Staff Reports
The FBI Director, Christopher Wray, is waving the red, white, and blue flag and shouting from the rooftop, “Y’all, we need to hurry up and reauthorize Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act before it kicks the bucket next week!”
Wray made his passionate plea to the bigwigs on Capitol Hill, claiming that Section 702 is like the superhero cape that keeps America safe from all those fast-moving foreign baddies. He warns that if Congress doesn’t renew the Section, we might as well roll out the welcome mat for trouble and kiss crucial intel goodbye, especially during these treacherous times.
Wray wants to keep American enslaved https://t.co/o4NZl0B60W
— steve parks (@stevep38af) April 12, 2024
The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA for short, has been knocking around since the groovy disco days of 1978. And since then, it’s had more makeover moments than a reality TV star! Despite its antiquity, FISA has been swiping right on revisions, including getting a glow-up after 9/11 to give the FBI more snooping superpowers on folks in the good ol’ U.S. of A.
But hold onto your cowboy hats, folks, ’cause approving this reauthorization has become a real headache for the House this week. It all started when the former head honcho, Donald Trump, took to the Twittersphere, rallying the troops on the hard Right and telling them to slam the brakes on this FISA thing. Trump’s beef? He claims the FBI used these authorities to play spy games on his 2020 campaign, and now he wants this FISA fella to sleep with the fishes.
Trump’s social media soapbox, Truth Social, became the town square for his call to “KILL FISA” during a procedural vote, creating a rift in the House GOP. Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) and the majority of Republicans are caught in the middle of this tussle between the Trump loyalists and the rest of the party.
Wray’s pointing out that Section 702 is like the eyes and ears of the FBI, allowing them to spot terrorists in our backyard, uncover foreign schemes to snatch or bump off folks on American soil, and give a heads-up to the tech honchos about hacking plots by China, Russia, and Iran. So the stakes are higher than a giraffe’s neck for getting this reauthorization through.
Despite the hiccups, Johnson hasn’t hung the “closed” sign just yet. He’s still got a glimmer of hope that the House can pull off a victory dance and renew this baby before the buzzer sounds. And in Congress, anything can happen, so buckle up, ’cause it’s gonna be a wild ride!
