Tangle - Will Congress extend a controversial surveillance program?

Episode Date: April 21, 2026

On Friday, the House and Senate passed a short-term renewal of Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), reauthorizing the law until April 30. Republican leadership pivoted to the stopgap measure after a group of 20 House Republicans voted against an 18-month extension that President Donald Trump had endorsed. Congress is now expected to debate adding new privacy measures to the law before next Thursday’s deadline. Ad-free podcasts are here!To listen to this podcast ad-free, and to enjoy our subscriber only premium content, go to ReadTangle.com to sign up!Our latest video.Maritime issues have been a constant in the news this year — from drug boat strikes in the Caribbean to blockades in the Strait of Hormuz. At Tangle, we tend to focus on the issues that involve American vessels or the U.S. military. But Associate Producer Aidan Gorman wanted to dig into a story about what could be the largest fleet on the open oceans: Chinese fishing vessels. Aidan goes deep on the issue, talking to experts and surfacing the context, in the latest video on the Tangle YouTube channel. Check it out here!You can read today's podcast⁠ ⁠⁠here⁠⁠⁠, and today’s “Have a nice day” story ⁠here⁠.You can subscribe to Tangle by clicking here or drop something in our tip jar by clicking here. Take the survey: Do you think Section 702 should be reauthorized? Let us know.Our Executive Editor and Founder is Isaac Saul. Our Executive Producer is Jon Lall.This podcast was written by: Isaac Saul and audio edited and mixed by Dewey Thomas. Music for the podcast was produced by Diet 75.Our newsletter is edited by Managing Editor Ari Weitzman, Senior Editor Will Kaback, Lindsey Knuth, Bailey Saul, and Audrey Moorehead. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

From executive producer Isaac Saul, this is Tangle. Good morning, good afternoon and good evening, and welcome to the Tangle podcast, a place we get views from across the political spectrum, some independent thinking, and a little bit of my take. I'm your host, Isaac Saul, and on today's episode, we're going to be talking about FISA reauthorization. Congress just temporarily reauthorized FISA in Section 702. We're going to break down exactly what happened. share some views from the left and the right, and then you'll get my take. Before you do, though, I do want to give a quick shout out to Aidan Gorman, our associate

producer on the YouTube channel who published a new video that went up this morning on-air channel that is very much worth your time. Maritime issues have been a constant in the news this year, from drugboat strikes in the Caribbean to blockades in the Strait of Hormuz. And in Tangle, we tend to focus on the issues that involve American vessels or the U.S. military, but Aden wanted to dig into a story about what could be the largest fleet in the open ocean, Chinese fishing vessels. Aidan goes deep on the issue talking to experts and surfacing the context in the latest video on the Tangle YouTube channel. You can check it out

with a link in today's episode description or just look up Tangle News on YouTube and find it there. With that, I'm going to hand it over to John for today's main topic and I'll be back for my take. Thanks, Isaac, and welcome everybody. Here are your quick hits for today. First up, the White House announced that Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-Daremer will leave her position for a role in the private sector. In recent months, Chavez-Dremmer was accused of misusing federal funds for personal expenses and having an affair with a member of her security team, prompting an inspector general probe. Deputy Labor Secretary Keith Sonderling will serve as acting secretary until a replacement is confirmed. Number two, President Donald Trump set an informal deadline of Wednesday evening for U.S. and Iranian negotiators to reach a peace deal, saying it is highly unlikely he would support extending the current ceasefire if no deal is reached by then. Number three, Federal Bureau of Investigation Director Cash Patel filed a $250 million lawsuit against the Atlantic, alleging the magazine defamed him in a report claiming the director has engaged in excessive drinking and erratic behavior. Number four, the Supreme Court agreed to take up a case challenging Colorado's restrictions on funding for Catholic preschools due to the school's refusal to admit students based on their or their parents' sexual orientation or gender identity. And number five, Virginians are voting on a referendum on whether to temporarily approve a new congressional map expected to give Democrats a 10 to 1 advantage in the U.S. House, part of a broader mid-decade redistricting push by Democratic and Republican-controlled states.

The Senate agreed to a temporary extension of FISA. FISA, what is that? Let me remind you. Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. That extension runs until April 30th. FISA, this is important, allows the government to collect communications of non-American citizens outside of the U.S. without obtaining a warrant. It can also collect data from Americans who are in contact with foreigners.

There's a divide among House Republicans. And that derailed a vote last night. that would have extended these powers for five years. On Friday, the House and Senate passed a short-term renewal for Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA, reauthorizing the law until April 30th. Republican leadership pivoted to the stopgap measure after a group of 20 House Republicans voted against an 18-month extension that President Donald Trump had endorsed. Congress is now expected to debate adding new privacy measures to the law before next Thursday's

deadline. For context, FISA was originally enacted in 1978 as a framework for gathering physical and electronic foreign intelligence. In 2008, Congress added several amendments to the law, including Section 702, which enables U.S. intelligence agencies to collect and analyze information on non-citizens abroad for foreign intelligence purposes without a warrant. While U.S. citizens cannot be directly surveilled, their data may still be collected when they interact with a foreign surveillance target. U.S. officials have credited the program with aiding operations against terrorist leaders, but critics argue it is allowed for warrantless surveillance of Americans. Congress reauthorized a program for two years in April 24. On Wednesday, President Trump endorsed a clean extension of Section 702,

rating, while parts of FISA were illegally and unfortunately used against me in the Democratic's disgraceful witch hunt and attack in the Russia, Russia, Russia hoax, and perhaps would be used against me in the future, I am willing to risk the giving up of my rights and privileges as a citizen for our great military and country. On Thursday, GOP leadership put forward a five-year extension with new provisions, specifying that only Federal Bureau of Investigation attorneys could allow intelligence queries on U.S. citizens and requiring the Office of the Director of National Intelligence to review such cases. That proposal failed, prompting the 18-month and 10-day extension votes.

Lawmakers from both parties have sought more meaningful reform to the government. the program. Senator Ron Wyden, the Democrat from Oregon, called for closing a loophole in federal law that allows the government to buy Americans' location data without a warrant and adding protections against using artificial intelligence to conduct mass surveillance. Representative Thomas Massey, the Republican from Kentucky, offered three amendments that would create new warrant requirements, bar reverse targeting, surveilling a non-American as a means to gather intelligence on their American associate, and restrict access to information held in private data centers and other electronic communication systems.

If Congress fails to pass an extension by April 30th, the program can continue operating through March 2027, since an intelligence court recertified it last month. However, GOP leaders have indicated that they will try to reach a deal on a long-term extension in the next week. Today, we'll break down the debate over extending Section 702 with views from the right and the left, and then Isaac's take. We'll be right back after this quick break.

All right, first up, let's start with what the right is saying. Many on the right support extending Section 702, saying it is a critical intelligence tool. Some argue the program has been abused and should be repealed. Others note that prior reforms to the program have been working as intended. National Review's editors argued reauthorized FISA Section 702 again. The threat of international terrorism may not be as visible and visceral to the public as it was 25 years ago, but with the United States currently at war with the leading state sponsor of terrorism, this would be an especially inopportune time to let the legal authority for this crucial function

lapse, the editors wrote. Where Section 702 and its predecessors become controversial is that surveillance of the communications of foreigners abroad may sweep in their conversations with Americans. Of course, this has a parallel in domestic law enforcement, where even searches or surveillance with a proper warrant can sweep in communications with people other than the main target of the warrant. If Section 702 is not reauthorized, the executive branch will be back in the legal no-man's land it inhabited before 2008. The legal safeguards would lapse and rank-and-file members of the intelligence and law enforcement community could face uncertainty about whether they would

face legal jeopardy for doing their jobs, the editors said. It's a curious situation that Congress has to keep revisiting this issue on increasingly compressed timelines, when so many other laws, programs, and powers of the executive branch are authorized in perpetuity no matter how unpopular or obsolete they grow. In the dispatch, Patrick G. Eddington made the case for letting FISA's Section 702 expire. No person on U.S. soil should be the subject of intelligence collection under FISA in the first place unless they are in direct contact with a known or suspected terrorist or foreign spy. And if they are, that itself is probable cause to get a warrant for investigative purposes under the Fourth Amendment, Eddington wrote. Yet it's known that information on millions of innocent Americans

is swept up and stored for years via Section 702's Digital Dragnet. If FISA were to revert to its pre-9-11 legal form, the Justice Department and U.S. Intelligence Community could still collect foreign intelligence information on foreign entities, including terrorist organizations. The Attorney General would still be authorized to conduct warrantless surveillance on an emergency basis, but would be required to report such surveillance to the FISA court within 24 hours, Eddington said. In other words, if Section 702 expires for a time, it wouldn't be the end of FISA, but it would force a badly needed reckoning with its abuses and provide Congress with

the time to agree on a bill that would preclude such abuses in the future. On the Senate floor, Senator Chuck Grassley, the Republican from Iowa, called for reauthorizing FISA Section 702. Section 702 is an essential national security tool. That law is responsible for over 60% of the intelligence in the president's daily brief. Section 702 enables our intelligence and law enforcement communities to thwart attacks before they occur, Grassley said. It gives our military a strategic edge, allows us to hunt down foreign terrorists and rescue hostages,

and helps us defend critical infrastructure from cyber attacks. More recently, Section 702 has enabled more than 90% of six, CIA-driven synthetic drug disruptions abroad and prevented a mass-casualty terrorist attack at a Taylor Swift concert overseas. So there's no doubt that this is a powerful, critical tool to protect Americans, but there's also no doubt that powerful tools like this require strong oversight and accountability, Grassley continued. Two years ago, the Reforming Intelligence and Securing America Act, RISAA, for short, added critical and successful reforms to Section 702 in response to some abuse and overreach. In the last public audit, the FBI achieved a 99% compliance rate with its

U.S. person queries, which have also decreased sharply overall in recent years. The reforms that we imposed in RISAA are working. If it expires, so do its civil liberties protections and many of its oversight mechanisms. All right, that is it for what the right is saying, which brings us to what the left is saying. Most on the left opposed Section 702's backdoor surveillance of Americans. Some say Congress has a small window to pass bipartisan reforms. Others reject claims that intelligence agencies use the program responsibly. In just security, Ryan Goodman explored guarding FISA Section 702's backdoor. Section 702 allows U.S. intelligence agencies to collect the email, text, and phone communications

of foreign nationals located outside the U.S. As a byproduct, Americans' communications are caught in the net as well. subject to limitations that Congress introduced in 2024, the FBI can dip into that vast database to look for derogatory information on Americans, Goodman said. That backdoor allowing access to Americans communications is ripe for abuse, especially in the context of the administration's campaign to paint Antifa as an international and domestic terrorist threat. Failure to maintain Section 702 would be a tragic outcome, specifically the loss of the

course surveillance program. The interception of communications of foreign actors abroad who pose real threats would amount to the worst intelligence failures of our time, as the President's Intelligence Advisory Board explained in 2023, Goodman wrote. A solution that fits the problem is to require the Justice Department to obtain a judge's approval for the FBI to read Americans' communications. That may be good policy regardless of presidential administrations or whatever one thinks the Fourth Amendment demands. In Bloomberg, Noah Feldman wrote, Congress has a rare chance to stop warrantless searches. Section 702 effectively permits the government to collect the private information of Americans indirectly,

and it doesn't bar the government from buying data that would be unlawful for the government to collect itself or get directly from phone or internet providers, Feldman said, a bipartisan bill, the Government's Surveillance Reform Act, that would close the most important loopholes in the current law. The bill proposes to close the backdoor loophole by specifically requiring the government to get a warrant before querying and searching the names of Americans. The bill would also close the so-called data broker loophole. Longstanding federal law says phone and internet service providers

can't sell customer data directly to government agencies. But no law prohibits the government from buying the same exact information from data brokers, Feldman wrote. Congress should pass the government surveillance reform act, and the president should sign it. This moment of bipartisan agreement might not last. In the Hill, Representative Pramilla Gaiapal, the Democrat from Washington, argued FISA 702 endangers your privacy.

Protecting Americans constitutional rights while operating this surveillance program is only possible when key oversight and auditors within executive branch agencies are able to operate independently from the federal government and the president, Jayapal, said. While this Department of Justice's actions have been particularly egregious, administrations on both sides of the aisle have routinely violated Americans' privacy rights and conducted surveillance on millions of people without any warrant or justification. The FBI has a long and troubling history of spying on Americans. From the inception of the agency, we have seen disturbing surveillance of Martin Luther King Jr.,

anti-Vietnam war protesters, environmental groups, and regular U.S. persons. And we've seen how quickly surveillance abuse can spiral out of control when oversight and safeguards are torn down, Jaiapal, wrote. Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act has been misused by administrations on both sides for too long to collect the private, sensitive communications of Americans. Congress must not reauthorize it without real reforms and protections. All right, let's head over to Isaac for his take.

All right, that is it for what the left and the writer saying, which brings us to my take. When President Biden signed legislation to reauthorize Section 702 in 2024, I criticized the extension. My message then was simple. If intelligence agencies want to access the communications of American citizens, they can get a warrant. Two years later, my opinion remains as straightforward as that.

Believing that warrantless access to American communications is illegal doesn't mean there are no good arguments for it. Yes, the United States faces a multitude of threats from abroad, and giving our intelligence agencies more latitude to do their jobs is one way to try to keep the country safe. In that vein, some of the writers advocating for this extension have compelling points and unconvincing points. National Reviews editors argued under what the right is saying that, given the threat posed by Iran, this would be an especially inopportune time to let the legal authority for this crucial function lapse. I find this argument entirely unconvincing. It is always an inopportune time in the eyes of Section 702 supporters to remove this tool. Fear of foreign threats created this framework in the first place, so of course the same fear

can be used to require keeping Section 702 in place. And if letting an expire is never an option, then we'll never really know whether we can live without it, and law enforcement will never really learn to operate without it. Holding the line on civil liberties requires some level of bravery. Bravery we exercise all the time while defending our own rights. A dozen witnesses might watch someone commit a crime, but that doesn't mean the state gets to imprison that person without a trial. The accused are innocent until proven guilty. Staying committed to this ideal means allowing for the possibility that an obvious criminal could walk if the government can't prove their case, or that someone may be free on bail while they await trial. Living with that can incur costs like the potential

for someone to do harm when they could be in jail, so it requires bravery. Similarly, we all understand that bad people will try to do bad things, and I don't think there's any question that Americans' right to privacy provides for secondary protections against surveilling those bad actors. It takes a level of bravery, then, to say that the right to privacy is more important than constantly looking out for bad guys. Just as we live with the consequences of the right to a fair trial, we live with the consequences that the government can't just listen to an American's phone call because that person is talking to a non-American target of their surveillance. And just as a judge may keep someone incarcerated while they await trial if they deem that person a public safety threat, a judge may also approve of a warrant

to monitor an American citizen. If someone shows reasonable evidence, they are a threat. The same National Review editors make a much more convincing argument later in their piece, though, which is that reforms to Section 702 are already having a positive impact. More stringent reporting requirements and a higher standard for recording communications that include Americans have dramatically reduced such incidents. Representative Jim Jordan, the Republican from Ohio, who previously opposed a Section 702 extension under Biden and now supports it, said there were 278,000 improper queries of the database in 2023. Yet, post-reform, he pointed out the total number of searches on U.S. persons dropped from $2.9 million in 2022 to 9,000 in the

past year. And that's despite the targeting of foreign surveillance going up from 2022 to 2025. Notably, though, these numbers have produced a lot of skepticism. In March, the Brennan Center published a report claiming the FBI improperly tracked and audited search queries involving U.S. citizens. If true, the numbers from 2024 and 2025 are likely a significant undercount. So while I'm glad to see some reforms implemented, those changes clearly aren't enough. I also worry about how easily these reforms can be undone. Put another way, until we pass a warrant requirement, the government's powerful surveillance authorities

will always be subject to abuse. That's something Jim Jordan said in April of last year. Right now, the most straightforward way to prosecute feces of violations is through the United States Attorney General, but let's state the obvious. The Justice Department is becoming totally captured by President Trump, and that's setting the stage for a more politicized DOJ

under future Democratic president, too. A presidentially dominated DOJ would never actually prosecute FBI Section 702 abuses. Just as easily as I could believe these reforms are having a positive impact, I could believe the FBI has been on its best behavior to get a long-term extension or adjusted its behavior to prepare for a repeal and will go right back to its old ways. This is just one of a dizzying number of ways the president's demands for loyalty directly and negatively impacts American citizens. The president himself is an interesting case here. After all, he was the victim of maybe the most notorious abuse of FISA in American history

when Carter Page's contacts with Russia were used as a pretext to target someone in Trump's orbit. Trump came out against Section 702 in 2024, urging supporters to, quote, kill FISA. It was illegally used against me and many others. They spied on my campaign with three exclamation points, end quote. Now that he's in office, though, the president. president's tune has changed. I am willing to risk giving up my rights and privileges as a citizen for our great military and country, he said in a truth social post last Wednesday. It's a somewhat amusing and also jarring pivot. It's amusing because it really is the most straightforward argument said

out loud in a way a president probably shouldn't. In order to back Section 702, you genuinely have to believe in giving up your rights and trust our military and intelligence communities to do the right thing. It's jarring because the president was so adamantly on the other side of this just two years ago. A charitable read is that he is now receiving daily briefs with information gathered using FISA. 60% of the briefs contain intel from Section 702, according to Senator Chuck Grassley. And then the people around him understand the importance of this information, so he wants it. The less charitable read is just as likely. He is the one who has the power now, and when presidents acquire power, they very rarely give it.

up. Either way, Trump and Representative Jordan were right the first time, and I agreed with them then. Their position has changed, but mine hasn't. One judge in 2023 described FBI's abuses of Section 702 as persistent and widespread. If you brought in the abuses of this warrantless surveillance beyond just Section 702 and to FISA as a whole, everyone should have a bone to pick. January 6 protesters, Trump's campaign, Black Lives Matter protesters, pro-Palestine activists who may have face government surveillance, and even members of Congress. Letting Section 702 expire won't stop our law enforcement agencies from monitoring and pursuing active threats to Americans,

but it will reduce how often they access Americans' communications without a warrant. Again, I'm heartened Congress has implemented some strong reforms, even if questions remain about how effective they've been. Given that it looks like we're barreling toward another long-term reauthorization, I'll probably have to settle for that win and hope it holds. yet I'm disheartened that those reforms didn't go all the way. All the improvements in the world can't move me off my core position that my communication should never be monitored without a warrant.

That's the kind of fundamental right that should be guaranteed to me in a free country. It's one Section 702 rules under mine, and it's one our intelligence agencies should learn to operate with. We'll be right back after this quick break. All right, that is it for my take, which brings us to a question today from Sophie in Smelterville, Idaho. Sophie said, I live in Idaho, and I just read an article by the Idaho Capitol Sun about House Bill 896. On the surface, it seems like a good thing to me.

Quote, the Attorney General can seek to bar local officials from office for violating state's rights seems like an accountability for being a bad official and going against your state's rights. Then it also says that state lawmakers and judges would be exempt from lawsuits, and that the AG would be able to sue a government agency or employee if they fail to correct the alleged violation within a certain period. So now I'm confused. Isn't there already some kind of way that people are held accountable for violating state's rights? What would this be changing?

Why should anyone be exempt from this? Okay, so all people including public officials, are subject to local state and federal laws. The bill wouldn't have changed that. However, it would have added a new mechanism for punishing officials who break the law. House Bill 896 would have given the Idaho Attorney General the direct authority to sue government agencies, officials, or employees without going through the typical channels of law enforcement and the court system. For context, Idaho Bill 896 was drafted in response to the city of Boise's attempt to sidestep a 2025 state law that prohibits flying an unofficial government flag on

public property by making the progress pride flag the city's official flag. Several Idaho House members wanted the state to be able to punish government officials who willfully violated the law and the lower chamber passed the measure in March. However, the Idaho Senate rejected the bill in April over concerns that it would give the state attorney general too much power. All right, that is it for your questions answered. I'm going to send it back to John for the rest of the pod and I'll see you guys tomorrow. Have a good one. Peace. Thanks, Isaac.

And last but not least, our have a nice day story. The eastern migratory monarch butterfly population has plummeted in recent decades, but two reports published in March show signs of hope from the past year. In one report, scientists found that nine colonies of monarch butterflies in Mexico occupied 7.24 acres of forest during the 2025-2020s winter, a roughly 64-206% increase from the 2024-25 winter. In the second, researchers found that 6.3 acres of the butterfly's winter habitat were degraded between February 2024 and February 2025,

approximately 2.9 acres fewer than the same period from the previous 12 months. Why environmental challenges remain, World Wildlife Fund Mexico Director General Maria Jose Villanueva said the studies offered promising signs of recovery for the monarch butterfly population. The World Wildlife Fund has this story and there's a link in today's episode description. All right, everyone, that is it for today's episode. As always, if you'd like to support our work, please go to readtangle.com where you can sign up for a newsletter membership,

podcast membership, or a bundled membership that gets you a discount on both. We'll be right back here tomorrow. For Isaac and the rest of the crew, this is John Law signing off. Have a great day, y'all. Peace. Our executive editor and founder is me. Isaac Saul and our executive producer is John Wall. Today's episode was edited and engineered by Dewey Thomas.

Our editorial staff is led by managing editor Ari Weitzman with senior editor Will Kayback and associate editors Audrey Moorhead, Lindsay Canuth, and Bailey Saul. Music for the podcast was produced by Diet 75. To learn more about Tangle and to sign up for a membership, please visit our website at retangle.com.