{"database": "press", "table": "releases", "rows": [["https://www.thune.senate.gov/news/press-releases/thune-democrats-must-not-expose-americans-to-the-consequences-of-letting-fisa-section-702-lapse/", "Thune: Democrats Must Not Expose Americans to the Consequences of Letting FISA Section 702 Lapse", "2026-06-09", "2026", "2026-06", "Republican", "Senate", "SD", "John Thune", "T000250", "www.thune.senate.gov", "thune", "https://www.thune.senate.gov/news/press-releases/", "scraper", "Click here to watch the video.\n\nWASHINGTON \u2014 U.S. Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) today delivered the following remarks on the Senate floor:\n\nThune\u2019s remarks below (as delivered):\n\n\u201cMr. President, in four days, authorization for our nation\u2019s most critical intelligence-gathering tool will expire.\n\n\u201cSection 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act allows the U.S. government to target the digital information of foreign actors located outside of the United States for specific national security purposes, such as counterterrorism, counterintelligence, and stopping the spread of weapons of mass destruction.\n\n\u201cEstablished in the wake of September 11 to address gaps in foreign intelligence collection, this program plays a vital role in foiling bad actors, including terrorists, cyber criminals, and drug and weapons traffickers.\n\n\u201cOur nation\u2019s policymakers \u2013 from the White House to the Pentagon to Congress \u2013 rely upon intelligence acquired from Section 702 on a near daily basis.\n\n\u201cTwenty-four percent of the National Security Agency\u2019s intelligence reports in 2025 contained Section 702 information.\n\n\u201cSo did 62 percent of products in the CIA\u2019s daily World Intelligence Review.\n\n\u201cAnd 63 percent of articles in the President\u2019s Daily Brief.\n\n\u201cAnd just to bring this down to the concrete, Mr. President, more than 90 percent \u2013 90 percent \u2013 of synthetic drug disruptions enabled by the CIA in 2025 relied on Section 702 information.\n\n\u201cSynthetic drug disruptions \u2013 that\u2019s operations targeting fentanyl and fentanyl analogues: poison intended for America\u2019s streets.\n\n\u201cThe CIA reports that one raid alone supported by Section 702 resulted in the seizure of more than one metric ton of fentanyl pills from a facility in Mexico.\n\n\u201cAnd drug disruption is just one activity supported by 702 information.\n\n\u201cSection 702 provided intelligence that helped prevent a terrorist attack at a Taylor Swift concert.\n\n\u201cIt enabled law enforcement to warn potential U.S. victims of ransomware attacks planned by North Korea.\n\n\u201cIt helped enable the successful mission against al-Qaeda\u2019s top leader, Ayman al-Zawahiri, in 2022.\n\n\u201cIt\u2019s identified threats to U.S. troops and provided information key to pursuing the release of Americans held hostage abroad.\n\n\u201cAnd the list goes on.\n\n\u201cSuffice it to say that Section 702 plays a vital role in providing intelligence to protect our country.\n\n\u201cNow, Mr. President \u2026 we\u2019ve considered multiple 702 reauthorizations since the program\u2019s inception, and each time there is a robust discussion of the program and its safeguards, to ensure that civil liberties are protected in the collection of vital intelligence.\n\n\u201cTwo years ago, a bipartisan coalition of senators voted to reauthorize this program with 56 bipartisan reforms that have now been fully implemented by the Trump administration.\n\n\u201cThe result is that 702 is the most overseen intelligence collection tool in the world.\n\n\u201cAnd over the past several weeks, both Senate Democrats and Republicans have been working on a Section 702 reauthorization in good faith.\n\n\u201cThe bill released by Chairmen Cotton and Grassley last week included additional bipartisan reforms over and above those included in the House-passed bill, and over and above the robust guardrails already in place to ensure that 702 operates within the law and with respect for civil liberties.\n\n\u201cAnd on Friday, Mr. President, I would have expected those Democrats who\u2019ve been working with us to vote to advance the bill.\n\n\u201cAfter all, some of the provisions in the bill were included at their request.\n\n\u201cBut they didn\u2019t.\n\n\u201cWhy?\n\n\u201cBecause they disagree with a short-term personnel choice made by the president \u2013 his temporary appointment for acting director of national intelligence.\n\n\u201cNow, Mr. President, Democrats have every right to disagree with the president\u2019s choice for this position \u2013 no matter how short-term the appointment is likely to be.\n\n\u201cBut I invite my Democrat colleagues to think about what they are doing here, in holding this vital intelligence collection program hostage because they don\u2019t like the president\u2019s temporary \u2013 temporary \u2013 DNI pick.\n\n\u201cI\u2019ve talked at some length here today about the critical role that Section 702 plays on a near daily basis in protecting Americans from a range of threats.\n\n\u201cAnd you don\u2019t have to take my word for it.\n\n\u201cThe top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee has also made it clear that he regards Section 702 as a key intelligence source.\n\n\u201cAnd yet he and a number of his colleagues are holding up reauthorization because they disagree with the president\u2019s \u2013 again, temporary \u2013 DNI pick.\n\n\u201cMr. President, without Democrat cooperation, in four days the Section 702 program will go dark.\n\n\u201cAmerica\u2019s enemies, however, will not \u2013 will not \u2013 go dark.\n\n\u201cThey will continue working against the United States, whether that\u2019s conducting cyberattacks, planning terrorist activity, or trafficking fentanyl and other deadly drugs into our country.\n\n\u201cThe only difference is that our intelligence agencies will have a greatly reduced capacity to discover these activities.\n\n\u201cMr. President, I hope my Democrat colleagues will rethink their decision to hold the 702 program hostage before we all have cause to regret the consequences.\u201d", 1, "2026-06-18T06:41:00Z", "2026-06-18T06:43:25Z"]], "columns": ["url", "title", "date", "year", "month", "party", "chamber", "state", "member_name", "bioguide_id", "domain", "scraper", "source", "date_source", "text", "has_text", "collected_at", "updated_at"], "primary_keys": ["url"], "primary_key_values": ["https://www.thune.senate.gov/news/press-releases/thune-democrats-must-not-expose-americans-to-the-consequences-of-letting-fisa-section-702-lapse/"], "units": {}, "query_ms": 1.6630440950393677, "source": "dwillis/congress-press", "source_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press", "license": "MIT", "license_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press/blob/main/LICENSE"}