Politics

FISA Was Set to Expire Tonight. Congress Punted. Here’s Where It Stands.

By Mike Harper · April 30, 2026

Tonight was supposed to be the deadline. Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act — the government’s most powerful surveillance authority — was set to lapse at midnight. Congress punted it down the road instead.

The House passed a three-year extension of FISA on Wednesday afternoon in a 235-191 vote, ending weeks of internal Republican warfare over how long to extend the program and what reforms to include. But the bill the House passed included an unrelated provision banning the Federal Reserve from creating a central bank digital currency — a poison pill that Senate Majority Leader John Thune called “not happening” and “dead on arrival.”

Rather than take up the House bill, the Senate moved toward a 45-day extension instead — buying Congress through June 12 to try again on a longer-term reauthorization.

This is the third time Congress has extended or kicked the FISA deadline in 2026. In April, lawmakers passed a 10-day extension after failing to agree on either a five-year or 18-month renewal. That extension ran to April 30 — tonight. The House’s three-year bill would have resolved the issue, but the Senate’s rejection of the CBDC provision attached to it by House Republican leaders to win over conservative holdouts has sent the fight back to square one.

The substance of what FISA Section 702 does is not in dispute. The program allows U.S. intelligence agencies to intercept the electronic communications of foreign nationals located outside the United States without a warrant, and it sweeps up communications of Americans who are in contact with those foreign targets. Intelligence officials say it is essential — the CIA has said the program helped thwart a planned attack on a Taylor Swift concert in Austria in 2024. Civil liberties advocates say it has been systematically abused, with the FBI using it to search the communications of 141 Black Lives Matter protesters, 19,000 donors to a congressional campaign, members of Congress, and a state court judge.

The fight inside Congress is not really about whether to reauthorize FISA. It is about whether to require law enforcement to obtain a warrant before searching an American’s communications gathered under the program. Privacy-focused members of both parties have demanded that requirement. Intelligence hawks and the White House have refused it. That disagreement has now prevented a long-term resolution through three separate attempts.

With the Senate taking 45 days, the next deadline is June 12. The major wildcard between now and then is the Warsh confirmation. If a new Fed chair is installed quickly, the CBDC provision — which was attached specifically to win over conservative members who distrust the Fed — may become less politically necessary, potentially freeing House leaders to pass a clean reauthorization without it.

What happens if Congress fails again in June is theoretically the same as what would have happened tonight: a lapse in the legal authority to collect new information under Section 702. Intelligence agencies would lose that authority. Technology companies — legally uncertain about their obligations during a statutory gap — might stop complying with collection directives. The intelligence community has consistently warned those gaps create real-world national security risk.

Congress has until June 12 to find out if that warning is enough to finally force a resolution.