“The fate of legislation to revive the government’s warrantless spying powers remains murky after President Trump last week called for a Senate Intelligence Committee nomination hearing for Jay Clayton, his pick to serve as director of national intelligence, to be postponed.”
— FISA negotiations at a standstill after Clayton hearing delayed, Sudiksha Kochi on The Hill, June 22
Despite surveillance hawks wringing their hands about how the FISA lapse that started on June 12 could cause the sky to fall, the Administration sure doesn’t seem to see it as urgent. Not only is acting director of national Intelligence Bill Pulte starting mass firing at ODNI reinforcing Democrats’ refusal to do any reauthorization until a permanent DNI is in place, Trump’s is now saying that he’ll veto any version of FISA that doesn’t include SAVE Act — a voter-suppression bill has no chance of passing the Senate on its own, so apparently dooms FISA until he backs down.
It’s hard to know when things will start up again. Trump has a meeting with Senate Republicans on Wednesday, so maybe after that? The House is scheduled to be in session from June 23 to July 3, and June 26 is the Senate’s last scheduled day before the holiday … will there even be a vote before then? Time will tell.
After that, there’s still a long ways to go. Both chambers come back on July 13 (although the House will only be there for a couple of weeks before the August recess), and they’re in session for a few weeks in September as well, but the closer it gets to an election the less likely it is that they’ll tackle something so controversial. Existing certifications go through March 2027, so they can also take a crack at it in the post-election “lame duck” sessions in November and December or early next Congress. It’s exhausting just writing this …
In any case, once things do pick up, they’re likely to start moving quickly. So … stay tuned!
If you want more frequent updates than we have here on the blog … well, Get FISA Right has always been adventurous on social networks, so we’ve set up a couple of feeds in the Atmosphere.
- FISA (uncurated) has a broad selection of posts related to FISA and Section 702
- FISA (curated) has posts related to FISA and Section 702 from a list of about 50 organizations, legal experts, journalists, and activists focused on surveillance, human rights, and civil rights
You don’t need accounts to check the feeds. That said, if you’ve bot a Blacksky, Bluesky, or Eurosky account you can pin them to make it easier to see regular updates — and you can also follow us, at @getfisaright.net.
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