June 10, 2026
The controversial FISA 702 government surveillance program — that has swept up millions of American citizens over the years — may go dark. The White House and national security experts are scrambling because they say this program is critical to keeping Americans safe. But right now, there aren’t enough votes in the House and the Senate to keep it going past this Friday.
Here’s the kicker — there was a bill to extend FISA 702. It was all set to pass in the House and the Senate, but then President Trump decided to appoint this guy to be the acting Director of National Intelligence. And almost immediately the bottom fell out. A bunch of lawmakers who supported the FISA extension said absolutely not — we’re not going to allow that guy, Bill Pulte, to have access to this super powerful government spy tool. I’m going to explain why in a second, and you’re going to want to hear this.
But first, let me explain FISA 702. The short, short version is this: Back in 2008, Congress enacted Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act — FISA. This section allows the U.S. government to “target” non-U.S. persons who are reasonably located outside of the United States and surveil them. And by surveil, I mean surveil. We’re talking phone calls, texts, emails, and any kind of communications you can think of. Oh, and there’s no warrant required.
The U.S. government says this FISA authority to surveil these “targets” is critical to national security, to thwarting potential attacks on the homeland, and to keeping Americans safe. They say it absolutely works and saves lives.
Oh, and just in case you’re thinking it — because I know you are — don’t worry. The law specifically says the U.S. government cannot “target” Americans on American soil.
Well, the issue is that over the years Americans have been surveilled by U.S. intelligence agencies through this 702 FISA program. The communications of Americans sometimes do get swept up when the government is focusing on collecting the communications of their non-American “targets.” And oftentimes that surveillance data that’s “incidentally” collected on Americans — meaning their personal texts, phone calls, emails, and private communications — gets put into a government database, which then can be searched by the government for other things, in some cases also without a warrant.
Formally, the U.S. government calls the search of that database a U.S. person query. Informally, it’s called a backdoor warrantless search.
And it turns out those backdoor warrantless searches are happening a lot. Millions of Americans have been swept up over the years. And the U.S. government is totally getting away with it even though we all have a Fourth Amendment right. But that’s a whole different issue. I did a whole deep dive on that, which is available on my Substack if you’re interested.
But what I want you to understand about FISA 702 is that for years there has been a faction of Democrats and Republicans who support the program because of the national security benefits, and there has been a faction of Democrats and Republicans who do not support the program because they say it needs guardrails to protect the privacy and civil rights of Americans.
Well, a few weeks ago it looked like there was enough support in the House and the Senate by Democrats and Republicans to extend FISA 702 for three more years because of some new guardrails that had been put in place.
But then — boom! President Trump nominated Bill Pulte to be the acting Director of National Intelligence. And that’s when the deal fell apart.
See, now that you understand FISA 702, it’s not a stretch to wonder what would happen if the wrong person got his or her hands on this unbelievably powerful government surveillance tool, which we already know has swept up American citizens. And guess who absolutely has access to 702? If you guessed the Director of National Intelligence, you would be right.
Bill Pulte is scheduled to take over as DNI in nine days. He has zero national security or intelligence experience, but he has a lot of experience going after President Trump’s enemies. And President Trump has admitted that he’s putting Pulte in the DNI position so he can look into past elections — and probably the midterms too.
And since Trump will not drop Pulte, lots of lawmakers are saying, “Nope. We’re not extending 702 until Pulte is gone.”
Trump has so far refused, saying he’s not going to let Democrats extort him. But the reality is that if Trump wants FISA 702 to continue, he needs Democratic votes.
So what’s going to happen?
Well, tomorrow the House Speaker is going to attempt to pass another short-term extension of FISA through July 2. Because of the mechanism he’s using, he’s going to need two-thirds of the House to say yes. If by some miracle he can pull that off, this FISA short-term extension will need 60 votes in the Senate to also pass.
If Trump refuses to get rid of Pulte, this whole thing is likely doomed. There’s no way this 702 extension will pass in either chamber.
So like I said at the very beginning, FISA 702 may go dark after Friday.
Read the letter from Democrats here.
