Inside the House GOP’s surveillance law nightmare

House Republicans are plunging headlong into another divisive debate — this time over government spy powers, a battle that pits them against each other and reveals deep-seated uncertainty about their party’s ideological direction.

Reapproving the section of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act known as Section 702, which allows the intelligence community to collect and search through the communications of foreign targets without a warrant, was always going to be difficult given the sour relationship between some Republicans and the FBI. But that skepticism, which dates back to the FBI’s initial...