Civil Liberties

Stephen Miller and Pete Hegseth Are Wildly Misleading About Section 702 Warrantless Surveillance

Miller says it is "madness" to expect law enforcement to get a warrant before spying on Americans' electronic communications.

Eric Boehm | 6.8.2026 2:50 PM

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(Credit: Andrew Leyden/ZUMAPRESS/Newscom/Andrew Thomas-CNP/Newscom)

It has been said that patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel—but we might need harsher terms to describe how some prominent figures in the Trump administration are appealing to Congress to extend a warrantless surveillance program that is routinely used to spy on Americans.

Lawmakers who refuse to reauthorize Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) are advancing "marxism" and reversing "patriotic reform," argued Stephen Miller, the White House deputy chief of staff, in a post on Twitter.

"A libertarian demand to make SecWar get approval from liberal DC judges (the ones who targeted Trump) is madness," Miller wrote in a separate post.

What has Miller in such a tizzy? On Friday, a bipartisan group of senators........

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