Fights over FISA are inherently political, and the next speaker may take a page from Mike Johnson’s complete reversal.
As the new Democratic majority prepares to take the floor in January, Representative Mike Johnson will return to Capitol Hill in much the same way he began: a Louisiana Republican among the backbenchers. Yet he can no longer claim to be the staunch critic of the surveillance state that he once presented himself as.
Assessing Johnson’s tenure as speaker may seem like a distant concern amid the Democrats’ post-election focus, but his dramatic about-face on surveillance offers a meaningful warning to rising politicians on both sides of the aisle.
Before rising to the speaker’s chair, Johnson—described by the New York Times as a “little-known social conservative from Louisiana”—advocated against the abuses he saw within the security apparatus. In 2022, he joined a letter with Rep. Jim Jordan (R–Ohio) voicing concerns about reports that the FBI may have violated privacy rules while conducting surveillance under Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA).
Section 702 of FISA permits national security agencies to collect foreign intelligence information without a warrant. Yet, as the Electronic Frontier Foundation explains, “the law enables the intelligence community to target foreign information in ways that inevitably sweep up Americans’ communications when they speak with people abroad.”
In a July 2023 interview on System Update with Glenn Greenwald, Johnson stated that the government’s power abuses were issues that kept him and his colleagues awake at night. That same year, he was chosen as Speaker after former Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R–Calif.) was ousted. Fewer than two months later, Section 702 came up for renewal. By bundling it with the defense policy bill, Congress extended the program through April 2024.
Days ahead of the deadline, Johnson not only opposed an amendment that would have required warrants to search Americans’ communications, but he also helped push through a two-year extension of FISA. His vote against the warrant measure drew anger from fellow Republicans, including Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky, who wrote on X, “This is how the Constitution dies.”
So what happened? According to The Hill, Johnson told reporters that a confidential briefing after he became speaker gave him a “different perspective” on FISA. Unfortunately, the public may never learn the private justification for why Americans should be spied upon without a warrant.
Johnson’s path crossed with that of President Trump on the same day as the FISA votes when he traveled to Mar-a-Lago, later telling Fox News that Trump, who had claimed FISA was used to spy on his campaign, supported the changes.
“What we did was we adjusted the bill to meet his demands as well as ours, and the result is that it would expire…two years from now, in the middle of his next term, leaving him the one to decide if it’s functioning well,” Johnson said.
He added that imposing a warrant requirement would hinder intelligence analysts from acting swiftly, and he cited assurances from prominent figures like Mike Pompeo and John Ratcliffe that such a warrant mandate cannot stand.
Then, predictably, this year Trump and Johnson backed renewing Section 702. But after Trump appointed Bill Pulte as acting director of national intelligence in June, Democrats refused to renew the program, citing concerns that Pulte would weaponize FISA information, NPR reported. Although Congress allowed Section 702 to lapse, certified surveillance under the mechanism will effectively persist until March 2027.
Whatever lies ahead for Section 702, its fate is likely to be driven by political calculations rather than genuine civil-liberties considerations. While Democrats have yet to officially name a House speaker, if Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (D–N.Y.) takes the role, voters should not expect him—or most lawmakers—to maintain a consistent privacy-first stance on surveillance. Jeffries voted against the warrant amendment and supported reauthorization in 2024, and he subsequently declined to extend the unreformed surveillance program once Pulte assumed leadership.
Many of the surveillance-state’s most vocal critics, including Massie and Rep. Andy Biggs (R–Ariz.), won’t be in Congress in 2027. Although some fringe voices, such as Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D–Wash.), oppose state spying publicly, the majority of representatives are unlikely to place privacy above power.
The security apparatus is intended to protect Americans, yet far too often it is wielded as a tool against domestic political adversaries. If Johnson—who once practiced as a constitutional lawyer—abandoned his opposition to domestic spying, it is unlikely that privacy advocates will prevail over partisan loyalties to the security state in future FISA battles.
