EXTENSION OF AUTHORITIES OF TITLE VII OF THE FOREIGN INTELLIGENCE SURVEILLANCE ACT OF 1978

On 2026-06-10, Representative Nancy Pelosi (D-CA-11) delivered a floor speech titled "EXTENSION OF AUTHORITIES OF TITLE VII OF THE FOREIGN INTELLIGENCE SURVEILLANCE ACT OF 1978" in the House.

EXTENSION OF AUTHORITIES OF TITLE VII OF THE FOREIGN INTELLIGENCE SURVEILLANCE ACT OF 1978

Congressional Record, Volume 172 Issue 98 (Wednesday, June 10, 2026) [Congressional Record Volume 172, Number 98 (Wednesday, June 10, 2026)] [House] [Pages H4079-H4084] From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [ www.gpo.gov ] EXTENSION OF AUTHORITIES OF TITLE VII OF THE FOREIGN INTELLIGENCE SURVEILLANCE ACT OF 1978 Mr. JORDAN. Mr. Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and pass the bill (H.R. 9238) to amend the FISA Amendments Act of 2008 to extend the authorities of title VII of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978, and for other purposes, as amended. The Clerk read the title of the bill. The text of the bill is as follows: H.R. 9238 Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, SECTION 1. EXTENSION OF AUTHORITIES OF TITLE VII OF THE FOREIGN INTELLIGENCE SURVEILLANCE ACT OF 1978. (a) Extension of Repeal Date of Title VII.--Section 403(b) of the FISA Amendments Act of 2008 (Public Law 110-261), as most recently amended by Public Law 119-87, is further amended-- (1) in paragraph (1) (50 U.S.C. 1881 note), by striking ``June 12, 2026'' and inserting ``July 2, 2026''; and (2) in paragraph (2) (18 U.S.C. 2511 note) in the matter preceding subparagraph (A), by striking ``June 12, 2026'' and inserting ``July 2, 2026''. (b) Effective Date.--The amendments made by this section shall take effect on the earlier of the date of the enactment of this Act or June 11, 2026. The SPEAKER pro tempore. Pursuant to the rule, the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Jordan) and the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Raskin) each will control 20 minutes. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from Ohio. General Leave Mr. JORDAN. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members [[Page H4080]] may have 5 legislative days in which to revise and extend their remarks and to insert extraneous material on H.R. 9238. The SPEAKER pro tempore. Is there objection to the request of the gentleman from Ohio? There was no objection. Mr. JORDAN. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, FISA section 702 will expire on Friday. This bill extends the program until July 2. The 702 program is critically important to our national security. More than 60 percent of our intelligence presented to the President, to the Commander in Chief, every single day is derived from 702. With the World Cup about to begin this week, we cannot be left without this critical tool every day. The 702 program helps keep us safe here at home and advance our interests abroad. This temporary extension will ensure that there is no disruption to the program while we find a path forward on reauthorization. Mr. Speaker, I urge Members to support the bill, and I reserve the balance of my time. Mr. RASKIN. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. 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. {time} 1750 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 [[Page H4081]] 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 proces

Referenced legislation: HR9238, HR9238