Given the long trail of abuses so far, Republicans should be well aware that the Deep State will mobilize whatever authority it can to target conservative political opponents. Yet too many in Congress still seem to have their heads in the sand. The Republican-backed vote to reauthorize key parts of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) could spell doom for conservatives in the 2024 election — even if they win.

“We have rampant [FISA] abuses going on. And this body is just going to extend the very mechanism of those abuses on the back of the National Defense Authorization Act,” Republican Texas Rep. Chip Roy said in a speech ahead of the vote. Roy’s pleas apparently fell on the deaf ears of his Republican colleagues.

Attempts to reauthorize the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) without including Section 702 of FISA fell through this week. The provision has been hotly contested by both conservatives and progressive over the years for giving intelligence agencies broad authority to spy on American citizens. Although the warrantless surveillance ostensibly targets foreigners abroad, it inevitably brings in large amounts of correspondence by American citizens. Progressives often rail against how this facilitates “Islamaphobia,” while conservatives rightly worry that the history of the 2016 election is about to repeat itself in 2024.

The Senate has once again betrayed the American people, trampling on the Constitution and our rights in bipartisan fashion.

The first two images list the senators who voted yea to keep unconstitutional, warrantless surveillance of Americans via FISA 702 in the National Defense… pic.twitter.com/1pvcAWGhxO

— Justin Amash (@justinamash) December 14, 2023

Indeed a bipartisan coalition from libertarian GOP Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul to socialist independent Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders voted no on the bill. Ultimately, however, the Senate approved the $886 billion NDAA funding bill for 2024 with the four-month FISA extension included. There were only 13 total holdouts: including six Republicans and seven Democrats.

The Republican-led House then sent it on to the White House for President Joe Biden to sign. The final vote in the House came out 310 to 118, with 73 Republicans and 45 Democrats opposed. Biden, an establishment shill who had his hands in FISA targeting of Trump’s 2016 campaign, has every reason to sign the bill into law. 

Any attempts to downplay the short-term FISA extension ring hollow. The wording of the provision would allow surveillance into mid-2025. While the extension only goes until April 2024, any surveillance authorization received during this time will be valid for a year. So surveillance that begins the day before the extension expires will give the intelligence community free rein until April 2025 — i.e. until after the election.

Republicans have served as useful idiots, setting the stage for a repeat of the 2016 FISA abuses against the Trump campaign.

There is no such thing as a “short term” extension of Section 702.

Authorizing 702 until April 19 via the NDAA opens ANOTHER loophole by permitting the IC to extend warrantless surveillance well into 2025. Hell no. pic.twitter.com/UxGuwYRtKu

— Warren Davidson 🇺🇸 (@WarrenDavidson) December 7, 2023

Of course, the FISA abuses have been well documented over the past eight years. Inspector General Michael Horowitz’s conclusive report found myriad “mistakes, errors, and abuses” in the FISA process that sparked operation Crossfire Hurricane — the ham-handed investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election. Surveillance of Trump affiliates Carter Page, George Papadopoulos, Michael Flynn and Paul Manafort ultimately cascaded into the Russian collusion hoax, which Democrats and the media used to undermine Trump’s legitimacy with the American people and sabotage his first term.

With the powers-that-be now warning of imminent descent into a Trumpian “dictatorship,” there is every reason to believe FISA power will be leveraged in the same way or worse. Trump is not the same man he was when he first took office. He understands how the game works and has a clear vision for how to purge those who abused their power to target him. The Deep State faces an existential reckoning if Trump returns to power. It will pull out every dirty FISA trick in the book to keep this from happening. If Trump does get elected, you can bet FISA will once again be used to undermine his ability to govern.

It’s ironic that a TIME Magazine piece ran Thursday warning of the urgent need to “tighten” FISA laws to prevent a second Trump administration from abusing them. But FISA was only ever weaponized one way. That could change under Trump 47, but it shouldn’t. Republicans who voted no on the extension are ultimately in the right.

It would be giving yes-vote Republicans far too much credit to believe they are thinking ahead, reauthorizing FISA to tactically use it against their enemies. Rather, they are swamp creatures who cater to establishment interests and have little respect for Constitutional rights as soon as they become inconvenient.

It is, however, still awfully tempting to succumb to the idea that Trump should seek to immediately turn FISA back on his enemies. There are legitimate arguments to be made about Republicans using state power to fight the left on its own turf — but FISA provision 702 is not one of them. This is too much power for the government to have. While Republicans could benefit in the short-term, the pendulum will always swing back harder than before. The only answer is to severely curtail warrantless surveillance of American citizens once and for all.