Congress approved a second short-term extension of the government’s foreign surveillance program Thursday, granting a 45-day reprieve just hours before the program was set to expire — leaving unresolved a years-long dispute over whether federal law enforcement should need court approval before searching through Americans’ data collected under the authority.
The House voted 261 to 111 in favor of the stopgap extension for Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, a program that allows U.S. intelligence agencies to intercept the electronic communications of foreign individuals located outside the country. Each year, nearly 350,000 foreign targets whose communications are collected under FISA 702 may interact with Americans, meaning their calls, texts, and emails can end up in the federal database available for review without a separate warrant.
A bipartisan coalition of privacy advocates in both chambers has pushed for nearly two decades to add a warrant requirement before federal agents can search that database for an American’s communications — arguing the practice violates Fourth Amendment protections. Intelligence officials argue the warrant requirement would undermine the program’s effectiveness against terrorism and espionage. Former NSA general counsel Stewart Baker testified in January that requiring a separate warrant for information already collected for intelligence purposes is a mistake when addressing terrorism or espionage.
Speaker Mike Johnson spent weeks attempting to assemble a longer-term deal. An attempt at a five-year extension and a separate 18-month package were both derailed by Republican dissent. A more limited reform bill that passed the House Wednesday was rejected by the Senate within 24 hours after Republican hardliners attached an unrelated provision banning a theoretical government digital currency. The Senate instead sent back the 45-day stopgap, which the House accepted. President Trump signed both the FISA extension and the DHS funding bill Thursday evening.
Republican lawmakers now have until mid-June to reach agreement on longer-term legislation, which may require bipartisan cooperation to secure the 60 Senate votes needed under standard procedure. The program’s authority has now been extended twice this month without structural reform.
South Carolina’s delegation has direct stakes in this debate. Sen. Tim Scott, who sits on the Senate Banking and Finance committees, has been a consistent voice for economic privacy protections and has previously signaled concerns about surveillance overreach affecting private financial data. Sen. Lindsey Graham, on the Senate Judiciary Committee, has historically sided with intelligence agencies on the warrant question, prioritizing national security over expanded privacy restrictions. Their divergent instincts on surveillance reflect a broader split within the Republican Party that has made a durable FISA deal elusive.
