Extension of Authorities of Title VII of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978

Floor Speech

Mr. Speaker, when we first met on the majority's confusion and disarray over FISA at 1:30 in the morning on April 17, we pointed out that the majority's language departed so sharply from the requirements of the Fourth Amendment in the Constitution that, for the very first time, it would have authorized the government to use 702 to specifically and deliberately target and spy on the communications of American citizens.

That midnight maneuver quickly collapsed as support melted away all across the body. On unanimous consent, we agreed to a 1-week extension to give the House leadership a chance to discuss and negotiate necessary reforms with their own Members who had been ignored and bypassed in the process, as well as with us.

Speaker Johnson never once invited us to the table. He never got in touch with us.

One week later, congressional Republicans again failed to pass their own bill. I stood in this spot, and we agreed to a one-time 45-day extension as a gesture of legislative good faith to give the leadership a chance to meet with their own members who had been bypassed and with the Democratic side of the aisle, which had been completely bypassed, and to engage in good-faith negotiations for serious FISA legislation.

That means legislation that meets both the requirements of the Constitution for the privacy rights of the people and the needs of our foreign policy and national security. Again, we never heard from the Speaker. We never heard from his staff. They never came to talk to us.

Now, we are here to consider a bill drafted, it looks like, at 4:33 p.m., about 1 hour ago, just to kick the can down the road one more time.

For months, we have offered to work in good faith with our friends across the aisle, our colleagues in the Senate, and intelligence community to reauthorize 702 in a manner that preserves the necessary authority while protecting essential constitutional values and the privacy rights of the people.

Despite this, again, Speaker Johnson has never once invited Democrats to the table.

I know Speaker Johnson. We served together on the Committee on the Judiciary. We used to speak and interact freely, but he has completely vanished in this process.

We have an incredible shrinking Constitution under Donald Trump, and now we have an incredibly shrinking Speaker under Donald Trump.

Look, our touchstone has been a fundamental principle at the core of the Fourth Amendment. A judge must come between the Federal Government and the private communications of American citizens. That is the meaning of the Fourth Amendment. The FBI has abused this powerful surveillance authority for decades.

The FISA court has recently raised serious questions today about how section 702 is operating. Instead of implementing the modest self- administered guardrails Congress required as part of our 2024 reauthorization, the FBI appears to have been actively circumventing and violating those guardrails.

We cannot trust Kash Patel not to violate FISA when he readily admits he queried some government databases to dig up dirt on journalists who dared to report about him and the government services he has made available to his girlfriend.

Believe it or not, the administration's invitation to trust Kash Patel and Tulsi Gabbard, which the majority of this body was not interested in, has now gotten even less enticing. Today, President Trump just appointed Bill Pulte as Acting Director of National Intelligence, making it even more obvious that he intends to use FISA to investigate, harass, and persecute his political opponents.

Director Pulte has no national security experience, zero, zilch, none. He is famous in America for only three things:

One, he vowed to engage in fisticuffs with Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent when he was at Donald Trump, Jr.'s club in Georgetown, the Executive Branch.

Two, he brought Palantir into the Federal Housing Finance Agency, where he was director, to help him scour through American's personal financial data, looking for dirt on Trump's designated political enemies.

Finally, he then used this AI-enabled technology to create personal mortgage dossiers on Adam Schiff, Leticia James, and Lisa Cook, who he then referred to the Department of Justice for felony criminal prosecutions. He engaged in criminal referrals. All three of these attempted prosecutions, fortunately, collapsed either at the Department of Justice or in Federal court because they were so flimsy.

That is what he spends his time doing, trying to dig up dirt through this AI-enabled technology on American citizens, including elected officials.

So if you thought our civil liberties were safe with Tulsi Gabbard as the backstop, which was the last proposal, you will love the idea of Bill Pulte being the guardian of our privacy and the protector of our civil liberties.

Bill Pulte's appointment, which has been derided not just in our party but by Senators Thune, Tillis, and Cassidy, just to name a few, confirms our worst fears of the President's plans to abuse FISA section 702 for the purposes of domestic political surveillance, harassment, intimidation, and persecution.

Indeed, we know the FBI is currently abusing FISA based on the FISC opinion from March that remains inexplicably classified. Instead of implementing in good faith the modest reforms we passed 2 years ago, the FBI created a system to review Americans' data in violation of the minimal, self-administered, self-policing guardrails we required.

We can say with some confidence that the FBI has no idea how many U.S. person queries they ran last year, how many times they spied on the communications of American citizens, and we should be able to explain these serious deficiencies to our constituents.

Mr. Speaker, if we allow the President to turn FISA into an instrument of domestic political control, we will be ignoring everything we have already learned about the long history of abuse of this program, which my friend Mr. Jordan has helped to bring to light: past improper searches swept in Members of Congress and staff of both parties, campaign activists and donors, and Black Lives Matter activists.

President Trump certainly believes FISA provides the technology, methodology, and opportunity to spy on political opponents. On April 10, 2024, he posted: ``Kill FISA, it was illegally used against me, and many others. They spied on my campaign.''

``Kill FISA,'' he said. These allegations may or may not be true, but the President is certainly right that this program has been badly abused in the past.

The majority, yet, still shows no evidence of seeking to impose a judicial warrant requirement for queries of U.S. citizens. They have shown no interest in building a probable cause requirement into the statute. We have seen no evidence that they want to impose any judicial oversight at all, although that was the Framers' major commitment, that they wanted to make sure that there would be a judicial magistrate interposed between the government and the rights of the people.

That is the meaning of the Fourth Amendment. We need to stand by that, and we need a real process to make sure that we come up with real legislation that honors it.

Mr. Speaker, I don't know what personality potshots the distinguished gentleman is referring to. Of course, that is against the rules of the House, and if you think you have an objection, you should go ahead and object based on personalities. I haven't heard a single one mentioned.

In any event, when section 702 of FISA sunsets on June 12, if that is the will of the majority, the government surveillance activities will continue unchanged. Everything that has already been authorized and certified is already in motion, and current FISA authorizations will continue unaffected, at least through March 17, 2027.

In any event, I know that the gentleman said that we are approaching the 250th anniversary of the country. Yes, that is something we have known about for 250 years, and the majority has known for many months about this deadline and can't seem to get it together.

We don't have the opportunity to help them because they will not reach out to us and talk to us about it. I restate our commitment to try to help them get through this, but we are not going to continue to kick the can down the road with them indefinitely.
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Mr. RASKIN. Let me just say, we gave the majority an extra week. We supported that unanimous consent. Everybody Member of this body supported that. They never consulted us. They never talked to us, despite all kinds of promises to do so.

I had GOP colleagues telling me, on the Judiciary Committee, they were never consulted. Nobody ever talked to them about it.

Then we gave them 45 days. They said they just needed 45 days, and they would definitely talk to us. We would be able to meet. After 1\1/ 2\ months, we heard nothing from them.

We have been begging them to sit down, because I believe there is a robust, bipartisan majority in this House to support the needed reforms and making sure that we interpose the voice of a judge before the personal communications of American citizens are invaded by the Government.

I think that we have got a vast majority on that side, but nobody from leadership seems to be talking to anybody who is concerned about this.

Now they say: Oh, well, just give us another week.

No, we are not interested in that. We have given you lots of time. You are not consulting us. You are not negotiating in good faith. So maybe the threat that we are not going to support you will finally get you guys serious about it.

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Mr. RASKIN. Mr. Speaker, can you tell us how much time we have remaining.

Mr. Speaker, my friend, the distinguished chairman of the Judiciary Committee, flippantly says: What is another 3 weeks after we have kicked the can down the road this far?

Where is the passionate, stalwart defender of American civil liberties and right to privacy we have come to admire and esteem? The Fourth Amendment protects the rights of all Americans. It does not have a ``unless it is just for another 3 weeks'' exception.

Congress must act to protect the rights of Americans. We agreed to 1 week. We agreed to 45 days. Enough of this disorganization and chaos. If there is a serious proposal on the table, we are all ears. We will sit down, and we will work on this. We want to reauthorize section 702, and we want to make it safe for the constitutional rights and liberties of the people.

We also know, Mr. Speaker, that section 702 explicitly allows any current authorizations to continue until their expiration dates, even if the statute sunsets. Therefore, there is no reason we cannot protect both the Fourth Amendment rights of the people and the authorities that keep us safe.

If Speaker Johnson will just allow us to do so, I believe that the Judiciary and Intelligence Committees can come together and get this done.

Again, Mr. Speaker, I believe there is a robust, bipartisan majority. I think it is ridiculous that we even need to say it, but I do believe there is a robust bipartisan majority that will stand with the Constitution, that will make sure we are interposing the proper independent judicial magistrate between the government and searches of the private rights and the persons and things protected by the Fourth Amendment.

We need to protect the rights of the people and the Constitution. We can do that. We need to protect our national security with section 702. We can do that. We can harmonize them. All it takes is old-fashioned legislative deliberation and compromise.

I am certain we can do it, but we haven't had any effort by the GOP leadership to look to this body, both Republicans and Democrats. Where do they look? They look to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

But we are an Article I for a reason. We are the legislating branch, not the President. We have got the power to declare war. The President has forgotten that. We have got the power to appropriate. We have got the power to tax, and we have got the power to pass this legislation on section 702.

We don't have to wait on hand and foot for the White House to tell us what to do. Let's just sit down. Let's hammer out a great legislative compromise that will take us not for another 7 days or 42 days or 45 days. How about we do it for the next 5 years? If we build a search warrant requirement into it, I bet we could do it for the next 10 years.

Let's live up to our constitutional responsibilities and legislate together.

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Mr. RASKIN. Mr. Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.

The yeas and nays were ordered.

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