Congress is about to stage one of its annual spectacles: reauthorizing Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.
Normally, this is an already messy affair, but President Trump has decided to spice things up by suggesting that Republicans attach the SAVE America Act to the must-pass FISA bill.
The result is a headache for House Speaker Mike Johnson.
“Maybe you put them together, because a lot of people feel very strongly about FISA,” Trump told House Republicans at their retreat last week.
That might be the understatement of the year.
The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA, was created to let the US government collect intelligence on foreigners. In theory, it targets only non-US citizens abroad. In reality, it has become a tool for sweeping up Americans’ communications on a massive scale.
Section 702, the part now up for reauthorization, allows intelligence agencies to grab emails, texts, and calls from foreign targets and, in doing so, they routinely capture the American side of those conversations.
This incidental collection has become anything but incidental. The FBI treats Section 702 data as a domestic treasure trove, conducting millions of warrantless searches of Americans’ communications each year.
It effectively bypasses the Fourth Amendment, giving federal agencies legal cover to monitor Americans without warrants, often funneling the information into ordinary criminal investigations. FISA’s original promise of balancing security and privacy has been eroded by decades of routine overreach.
GOP leadership had been planning a clean extension, but Trump’s intervention opens the door for a faction of conservatives, led by Rep. Anna Paulina Luna, to insist on a legislative package deal.
Luna didn’t vote to reauthorize FISA in 2024, but she and other SAVE supporters are already signaling they will use their leverage to shape the House floor debate.
Johnson likely has the votes to pass FISA with bipartisan support, but the rule vote, the procedural step determining how the floor debate proceeds, is the real landmine. Conservatives have yet to announce support, and procedural votes have long been the preferred weapon for those who want leverage without responsibility.
Hellbound and Down 