The House voted Wednesday to extend the federal government’s warrantless surveillance program through the rest of President Donald Trump’s term, passing the measure 235-191 and leaving the Senate a narrow window to act before a Friday midnight deadline.
The vote was bipartisan in name only. More than 20 House Republicans broke with leadership and voted against renewing Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, citing concerns that the bill does nothing to protect Americans from having their private communications swept up in a program designed to target foreign nationals.
“We should all be standing up for the Fourth Amendment,” said Rep. Chip Roy (R-TX), a leading voice among the GOP’s privacy hawks, during floor debate Tuesday.
Section 702 allows the U.S. government to collect intelligence on foreigners abroad who use American platforms. The catch: when those foreigners communicate with Americans, those American communications can be collected too, without a warrant. Congress first authorized the program in 2008.
House leadership tried to break the logjam by attaching a permanent ban on Federal Reserve central bank digital currencies to the FISA renewal bill. The CBDC provision had been floated as a sweetener to win over conservative holdouts skeptical of government surveillance expansion.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) quickly poured cold water on the strategy. He warned Tuesday that the CBDC attachment would be treated as a poison pill in the upper chamber, where Democrats fiercely oppose any legislation restricting the Fed’s digital currency options.
“They know that,” Thune told reporters, referring to House Republicans who added the provision.
Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) expressed optimism that the Senate would move quickly anyway. “I speak with Leader Thune all the time. They’re watching this very closely, and hopefully they can process what we send them,” he said. “No one on the Republican side, anyway, wants to play around with letting these critical national security tools go unfunded or expire.”
The Trump administration had pushed hard for the renewal, arguing Section 702 is too vital for national security to allow it to lapse, even temporarily.
“This department strongly supports the reauthorization of FISA 702,” War Secretary Pete Hegseth told House lawmakers Wednesday during an Armed Services Committee appearance. “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.”
Most House Democrats voted against the measure. Only 42 Democratic lawmakers crossed party lines to support it, including Rep. Jim Himes (D-CT) the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee.
“I’ve seen countless, countless instances where the intelligence obtained through Section 702 quite literally saved lives,” Himes said. “So given the binary choice between reauthorization and expiration, the responsible choice is reauthorization.”
Rep. Andre Carson (D-IN) reflected the skepticism among most Democrats. “I’m suspicious. The way it’s proposed right now, particularly under this administration,” Carson told Fox News. “I was more comfortable when I voted for it in 2024.”
The Senate must now act before the program lapses at midnight Friday, April 30. With the CBDC provision attached, that vote is anything but certain.
