The flatlined bid to reauthorize the nation’s controversial spying powers may have a pulse again after President Donald Trump made a key concession to Democrats. Congress was on its way to reauthorizing the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), which is set to expire Friday, but that momentum was halted when Trump tapped his current director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, Bill Pulte, to serve as a temporary chief for the nation’s spy agencies. Pulte, who is set to take over the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) on June 19, has proven the prime sticking point in a process that has already been marred by disagreements over FISA’s controversial Section 702.Critics have panned him as having no experience in a role that will require him to oversee the nation’s 18 intelligence agencies.SENATE PUSH TO REAUTHORIZE NATION’S SPY POWERS STUMBLES OVER CONTROVERSIAL TRUMP DECISIONPresident Donald Trump speaks in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington on June 10, 2026.
(Julia Demaree Nikhinson/AP Photo)"This is not a problem between Senate Democrats and Senate Republicans, this was the administration throwing a live hand grenade into a critical reauthorization 10 days out," Sen.Mark Warner, D-Va., said.Warner, the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, and Senate Intelligence Committee chair Tom Cotton, R-Ark., produced a compromise, three-year reauthorization with reforms to Section 702 that likely would have advanced absent Trump’s decision to tap Pulte. Given the logjam, Trump on Wednesday announced that he was actively seeking a replacement to lead ODNI and requested that Congress produce a short-term extension to keep the program running in the meantime."I would say this, [Pulte is] going to be there for a short while, while we pick somebody else," Trump told reporters in the Oval Office.
"We're interviewing five different people.They're all very good, very different, and we'll put somebody there."W...