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House caves on FISA fight, buys six weeks of breathing room

James Rodriguez 0 comments 6 min read
House caves on FISA fight, buys six weeks of breathing room

The House voted 261-111 on Thursday to extend Section 702 of FISA for 45 days, kicking a contentious surveillance debate into the coming weeks after the Senate rejected a longer-term approach.

The bill now goes to the president for signature. Without it, the government's warrantless surveillance authority would have expired Thursday night.

What unfolded was a tactical retreat by House leadership. On Wednesday, the chamber had passed a three-year extension packed with an amendment banning central bank digital currencies, a provision designed to peel away conservative lawmakers who wanted broader surveillance reforms attached to the bill.

That strategy collapsed in the Senate. Bipartisan opposition to the digital currency ban proved strong enough to kill momentum for the longer extension. Senate leaders opted instead for the stopgap measure, forcing the House to accept the 45-day patch.

The real battle lines remain unchanged. A bloc of lawmakers continues to demand warrant requirements be written into any FISA extension, a position House leadership has resisted. That core dispute now gets six more weeks to fester.

This is the second short-term extension Congress has passed in as many weeks. Earlier this month, a group of House Republicans blocked attempts to pass both a five-year and an 18-month renewal, forcing leadership to settle for an initial patch. That interim fix proved too narrow to create enough political space for a full deal.

Congressional leaders now have 45 days to negotiate a resolution. The stakes are straightforward: either they forge a compromise that bridges the warrant requirement divide, or they face another deadline scramble in early spring. With Republicans and Democrats divided on surveillance powers and conservative hardliners refusing to bend without reforms, breaking the impasse will prove difficult.

The frequent deadline extensions signal the depth of the disagreement. Section 702 remains one of the most potent surveillance tools in the government's arsenal, and lawmakers remain sharply split on how much judicial oversight should constrain it.

Author James Rodriguez: "Kicking the can down the road works until it doesn't, and Congress just bought itself enough rope to either tie up this fight or hang the entire renewal process."

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