A law that became the subject of scrutiny following surveillance on 2016 Trump campaign aide Carter Page is up for renewal with an April 20 deadline, and the debate is creating unusual battle lines.
The debate centers on whether reforms should be made to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) Section 702, or if there should be a “clean” extension of the law. FISA allows for the federal government to gather foreign intelligence, but some critics have warned that it opens the door for Americans to be spied on in the process.
President Donald Trump is asking for a “clean 18-month” extension of the law, saying that it is an “effective tool to keep Americans safe” when “used properly.” He noted that “whether you like FISA or not, it is extremely important to our Military,” noting it could be useful during the ongoing military operation in Iran.
“HOWEVER, the Critical and Common Sense Reforms that were made in the last Reauthorization of FISA must remain intact to protect the American People from abuses,” Trump posted to Truth Social on March 25.
The president said he “was a victim of the worst and most illegal abuse of FISA in our Nation’s History, by Radical Left Lunatics who lied to the FISA Court to spy on my 2016 Presidential Campaign in their attempt to RIG the Election in favor of Crooked Hillary Clinton.”
In 2024 when President Joe Biden was in office, Trump asked Congress to “KILL FISA” in a Truth Social post, saying “IT WAS ILLEGALLY USED AGAINST ME, AND MANY OTHERS.” The FBI ended up issuing an apology in 2020 for how it pursued FISA warrants against Page over alleged Russian connections, as he was never prosecuted.
The House has been in recess, but returns to work this week, when Speaker Mike Johnson plans to raise the renewal.
Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-FL) has said that she wants the SAVE America Act, an election security bill, to be tacked onto the FISA vote, which was a point of contention between her and Johnson, according to Axios. Even though the SAVE America Act has passed the House, it has struggled to gain the momentum necessary to pass in the Senate.
Meanwhile, Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO) has declared “warrants or bust” in order to get her vote on the legislation, as she wants more barriers in place to review American communications gathered under FISA, according to Politico.
Some congressional Democrats have joined in on the calls for reforms, but their concerns relate to weaponization by the Trump administration.
“Any attempt to push forward a ‘clean’ reauthorization of Section 702 will put our private, sensitive data at risk,” Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-WA) said in a March 19 statement.
“This Trump administration has been particularly brazen in its use of domestic surveillance to suppress our Constitutional rights and dissent,” she added.
However, some Democrats, like Rep. Jim Himes (D-CT), have faced left-wing backlash for their decision to support a FISA renewal.
“It is our most important intelligence collection tool … every day it stops terrorist attacks somewhere in the world,” Himes said, according to Connecticut Public Radio on March 31.
Matthew R.A. Heiman, Chairman of the Cyber & Privacy Working Group of the Regulatory Transparency Project, told The Daily Wire that “to the extent that [FISA] picks up Americans communications, it’s incidental.”
“Members of both sides, multiple boards and committees, have looked at this tool now for almost 20 years that it has been used, and they consistently find that the tool is really effective in terms of delivering important intelligence, and the misuses of the tool have been largely accidental,” Heiman said.
“And so it’s not a tool that’s been heavily abused, or there’s been malicious intent when there’s a mistake made,” he said.
“I think the Americans should support renewal of this tool, because it’s really important for all of our safety,” he continued.
