{"id":22036,"date":"2026-04-29T22:32:05","date_gmt":"2026-04-29T22:32:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/senate-to-seek-short-term-punt-for-key-surveillance-power\/"},"modified":"2026-04-29T22:32:05","modified_gmt":"2026-04-29T22:32:05","slug":"senate-to-seek-short-term-punt-for-key-surveillance-power","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/senate-to-seek-short-term-punt-for-key-surveillance-power\/","title":{"rendered":"Senate to seek short-term punt for key surveillance power"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<p>The Senate is preparing a weekslong punt for an expiring spy law after House Republicans linked a longer-term extension to a digital currency ban that is DOA across the Capitol.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe\u2019re probably going to end up doing a short-term,\u201d Senate Majority Leader John Thune said Wednesday, adding that leadership is currently \u201crunning the traps\u201d on a short-term extension of Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.<\/p>\n<p>Thune said that punt would last about 45 days, putting the new deadline in mid-June.<\/p>\n<p>The decision to do another short-term extension comes as the surveillance power is set to expire Thursday night. The House <a href=\"https:\/\/www.politico.com\/live-updates\/2026\/04\/29\/congress\/section-702-passes-house-00899071\" target=\"_blank\">passed a three-year extension<\/a> of the surveillance law Wednesday, but Republicans are attaching a permanent ban on the Federal Reserve issuing a digital currency.<\/p>\n<p>Thune publicly warned House Republicans against the step Tuesday, calling the combination a \u201cbad idea\u201d that would be \u201cdead on arrival\u201d in the Senate.<\/p>\n<p>Thune said that Speaker Mike Johnson, who he met with Wednesday, is aware of the plan to pass a short-term FISA extension. He added that he told the Louisiana Republican that the Senate \u201ccan&#8217;t move a bill\u201d that has the currency ban attached.<\/p>\n<p>The House would also need to approve any short-term extension before midnight Thursday to avoid any lapse in the surveillance power, which allows intelligence agencies to monitor foreigners abroad but also sweeps up communications involving Americans \u2014 alarming civil libertarians.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Senate is preparing a weekslong punt for an expiring spy law after House Republicans linked a longer-term extension to a digital currency ban that is DOA across the Capitol. \u201cWe\u2019re probably going to end up doing a short-term,\u201d Senate Majority Leader John Thune said Wednesday, adding that leadership is currently \u201crunning the traps\u201d on [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-22036","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-congress"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22036","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22036"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22036\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22036"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22036"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22036"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}