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Congressional Republicans are racing to extend a controversial spying program before it is scheduled to lapse Friday at midnight.
House lawmakers voted 235 to 191 in a bipartisan manner to extend Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) for the rest of President Donald Trump’s term.
The vote split Republicans with more than 20 GOP privacy hawks voting against a three-year extension of the warrantless surveillance program.
The successful vote leaves the Senate little time to act before the fast-approaching April 30 deadline.
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A swath of House conservatives voted against the FISA renewal bill, citing concerns that the measure does not include more stringent privacy safeguards, such as a requirement for intelligence agencies to obtain a warrant before accessing Americans’ data.
The spy law — considered to be one of the government’s most powerful surveillance tools — allows the U.S. government to gather intelligence on foreigners abroad who are using U.S. platforms, even when those communications involve Americans.
“We should all be standing up for the Fourth Amendment,” Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, a leading GOP privacy hawk, said during debate on the FISA renewal bill Tuesday.
House leadership attempted to win over some conservative holdouts by adding language permanently banning the Federal Reserve from issuing central bank digital currencies (CBDC) to the FISA renewal bill.
But Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., has warned that the sweetener for privacy hawks will be interpreted as a poison pill in the Senate, where Democrats fiercely oppose a CBDC ban.
“They know that,” Thune told reporters Tuesday, referring to House Republicans.
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Johnson has voiced optimism that the upper chamber will take up the House bill without modifications.
“I speak with Leader Thune all the time. They’re watching this very closely, and hopefully they can process what we send them,” Johnson told Fox News Wednesday. “No one on the Republican side anyway, wants to play around with letting these critical national security tools go unfunded or expire,” he added. “So I think they’ll move it expeditiously.”
The Trump administration has pressured House Republicans for weeks to back an extension of the spy law, arguing the surveillance authority is too vital for national security to expire.
“This department strongly supports the reauthorization of FISA 702,” Department of War Secretary Pete Hegseth told lawmakers Wednesday. “It is not hyperbole to say many of the most important missions we have executed could not have happened without the intelligence gathered through FISA 702.”
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House Democrats, many of whom have fierce objections to a clean extension of the spy law, voted en masse against the measure.
“I’m suspicious. The way it’s proposed right now, particularly under this administration,” Rep. Andre Carson, D-Ind., told Fox News, referring to the FISA renewal bill. “I was more comfortable when I voted for it in 2024. Under this administration, I’m not as comfortable.”
Just 42 Democratic lawmakers, including Rep. Jim Himes, D-Conn., the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, crossed party lines in support of the measure.
“I’ve seen countless, countless instances where the intelligence obtained through section 702 quite literally saved lives,” the Connecticut Democrat said. “So, given the binary choice between reauthorization and expiration, the responsible choice is reauthorization.”
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