Tucker Carlson and Glenn Greenwald worry Congress will reauthorize a controversial intelligence tool.
For almost twenty years, Congress has routinely renewed one of the government’s broadest and most constitutionally questionable domestic surveillance powers, usually with overwhelming bipartisan support, minimal debate, and scant public scrutiny. In the early hours last Thursday at 2 a.m., House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) continued this practice by calling members to the Capitol in the middle of the night for what Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA) called “a secret vote to reauthorize FISA while America sleeps.”
Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, the law in question, was established in 2008, following Congress’s retroactive approval of elements from a covert warrantless spying program initiated during the George W. Bush era. This program was initially exposed in December 2005 by James Risen and Eric Lichtblau of the New York Times, revealing that under a 2002 presidential order, the NSA monitored international calls and emails involving people inside the U.S. without warrants, often targeting hundreds of American citizens. Later, whistleblower Edward Snowden and journalist Glenn Greenwald uncovered the vast extent of NSA surveillance on domestic communications, capturing data on nearly every U.S. person under the motto “collect it all.”
Since its passage, this law has facilitated a steady increase in executive surveillance powers, further eroding Fourth Amendment protections—a development extensively reported here. Although framed as a tool to surveil foreigners abroad, Section 702 has been used for warrantless backdoor queries of Americans’ private data, with the FBI conducting nearly 3.4 million such searches in 2021 alone. Efforts to reform these practices faltered in April 2024 when Johnson, a trained Constitutional attorney, unexpectedly reversed his stance against mass domestic spying and cast the deciding vote to reject an amendment requiring warrants, thereby extending the program’s authority through April 20, 2026.
Patrick Eddington of the Cato Institute was among the few who foresaw this result. Speaking to The American Conservative two days before the vote, he predicted that “at least a double digit group of GOP House members” would oppose the renewal—a prediction borne out when 20 Republicans sided with most Democrats to block the reauthorization. Eddington highlighted three key dissenters—Reps. Chip Roy (R-TX), Ralph Norman (R-SC), and Morgan Griffith (R-VA)—all of whom supported a warrant requirement earlier in 2024 and were notably absent from the Tuesday night Rules Committee session that advanced the clean renewal to the floor.
For Eddington, the vote signifies more than just a procedural loss for Johnson. “I think what this speaks to is probably the beginning of the end for Trump,” he told The American Conservative. “So many more voters who went for him, even those who supported him three times, are walking away. Some House members now feel emboldened to distance themselves from him with less political risk.”
Currently, Section 702 remains in force due to a brief 15-day extension, leaving uncertain the likelihood of stopping a clean renewal of the government’s surveillance powers. Greenwald, whose reporting alongside Snowden first unveiled the breadth of NSA mass surveillance, often notes that “the deep state always gets what it wants,” though he told The American Conservative that he “has been through about four of these and got [his] hopes up every time.” In a livestream last Friday, Greenwald maintained cautious optimism that enough congressional votes might prevent reauthorization.
Tucker Carlson, a longtime critic of surveillance overreach on his show, appeared even more doubtful. “I doubt it,” he said when asked whether Trump’s push for a clean renewal could still be stopped. “He’s determined. It’s very dark.”
“There are a couple of hints,” he added, citing the raw intelligence-sharing agreement between the NSA and Israeli intelligence—revealed by Snowden and reported by Greenwald—where Americans’ signals intelligence data is transferred “to be used, God knows how.” He also referenced a 2024 presentation by Rep. Mike Turner (R-OH), then-chairman of the House Intelligence Committee and a proponent of using Section 702 powers against American college students protesting the Gaza conflict. Supporting this, a 2024 statement from the “Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations” told Congress that FISA 702 was essential “for the safety and security of Israel.”
Carlson has a personal stake regarding FISA Section 702, having been surveilled himself. “They admitted spying on me,” he told The American Conservative.
In response to Carlson’s 2021 claim that the NSA monitored his communications, the agency stated only that he had never been an intelligence “target.” This carefully worded denial avoided confirming whether his communications were ever queried under programs like FISA Section 702. Such a response is unusual, since intelligence agencies typically neither confirm nor deny surveillance of specific individuals.
When asked how Trump, also a known victim of FISA abuse, and Johnson, who built his political brand opposing FBI overreach, came to champion an unmodified renewal of these spying powers, Carlson pointed to institutional influence and coercion. “I think it’s a combination of carrot and stick,” he said.
“But I’ve noticed that the House and Senate intelligence committee members, especially the chairs, tend to be weak and compromised individuals, making them easy to control,” Carlson remarked. “Alcoholics, compulsive philanderers, etc.,” he added, referencing disgraced Rep. Eric Swalwell, currently embroiled in a sex scandal likely to end his career, who sat on the House Intelligence Committee.
Original article: www.theamericanconservative.com
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