# FISA Section 702 Renewal (2026) > [!info] Status as of October 4, 2026 > **Lapsed, and still lapsed.** [[FISA Section 702]] expired at the end of Friday, June 12, 2026 — the first lapse since the authority was created in 2008. No reauthorization has passed since. Collection has not stopped: the [[FISA Court]] approved the annual certifications on March 17, 2026, and those certifications — and the directives to companies issued under them — are grandfathered until they expire in **March 2027**. That date, not the statutory lapse, is the real deadline. The 2026 renewal began as a rerun of every previous Section 702 fight — a left-right coalition demanding a warrant requirement, the intelligence establishment warning of catastrophe, a short-term patch. It ended differently. The reform coalition never won its warrant requirement. What broke the cycle was the president's choice of spy chief: when [[Donald Trump]] made the housing regulator [[Bill Pulte]] acting Director of National Intelligence in early June, Democrats refused to hand an expanded surveillance authority to him, and the authority lapsed. ## Timeline | Date | Event | |------|-------| | **April 20, 2024** | [[Reforming Intelligence and Securing America Act]] signed; Title VII renewed for two years | | **March 17, 2026** | FISA Court approves the annual 702 certifications (valid to March 2027) and issues an opinion on problems with agencies' query-filtering tools; the opinion stays classified | | **April 1, 2026** | ODNI's transparency report for calendar 2025 records more 702 targets than the year before and a new counternarcotics certification | | **April 14–17** | House floor fight; five-year and 18-month extensions fail amid Republican defections. Congress passes a **10-day** stopgap moving the deadline from April 20 to April 30 | | **April 29** | House passes a three-year extension **235–191** — attorney-approval rules for FBI queries plus a ban on a Federal Reserve digital dollar ([[CBDC]]); no general warrant requirement | | **April 29–30** | Senate refuses the CBDC rider and sends back a **45-day** stopgap instead; the House passes it 261–111. New expiry: **June 12** | | **May 1** | [[Senate Intelligence Committee]] chair [[Tom Cotton]] and vice chair [[Mark Warner]] ask for the March 17 opinion to be declassified within 15 days | | **May 16** | The deadline has passed with no release; [[Ron Wyden]] says the executive branch "ignored" the committee's request | | **May 22** | [[Tulsi Gabbard]] announces her resignation as DNI | | **June 2** | Trump names [[Bill Pulte]] — FHFA director, no intelligence background — acting DNI | | **June 10** | Wyden introduces S. 4740: release the March opinion within 14 days, add query reporting, extend 702 only to July 17 | | **June 11** | Trump nominates [[Jay Clayton]] as permanent DNI. The House rejects a **three-week** extension **198–218**; Speaker [[Mike Johnson]] says Democrats are "using it as a political hostage" | | **June 12** | Senate efforts also fail; Congress leaves for recess. **Section 702 lapses at the end of the day** | | **June 17** | Trump cancels Clayton's confirmation hearing and threatens to veto any 702 bill that doesn't carry the SAVE America Act (see [[SAVE Act]]) | | **June 18** | Democrats sink another extension attempt as the Pulte standoff continues (see [[DNI Succession News Log]]) | | **Late July – Aug. 3** | Clayton confirmed 51–47 and sworn in August 3; Pulte's acting tenure ends. No 702 vote follows | | **Sept. 13** | The statutory 180-day deadline to declassify the March 17 opinion passes without release, per *The American Prospect* | | **Sept. 17–24** | The DNI's office tells Congress 702 will "go dark" without reauthorization by **November 20, 2026**; the Brennan Center rebuts the claim, pointing to the March 2027 certification expiry | ## What the April 29 House bill would have done Nextgov's account of the House-passed three-year bill: no warrant requirement before the FBI or NSA queries U.S.-person data; instead, **attorney-level approval** inside the agency, criminal penalties for improper queries, new civil-liberties reviews of FBI searches involving Americans, more congressional access to FISA Court proceedings, a mandated audit of targeting procedures — and an unrelated prohibition on the Federal Reserve issuing a direct-to-consumer digital dollar. NPR's summary describes a narrower warrant rule for some law-enforcement searches; neither account describes the general warrant requirement the reform coalition wanted. Senate Majority Leader [[John Thune]] had called the CBDC ban "not happening," and the Senate answered with a stopgap instead of taking up the bill. ## Why it lapsed **The proximate cause was Pulte.** Democrats had voted for short-term extensions in April. Once Trump installed an acting DNI with no intelligence experience and a record — at FHFA — of using federal databases to make criminal referrals against the president's opponents (see [[Bill Pulte]]), Democratic leaders said they would not reauthorize without new privacy protections. Senator [[Mark Warner]] called Pulte "extraordinarily unqualified" and said "the timing could also not be more of a mistake." **Then Trump added his own condition.** On June 17 he tied the DNI confirmation, a U.S. attorney nomination and any 702 renewal to passage of the SAVE America Act, an election bill Democrats unanimously oppose. That turned the surveillance authority into one piece of a package deal, and nobody had a reason to move it on its own. **And nothing forced a vote.** Section 702 carries a grandfather clause: certifications already approved, and the directives compelling companies to cooperate, remain valid until they expire. Because the FISA Court had signed off on March 17, collection continued after June 12 exactly as before. Titles I and III of the [[Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act]] — individual court orders — never sunset at all. The lapse is legal, not operational. ## The deadline fight Two dates are now in circulation. The DNI's office has told Congress that 702 will "go dark" without reauthorization by **November 20, 2026**. The Brennan Center calls this a myth: under the grandfather clause, the March 17, 2026 certifications run into **March 2027**, so the real deadline is about March 17, 2027 — after the midterms, in the next Congress. The source of the November 20 date has not been made public. Whichever is right, the leverage Democrats used in June expired without buying anything, and the next vote will be held under a confirmed DNI rather than an acting one. ## The secret opinion The March 17, 2026 FISA Court opinion is the document reformers most want released. According to Wyden and *The American Prospect*, it identifies "serious issues" with the filtering tools agencies use to keep Americans' communications out of warrantless searches. Its history in this fight is a string of missed deadlines: Cotton and Warner's 15-day request (May 1), Wyden's bill demanding release within 14 days (June 10), and the statutory 180-day declassification deadline (September 13). As of late September it had not been released. The Brennan Center's Elizabeth Goitein reads the episode as proof that "internal self-policing reforms … are not sufficient." ## KB Significance ### The cycle broke — but not because reform won The page used to read "2008: no reform. 2012: no reform. 2018: no reform. 2024: no reform. 2026: no reform." The last entry turned out wrong in an unexpected direction. The authority lapsed for the first time not because the warrant coalition won a vote but because the president's personnel choice made the authority politically untouchable for a few weeks. Civil-liberties groups celebrated anyway ([[Electronic Frontier Foundation]]: "Victory! 702 has expired!"), while collection continued on the old certifications. ### Leverage with an expiration date Democrats withheld the authority to stop Pulte from controlling it. Pulte left on August 3; the authority is still lapsed; and because the certifications run to March 2027, the bargaining chip has no deadline before the midterms. The structural lesson matches the vault's reading of the DNI succession: an acting appointee can do most of his damage before the institutional check takes effect. ### The Patel variable is still live Whatever passes next, [[Kash Patel]]'s [[FBI]] remains the agency that runs the overwhelming majority of U.S.-person queries of 702 data, inside an administration running the [[Grand Conspiracy Probe]] against the officials who investigated Trump. The reform coalition's argument — that attorney sign-off inside the same agency is not oversight — is aimed at exactly this situation. ### The bundling tactic Trump's June 17 move — holding a surveillance authority, a cabinet-level confirmation and a U.S. attorney nomination hostage to an elections bill — treats national-security authorities as legislative leverage. That is the same president who urged Republicans to "KILL FISA" in April 2024 and then reversed himself. ## Watch next - Whether a 702 bill moves in the lame-duck session after the November midterms, or waits for the next Congress and the March 2027 certification expiry - Whether the administration sticks to the November 20 date publicly - Release of the March 17, 2026 FISA Court opinion - Clayton's position on a warrant requirement and on the [[CBDC]] rider ## See Also - [[FISA Section 702]] — what the authority is and how backdoor searches work - [[Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act]] — the 1978 parent statute; what did *not* lapse - [[Reforming Intelligence and Securing America Act]] — the 2024 renewal this one replaces - [[DNI Succession News Log]] — the Gabbard → Pulte → Clayton succession, day by day - [[Bill Pulte]] — the appointment that sank the renewal - [[FISA Court]] — the certifications that keep collection running - [[Kash Patel]] — FBI director with access to 702 databases - [[Crossfire Hurricane]] and [[Carter Page]] — the Title I warrant that politicized FISA on the right