Washington — The House is fast-tracking a bill to repeal a controversial provision that allows senators to sue for $500,000 if federal investigators search their phone records without their knowledge.

The House is poised to easily pass the bill with the necessary two-thirds majority required for passage under suspension of the rules on Wednesday evening. Senate Majority Leader John Thune said Tuesday that he wasn't sure how the upper chamber would approach the legislation, but he defended the provision allowing the lawsuits.

"The House isn't implicated in what we did. It just simply applies to the Senate," he said. "There's a statute that obviously was violated and what this does is enables people who are harmed — in this case, United States senators — to have a private right of a

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