For a brief moment, it looked like Congress was actually going to get something done.
A bipartisan coalition of lawmakers had quietly assembled the support needed to pass a three-year extension of Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, the surveillance authority that allows U.S. intelligence agencies to monitor foreign targets overseas, reported Politico.
The deal wasn't perfect — members on both sides had reservations about warrantless surveillance sweeping up American citizens — but it included new guardrails and transparency requirements designed to bring skeptics on board. The votes, by most accounts, were there.
Then President Donald Trump announced Bill Pulte as acting director of national intelligence.
Within hours, the coalition began to fracture. Pulte, a MAGA ally and Trump confidant, had no national security experience. For Democrats who had been cautiously willing to hand the administration a powerful surveillance tool, the appointment was a signal they couldn't ignore — a suggestion, in their view, that the intelligence apparatus they were being asked to reauthorize could soon be directed by someone with no regard for the institutional guardrails that had kept it in check.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD), who had been steering the extension toward the finish line, watched the votes evaporate in real time. Early Friday morning, nearly every Senate Democrat joined a handful of Republicans to kill a procedural vote that would have cleared the path to passage. The June 12 expiration deadline was suddenly very much in play.
Trump, apparently sensing the political damage, announced Thursday that Pulte would not be formally nominated for the role — a tacit acknowledgment, according to two people familiar with the situation, that Republican lawmakers had privately warned the White House the appointment was blowing up the FISA talks.
It wasn't enough.
"Pulte must go," said Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH), once considered a likely Democratic vote for the extension.
The votes that had taken weeks to quietly assemble were gone, and the clock was still running.
