Increasingly desperate negotiations. A plea from the president himself. An eleventh-hour sleight of hand, followed by a surprise vote in the dead of night.

Over the past month, chaos has unfolded on Capitol Hill as House Republicans fracture over a central question: Should the federal government need a warrant to spy on US citizens?

According to most interpretations of the Fourth Amendment, the answer is a simple yes. But for nearly two decades, Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) has created a nifty loophole. The law authorizes warrantless surveillance of foreign nationals abroad, but in practice, it allows intelligence agencies to scoop up the electronic communications of US citizens, too. Agents can then perform “backdoor searches” on records that would normally require a warrant to obtain—querying databases for Americans’ phone calls, text messages, and emails.

Privacy hawks and civil libertarians have long warned that the program undermines Americans’ constitutional right to privacy. Yet when Congress last reauthorized the program in 2024, Democrats were largely in favor. Joe Biden signed it into law with minor reforms; Donald Trump urged Republicans to “KILL” it.

But much has changed in the past two years, and FISA reform advocates say the 2024 changes have failed to stymie abuses. The rapid rise of artificial intelligence has collided with an unprecedented push by the Trump administration to expand government spy powers. ICE is spending hundreds of millions of dollars on new surveillance technology while the FBI buys up Americans’ cell phone location data from commercial brokers. Shortly after returning to office, Trump fired all three Democrats on the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board, an independent body tasked with advising the executive branch and reviewing programs like Section 702. And in May, the FBI........

© Mother Jones