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Trump Risks Key Surveillance Authority Over'Unqualified' Spy-Chief Pick US lawmakers are alarmed that Bill Pulte, a housing official with no intelligence experience, is poised to take charge of one of the government's most powerful surveillance tools. A sweeping warrantless surveillance authority remains on track to expire Friday, with no clear path to a deal, after President Donald Trump refused this week to abandon his pick of housing official Bill Pulte to temporarily lead the US intelligence community--even tasking Pulte with gutting the Office of the Director of National Intelligence in a DOGE-style "downsizing" before a permanent director is named. In a Truth Social post after his second White House meeting in two days with House speaker Mike Johnson, Trump called Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act "very important to our military, and keeping the American people safe" and asked Congress for a short-term extension to give him time to find a permanent director of national intelligence. Section 702 lets the government collect the communications of foreign targets abroad without a warrant, sweeping in an unknown volume of Americans' messages that the FBI can later search. It faces a first-ever lapse in its legal authorization if Congress does not act by the end of Friday, June 12.

US Lawmakers Move to Kill the FBI's Warrantless Wiretap Access A bipartisan bill would force the FBI to get a warrant to read Americans' messages and ban the federal purchase of commercial data on US residents ahead of a critical April deadline. A bipartisan privacy coalition in the United States Congress introduced legislation on Thursday that would impose a strict warrant requirement on the FBI's backdoor searches of Americans' communications, aligning federal law with a 2025 federal court ruling that found the warrantless practice unconstitutional. The bill, the Government Surveillance Reform Act of 2026, repeals controversial expansions of the government's warrantless wiretapping authority while overhauling key aspects of federal surveillance law--setting up a showdown with the US intelligence community and its congressional allies weeks before a sweeping global spy program sunsets on April 20. Senators Ron Wyden and Mike Lee are leading the legislative push alongside Representatives Warren Davidson and Zoe Lofgren. The measure carries endorsements from civil liberties organizations across the political spectrum.