Trump Flips & Demands FISA Renewal that Allows Warrantless Spying On US Citizens!

Etienne Note: This article also appears in “Government”, Media and Academia Criminality Exposed, A digest of HUNDREDS and HUNDREDS of articles exposing and suggesting inter-generational organized crime’s control of the “Government,” Media and Academia by the Art of Liberty Foundation. You can view the other articles or subscribe on Telegram: https://t.me/Government_Scams

by Owen Shroyer, Trump and Glenn Greenwald

The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) of 1978 contains section 702 that has been used to spy on Americans; it is set to expire on April 20. Donald Trump, vowed to “KILL FISA” during his campaign in 2024 based on his (quite valid) claim that spying powers had been abused against him by the Obama administration for political ends in the 2016 presidential campaign. Trump is now demanding that FISA be fully renewed: yet again, with no reforms, safeguards, or limits of any kind.

In 2013, there was a bill to rein in the NSA’s domestic spying powers by imposing serious limits on how such powers can be exercised when aimed at American citizens. But Obama was an enthusiastic supporter — and user — of the NSA’s domestic spying system and he instructed then-Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi to conjure enough Democratic House votes to kill the bill. The same tactics are being used today.

Former Congressman Justin Amash wrote: “Trump falsely claims FISA 702 is simply foreign collection.

He leaves out that the government “incidentally” collects huge volumes of Americans’ communications under this program and then searches them without a warrant.

That’s why Section 702 is the most dangerous part of FISA for ordinary Americans. Title I at least requires individualized court orders—even if those were abused against him.

A “clean” extension skips any meaningful safeguards for our rights. Tell your representative to vote NO on reauthorizing FISA 702 without a warrant requirement.”

See Trump’s full post below:

Glenn Greenwald shows a clip with Speaker of the House Mike Johnson from 2023 saying that he wants to reform FISA. But in 2026, Johnson has done complete turnaround.

From Glenn Greenwald:

Trump Reverses Himself, Joins Obama and Biden in Demanding “Clean” Renewal of NSA Domestic Spying Powers

In August 2013 — in the wake of our Snowden reporting, which revealed the NSA’s mass warrantless domestic spying on Americans — an extraordinary bipartisan bill emerged. Jointly sponsored by one of the most liberal House members (Michigan Democrat John Conyers) and one of his most libertarian-conservative counterparts (Michigan Republican Justin Amash), the bill would have reined in the NSA’s domestic spying powers by imposing serious limits on how such powers can be exercised when aimed at American citizens.

When the Conyers-Amash bill was first introduced, “Official Washington” did not take it seriously. But the Snowden revelations were causing serious public anger about NSA spying, and many members of Congress shared that anger because they were not told that the NSA had implemented a system of mass warrantless surveillance aimed, in part, at Americans. As a result, support for the bill quickly picked up bipartisan steam, seemingly heading toward certain passage — until Barack Obama called Nancy Pelosi.

Despite running for President as a constitutional law professor who vowed to end the civil liberties abuses of the War on Terror, Obama had become an enthusiastic supporter — and user — of the NSA’s domestic spying system. He thus instructed then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi to whip enough Democratic House votes to kill the bill. She did as she was told, and the bill — which initially appeared on its way to approval — was defeated 205-217 (94 Republicans and 111 Democrats voted for the reform bill; 134 Republicans and 83 Democrats voted against it). Official Washington heralded Pelosi as the heroine who saved NSA warrantless spying on Americans:

It is hard to overstate how significant the passage of this bill would have been. It would have been the first time in two decades that the U.S. Congress limited rather than increased the domestic powers of the U.S. security state. The era of the Patriot Act would finally have been confronted, or at least diluted. But Obama and Pelosi joined hands with the likes of GOP pro-spying members such as Peter King, Michelle Bachmann, and Kristi Noem to block any limits on the NSA’s power to spy on Americans without warrants.

Now, Donald Trump is on the verge of doing what Obama and Pelosi did back then. Despite running in 2024 by vowing to “KILL FISA,” based on his (quite valid) claim that spying powers had been abused against him for political ends in the 2016 presidential campaign, Trump on Monday demanded that FISA be fully renewed: yet again, with no reforms, safeguards, or limits of any kind.

Congress this week, perhaps as early as Wednesday, will vote on a renewal of Section 702 of FISA, which grants the NSA the power to spy on certain communications of American citizens without a warrant. Although it appeared that there was bipartisan support for finally imposing some limits and safeguards in the wake of years of documented abuses, Trump’s demand on Tuesday — that all House Republicans unite to renew the spying powers with no limits — raises serious doubts about whether any reform is now possible.

Section 702 of FISA has a nefarious genesis. And since its enactment in 2008, it has had a truly bizarre history of being renewed by Congress and the White House in the most confounding yet revealing ways.

After 9/11, the Bush administration — for the first time in American history — orderedthe NSA to spy on the communications of American citizens without the warrants required by the law and the Constitution. They did so by eliminating the requirement that forces the NSA, when spying on foreign nationals, to immediately stop spying once it becomes apparent that they were listening to Americans on phone calls or reading their emails.

Instead, Bush-Cheney — in secret, and in violation of the clear terms of the law — ordered the NSA to keep listening and keep reading even if they knew they were spying on Americans without warrants. (Warrantless eavesdropping on Americans is blatantly illegal and unconstitutional. A core purpose of the Fourth Amendment is to require warrants before the government can spy on American citizens.)

The FISA Act was first enacted in 1978, and a core purpose was to require warrants for all NSA spying on American citizens after the Church Committee revealed extensive spying abuses aimed at Americans. During the War on Terror, several NSA whistleblowers — including Edward Snowden, Thomas Drake, and others — came forward when they discovered that the NSA had violated what they were taught was the core taboo of the U.S. deep state: not directing its vast power on foreign adversaries but instead turning its power inward on Americans.

(I wrote my first book in 2006, devoted exclusively to the Bush-Cheney NSA scandal and the illegality of this warrantless domestic spying, and wrote another book in 2013 on my work with Snowden, showing how NSA spying had become virtually ubiquitous under Obama. The attack on core constitutional privacy has been a focus of mine for two decades precisely because of the severity of its erosons.)

The revelations of this post-9/11 NSA domestic spying program in 2005 caused a major public scandal, presaging the much more extensive revelations from the Snowden archive. Americans are taught from a young age that a defining trait of our government is that it cannot spy on us — on our actions, our papers, our conversations, our emails — without warrants.

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