The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) may be in danger of lapsing, but traders don’t think it’s going away entirely.
The market for Congress reauthorizing FISA before it expires on April 20 has plummeted to 9%.
Traders are still confident, however, that FISA will become law this year at some point. The market prices its passage in 2026 at 98%.
What is FISA?
FISA is a surveillance authority first approved by Congress in 1978. Among other things, the act allows intelligence agencies to conduct electronic surveillance of non-U.S. citizens outside the U.S.
The Brookings Institution says that the key provision of the act, known as Section 702, allows broad surveillance authority, with oversight from judges who “are not provided with information about particular persons who will be targeted.”
The law also prohibits monitoring of US citizens, but “US person data is not completely excluded from 702 collection. If a US person is in communication with a 702 target, the contents of those communications can be collected and stored.”
Why FISA might expire
The House was scheduled to vote on extending FISA beyond its April 20 deadline, but House Speaker Mike Johnson delayed the vote due to objections within his own party.
Politico reports that some GOP leaders and members are calling for tweaks to the law “to quell a GOP rebellion” over Section 702, even though President Donald Trump has called for its extension.
Johnson gave no specifics on its future on the House floor.
Why are lawmakers objecting?
Representatives such as Michael Cloud of Texas and Andrew Clyde of Georgia oppose the power Section 702 gives to intelligence agencies to conduct warrantless searches, particularly of American citizens.
Cloud released a statement in 2024 opposing FISA’s reauthorization, citing “countless documented abuses of the FISA program in recent history, including against political organizations, faith groups, and more.” He also cited an accusation of the act’s abuse of power to “surveil members of the 2016 Trump campaign based on faulty opposition research from the Hillary Clinton campaign.”
Rep. Warren Davidson of Ohio introduced an amendment to FISA’s extension that would prevent intelligence agencies from purchasing information and data from third parties to spy on American citizens.
He said in a statement that “Our personal devices [such as computers and cell phones] deserve the same constitutional protections as our homes.”
Politico also reported that President Trump posted on Truth Social that Republicans need to “unify” and pass an 18-month extension to FISA without any further delay.
The takeaway:
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