WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump’s top intelligence officials have written to the leaders of Congress urging them to reauthorize the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, and they have set Dec. 9 as the date by which lawmakers should start the renewal process, Fox News reported.
Attorney General Todd Blanche, Director of National Intelligence Jay Clayton and CIA Director John Ratcliffe signed the letter. It went to Senate Majority Leader John Thune, House Speaker Mike Johnson, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries.
“As you know, Section 702 is the single most indispensable tool we have to keep our homeland and the American people safe,” the letter says. “It enables our Intelligence Community to detect and disrupt terrorist plots, cyber intrusions, and weapons proliferation. No other authority can replace it.”
The statutory authority for Section 702 has lapsed, the letter explains, and collection under the program will expire on March 16 if FISA is not reauthorized. Beginning the 2027 renewal process by Dec. 9 would leave the agencies enough time to finish the steps that continued collection requires before March arrives.
“To prevent a gap in critical intelligence and avoid putting our nation at risk, the government must start the 2027 renewal process by then,” the letter states.
The warning comes with a date attached for a reason. “Any delays beyond this date will risk this critical authority lapsing, putting the lives of both Americans in the homeland and our troops stationed abroad at risk in the heightened threat environment briefed to the Gang of 8 earlier this week,” the letter says. Clayton and Ratcliffe briefed the Gang of Eight, the congressional leaders who receive the most sensitive intelligence briefings, on the status of FISA earlier this week.
One administration official put the push at the top of the White House’s list for the lame-duck Congress, which is still led by Republicans before Democrats take the majority in January. “This is going to be a huge priority and push by the administration, by the White House for the lame-duck Congress, because this really needs to get done,” the official told Fox News Digital. “Otherwise, we’re kind of in trouble from a national security standpoint.” The White House is “fully on board” with the request, the official said.
“If collection stops, we cannot simply turn 702 back on. The Administration looks forward to briefing Congress again in the coming days on the irreplaceable intelligence enabled by Section 702 and the dire risks to our nation if it is allowed to expire.”
The Office of the Director of National Intelligence credits Section 702 with thwarting a mass casualty terror attack at a Taylor Swift concert in Vienna, Austria, in 2024. It also says 63% of the articles in Trump’s daily brief contained Section 702 information reported by the National Security Agency in 2025.
A privacy fight is waiting
Section 702 has a controversial history. Privacy activists and constitutional scholars have long argued that the authority amounts to warrantless surveillance, because intelligence agencies can collect the communications of Americans when they are speaking to foreigners who are targets of investigations.
That opposition organized before the letter surfaced. A coalition of 27 civil liberties groups, led by Demand Progress, wrote to congressional leaders on Thursday urging them not to renew Section 702 through the annual defense policy bill and calling for a warrant requirement for searches of Americans’ information, according to CyberScoop.
The Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the Department of Justice and the White House did not return Fox News Digital’s requests for comment.