Hopes were fading on Wednesday for a breakthrough in Congress to salvage a warrantless surveillance law before its expiration this weekend, after President Trump dug in on naming a close ally who has alienated members of both parties to a top intelligence post.
Unless lawmakers act by midnight on Friday, the law, known as Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA, will sunset. It is the legal underpinning for what is widely considered to be the most powerful surveillance tool the federal government has at its disposal, credited with generating intelligence that thwarts terror plots, defangs foreign hackers, curtails drug trafficking and gleans key insights for policymakers about chief rivals like China and Russia.
Trump administration officials and some Republican lawmakers have warned that letting Section 702 lapse would risk grave security threats to the United States, especially as the war in Iran grinds on.
But while a bipartisan coalition had been close to a deal to extend it, Mr. Trump injected fresh chaos into the debate last week by naming Bill Pulte, a confidant without any national security experience, as acting director of national intelligence.
Even some Republicans expressed reservations, noting his lack of qualifications for the post. And days later, a bipartisan coalition blocked a renewal from moving forward in the Senate, as even Democrats who had previously been working with Republicans to forge an agreement to renew the law said they would not vote to do so unless Mr. Trump withdrew Mr. Pulte as his pick.
Congressional leaders had already been struggling to find enough votes amid longstanding privacy objections to pass compromise legislation that would renew Section 702 for three years.
Senator John Thune, Republican of South Dakota and the majority leader, conceded on Wednesday that there was now almost no chance of acting on such a bill before the law expired, and he was instead gauging support for a short-term extension, perhaps for three weeks.
“Well, I think if we do, it’s looking increasingly like it’s going to be some sort of an extension,” Mr. Thune told reporters at the Capitol.
But Congress has already punted on the issue twice this year, and another short-term reprieve looked less achievable, as some privacy advocates indicated they were unwilling to continue extending the law.
Republican congressional leaders have toiled in recent days to persuade the president to drop Mr. Pulte — or at least to name a permanent replacement for the top intelligence post who could be quickly confirmed — arguing that they could not muster the votes to renew Section 702 otherwise. Speaker Mike Johnson met with Mr. Trump at the White House both Tuesday and Wednesday, and Mr. Pulte attended the Tuesday session, according to people familiar with the matter who insisted on anonymity to detail confidential discussions.
But while Mr. Johnson described Tuesday’s meeting as “very productive,” he did not indicate any progress had been made.
“The Democrats now have taken a hostage on this, and they’re suggesting they might not advance it,” Mr. Johnson said afterward. “We cannot allow FISA to go dark. It would be a dangerous prospect, and I think everybody who’s reasonable understands that.”
Mr. Thune said on Tuesday that he was encouraging the White House to nominate a permanent director of national intelligence to quell Democratic opposition.
“Getting some certainty and closure on that issue about who that might be will certainly play an important role in unlocking the support we need to get FISA done,” Mr. Thune said.
But instead of following Republicans’ advice, Mr. Trump appears to have responded to the pushback by growing more resolute in his insistence on installing Mr. Pulte. On Tuesday evening, after his meeting with Mr. Johnson and Mr. Pulte, the president posted on social media that Mr. Pulte would assume the duties of his new job from Tulsi Gabbard, the current spy chief, on June 19 instead of the end of the month, which was to be her last day.
Then on Wednesday, he posted on social media that he was “looking for a permanent ODNI Nominee with experience in National Security,” but did not offer a name. He said Mr. Pulte would “execute the immediate and needed downsizing of the office, reverting staff to their home agencies,” and pushed Congress to send him a short-term extension of Section 702 to allow time to select a permanent nominee.
He later told reporters Mr. Pulte would have the job “for a short while.” Federal law generally allows an acting official to serve for up to 210 days.
The law has for years generated controversy and criticism from both conservatives and liberals over how intelligence agencies, including the National Security Agency and the Federal Bureau of Investigation, use the spying powers it authorizes. That is because Section 702, while aimed at scooping up private messages of foreigners abroad, also allows the collection — without a warrant — of an unknown volume of material from Americans, including when they communicate with overseas suspects.
Democratic aides said it was unlikely that Mr. Trump’s latest post would move any votes before the Friday deadline. Democrats have said that allowing Mr. Pulte, whom they view as a Trump loyalist likely to do the president’s bidding rather than provide unvarnished intelligence assessments, to serve at all in the intelligence role would be untenable.
“The president said that Pulte would be around for a period of time,” said Senator Ron Wyden, Democrat of Oregon and a leading privacy advocate. “That, to me, is unacceptable because it’s going to take us through the elections, and all kinds of things that he wants to do in terms of voting practices that really stomp on the rights of the states and communities like mine, that vote by mail.”
Absent passage of an extension, Section 702 will legally terminate at midnight Friday heading into Saturday. The law, however, has a built-in safety net for a temporary lapse that allows the surveillance program to endure until annual certifications issued by the nation’s intelligence court expire, though such a scenario could invite legal challenges. The court recertified the program in March, meaning the N.S.A. could continue to operate the program through March 2027 even if the statute were to expire.
The law in question permits the government to collect — from U.S. companies like Google and AT&T, and without a warrant — the private messages of foreigners abroad, even when the targets are communicating with Americans. Congress enacted it in 2008, legalizing a form of a once-secret warrantless wiretapping program created by the Bush administration after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. But it added a “sunset” provision that ensures the law periodically comes up for review and potential modification.
An extension bill would need 60 votes to advance in the Senate — a threshold it just barely reached in 2024, the last time Congress extended Section 702 for more than a handful of weeks. Back then, Section 702 briefly lapsed, as it cleared Congress less than an hour after the midnight deadline and was then quickly signed by President Joseph R. Biden Jr.
Until Mr. Pulte’s nomination, much of the debate about renewing it again had centered on the concerns among civil libertarians over how intelligence analysts and F.B.I. agents may search the raw database of Section 702 intercepts for Americans’ information. If there is a hit, then officials can read the private messages of Americans that were collected without a warrant and use it for investigations.
While there are strict rules for when such queries are permissible, in recent years F.BI. officials have repeatedly conducted searches that were later found to have violated those standards, prompting the bureau to adopt stricter search rules that were codified by Congress during the last renewal debate in 2024. But privacy hawks have continued to demand a fuller warrant requirement for searches.
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