Reason Magazine: Trump Backs Section 702 Reauthorization After Once Calling To ‘KILL FISA’

“Allowing this authority to expire would put the American people at severe risk,” Rep. Jim Himes (D–Conn.), ranking member on the House Intelligence Committee, said in a statement. “In 2024, Congress instituted 56 reforms to enhance oversight of this program, and since then we have seen zero evidence of intentional abuse.”

Of course, it’s not clear how we would likely hear about it: The PCLOB, which warned in 2023 about Section 702’s “significant privacy and civil liberties risks,” was effectively gutted in January 2025 when Trump reentered office.

“The Critical and Common Sense Reforms that were made in the last Reauthorization of FISA must remain intact to protect the American People from abuses,” Trump added in his Truth Social post. “My Administration has worked tirelessly to ensure these Reforms are being aggressively executed at every level of the Executive Branch to keep Americans safe, while protecting their sacred Civil Liberties guaranteed by our Great Constitution.”

But the “56 reforms” Himes touted, and that Trump alluded to, weren’t all they were cracked up to be. “This bill is not a ‘compromise,’ and its 56 ‘reforms’ codify the unacceptable status quo,” the Electronic Privacy Information Center, the Brennan Center for Justice, and FreedomWorks said in a joint statement following the 2024 reauthorization. “Making 56 ineffective tweaks to a fundamentally broken law is not reforming it. Absent significant amendment, [the bill] will do nothing to prevent the government’s repeated abuses of Section 702 to spy on Americans.”

Read more here.