President Donald Trump called on Congress to extend the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) Section 702 for 18 months. While FISA was intended to surveil foreigners to provide security, it was expanded and abused to illegally surveil Americans.
“When used properly, FISA is an effective tool to keep Americans safe. For these reasons, I have called for a clean 18-month extension,” the President posted on Truth Social Wednesday. “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.”
The House is set to vote on a bill that will extend Section 702 of FISA for 18 months without any additional reforms in mid-April. Speaker Mike Johnson had hoped to hold the vote this month, but some Republicans oppose the legislation because FISA allows the US intelligence community to collect the data of Americans without a warrant.
FISA was initially passed into law in 1978. In 2002, the George W. Bush administration began using the law to collect massive amounts of data on Americans. In 2008, Congress amended the law to include Section 702, allowing for the mass collection of Americans’ data.
Extending FISA could be a challenging political issue for both Johnson and Trump, who were vocal opponents of the law. Before becoming Speaker of the House, Johnson was a critic of FISA who called for requiring the US government to get a warrant before collecting the information of Americans. When FISA was last up for renewal in 2024, Trump called on Congress to “kill FISA.”
President Donald Trump is himself a victim of FISA abuses. “Nobody understands this better than me, as I 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,” Trump wrote on Truth Social.
During the 2016 election, the intelligence community used fake evidence to generate FISA warrants against members of the Trump campaign. While the wrongdoing was exposed, no one faced jail time for the illegal surveillance of a presidential nominee.
In his post on Truth Social, Trump attempted to justify his reversal by arguing that FISA was important to protecting troops waging war against Iran.
“With the ongoing successful Military activities against the Terrorist Iranian Regime, it is more important than ever that we remain vigilant, PROTECT our Homeland, Troops, and Diplomats stationed abroad, and maintain our ability to quickly stop bad actors seeking to cause harm to our People and our Country.” He added, “The fact is, whether you like FISA or not, it is extremely important to our Military.”
The FISA extension passed in 2024 included some reforms to the law. However, rather than restricting mass surveillance, the reforms expanded enforcement.
