Mike Johnson’s Crusade to Renew Warrantless NSA Spying on Americans Culminates This Week
The House Speaker, who once told me FISA abuses “keep me up at night,” now fights to renew the domestic spying law with no reforms. And he has key allies in the White House and Democratic leadership.
House Speaker Mike Johnson is on a crusade. He is determined to pass a three-year, reform-free renewal of the notorious FISA law that authorizes the NSA to spy on the communications of American citizens, on U.S. soil, without warrants of any kind.
Immediately prior to the last (unsuccessful) attempt by Johnson to pass a new reform-free renewal of this spying law — just two weeks ago — I wrote about the bizarre and deeply bipartisan history of FISA domestic spying and how the U.S. somehow became a country that authorizes its surveillance state to target American citizens, all without warrants.
I will not recount all of that here, except to note that — like the 2001 Patriot Act — the original law empowering the NSA to spy on Americans without warrants was such a self-evident departure from American tradition that passage was only possible by portraying it as a mere temporary emergency measure. Yet those spying powers have now become one of the many such “temporary” and “emergency” measures that have seamlessly become a quasi-permanent fixture of the U.S. government. This upcoming week in the House will determine whether it becomes genuinely permanent and, worse, forever immune to reforms.
The FISA bill that permits warrantless NSA spying on American citizens was first enacted by Nancy Pelosi’s House in 2008, then signed into law by President Bush. The law provided for those powers to expire four years later, unless Congress approved renewal.
The law was first renewed in 2012 with the support of the Obama White House, this time for five years, without any reforms. When that five-year renewal was set to expire in 2018, Congress, this time backed by the Trump White House, passed a six-year reform-free renewal, requiring a new vote in 2024.
For the 2018 renewal, there was a mountain of evidence demonstrating abuse, which in turn gave rise to steadfast opposition to such a renewal from dozens of members of both parties (who were demanding, among other reforms, the addition of a warrant requirement for spying on Americans). As a result, then-Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI) was forced to rely on dozens of Democratic representatives to secure FISA renewal.
Ryan accomplished this by working in close tandem with three key California Democrats: then-Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, ranking Intelligence Committee member Adam Schiff, and Eric Swalwell (D-CA). That liberal trio led 65 House Democrats alongside 191 Republicans to vote to endow a President they were calling a Hitler-type fascist with virtually unlimited power to spy on Americans without warrants.
The last time the FISA bill was renewed was four years after that 2018 vote: in April, 2024, with the support of the Biden White House and the key support of newly elected House Speaker Mike Johnson. That time, Congress was only willing to extend it only for two years, meaning the bill was scheduled to lapse on April 17, 2026, unless it was renewed again.
That is why Mike Johnson is now tasked with securing a new multi-year renewal of FISA with no reforms. On April 17 — last week — Johnson’s first attempt to renew the spying law for 18 more months failed to secure the necessary votes in the House for renewal He was thus forced to desperately plead with the chamber for a short 10-day extension to give more time to pressure the 20 House GOP holdouts to change their minds, and to try to induce more Democratic defections.
Once Congress agreed to that short 10-day extension, it set the new expiration date to April 30: this upcoming Thursday. Johnson, working at the direction of the Trump White House and in close partnership with the Democratic ranking member of the Intelligence Committee, Rep. Jim Himes (D-CT), is now scurrying for more votes in both parties to extend this domestic spying law with no reforms.
Among the key reforms Johnson and Himes are trying to block is one that would amend the law to require a warrant before the NSA can spy on the communications of American citizens. It is remarkable that it a proposal to require warrants before the NSA can spy on Americans is even controversial at all, given that this has been a linchip on the American conception of liberty since the country’s founding.
That House vote is now expected on Monday or Tuesday. The outcome is very much in doubt. But as someone who has been reporting on this law since its enactment fifteen years ago, it is very difficult to bet against the U.S. surveillance state, which virtually always gets its way in Washington.
That is especially true since elected officials who purport to oppose domestic warrantless spying when the other party is in the White House typically change their minds once their party is in power. And those who posture as opponents of this law often end up voting for it if their votes are needed for renewal. Worse, as Trump, Mike Johnson, Nancy Pelosi, and so many others have proven, their steadfast opposition magically transforms into vehement support once they ascend to power.
Still, many obstacles remain for Johnson to overcome if he is to get the necessary votes by Monday or Tuesday. The key factor is whether enough of those 20 House Republicans will continue to oppose it, despite intense White House pressure, and whether the Democratic caucus will remain united in their opposition, despite their long history of lending enough votes for FISA renewal to ensure its reform-free passage and despite the vigorous support of Rep. Himes, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee.
Mike Johnson has proven himself to be a particularly shameless huckster when it comes to Americans’ constitutional privacy rights. A constitutional lawyer who was a long-time and vehement opponent of FISA and reform-free renewal while back-benching in the House GOP caucus, he performed a 180-degree reversal as soon as he became House Speaker in October 2023. Shortly thereafter, he led the push to defeat all FISA reforms and secure the 2024 two-year “clean” renewal of the spying law, and is now, in 2026, dutifully performing the same function to force a “clean” renewal.
Johnson’s history on this issue is nothing short of strange. I happened to interview Johnson just months before he was surprisingly elevated to the Speakership as a compromise candidate when all other candidates failed to obtain a majority. I asked him to come on my show precisely because he had become such an impassioned and knowledgeable critic of the U.S. surveillance state and, more broadly, a steadfast opponent of the unconstrained powers vested in U.S. security agencies.
When I spoke to him on SYSTEM UPDATE, he was particularly fixated on the urgent need to reform FISA spying by adding a warrant requirement for the surveillance of Americans’ communications. In fact, he melodramatically told me that the U.S. government’s warrantless power to spy on Americans’ communications is what “keeps [him] up at night.”
When Johnson was chosen as Speaker in October 2023, I assumed that would be good news for the cause of privacy and reining in the Surveillance State. Instead, he instantly — and I mean instantly — converted from a stalwart opponent of this domestic spying law into its most enthusiastic and influential cheerleader. He vowed to lead the effort to renew FISA in 2024 and to block all proposed reforms to the law.
When asked to reconcile this sudden, radical reversal on an issue he had made central to his political identity, the new House Speaker explained that he was taken into a secret briefing room and shown information that “convinced” him to argue that this spying law was not only vital but that no reforms could be permitted. I have no doubt he was indeed taken into a secret room. What was said to Johnson in that secret room remains a mystery, but whatever it was, it was clearly “persuasive.”
https://greenwald.substack.com/p/mike-johnsons-crusade-to-renew-warrantles