House Passes Warrantless Surveillance Bill At 2 AM

In the 2 a.m. vote, the House passed a 10-day extension of FISA Section 702, the warrantless surveillance program that lets the government read your communications without a judge's approval. But also the full story is crazy.

The Republicans revolted. Trump wanted a clean 18-month extension. Speaker Mike Johnson also tried a five-year version with some reforms, but both got tanked when around 20 Republicans sided with Democrats to vote them down. programmed it in lapse on Monday. And a quick reminder, section 702 gives intelligence agencies the power to spy on foreigners outside of the United States

without ever going to a judge. The catch though, is that any American who talks to one of those foreigners, right, a call, a text, an email, they get pulled into the same database. And the FBI, they have a long history of abusing it, right?

There was a 2024 court filing that found that the FBI broke on January 6th defendants, as well as people involved in the 2020 George Floyd protests. And so the holdouts for the longer extension, they want a warrant requirement before the FBI can search Americans' data. But Trump and CIA Director Ratcliffe, they have been working hard against that. With Trump saying that the program is critical to,

quote, our military patriots on the battlefield, right? A reference to Iran. A reference to Iran. And as far as the feelings of most,