For years, centrist Democrats like Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia dismissed claims that a key National Security Agency surveillance program could be abused to spy on Americans.
Then President Donald Trump tapped Bill Pulte — an unqualified housing official accused of misusing sensitive databases to pursue the president’s political vendettas — to oversee the nation’s spy agencies. That got the centrist Democrats’ attention.
Warner, who serves as ranking member of the Select Committee on Intelligence, voted with every Senate Democrat except for Pennsylvania Sen. John Fetterman last week against advancing the renewal of the NSA program authorized by Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA.
In the face of pushback from Democrats and some Republicans, Trump declined to back down on his choice. Instead, he said Tuesday that he was moving up the effective date of Pulte’s appointment to lead the Office of the Director of National Intelligence to June 19.
Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., a longtime critic of Section 702, said that there’s unprecedented support for reforming the law.
