quietly tucked into the bill that ended the record-long government shutdown in November.
• Had the House moved to strip the provision from the funding package, it would have prolonged the shutdown.

Flashback: House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) told reporters at the time he had not been aware of the measure until after the Senate passed it.

• "I think it was a really bad look," the speaker said in November.
• After frustrations from House members boiled over, Johnson brought the repeal up for a vote in the House, where it passed unanimously.

Between the lines: The episode has fueled tensions between Johnson and Thune.

• "The law that was violated was a statute that only affected the Senate," Thune told reporters in November. "We drafted this whole thing not to in any way implicate the House."

Yes, but: Some Republican senators have expressed concern about the provision, and Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) said in November he supports repealing it.