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It's now MAGA to be in favor of warrantless government spying on American citizens

When Donald Trump was running for a second presidential term in 2024, he came out strongly in favor of ditching the federal government’s claim that it has the right to easedrop electronically on basically anyone it wants, without so much as going before a judge and getting a warrant. This was an audacious claim that had absolutely no precedent in the history of American jurisprudence, or in the common law, but it was created out of thin air after the 9/11 attacks in the form of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). This legislation, approved by Congress as a “temporary” measure in a time of alleged national emergency, has always been anathema to traditional conservatives, and even a fair number of Democrats and independents, so Trump was singing to the choir when he said in 2024 that he would abolish FISA. “KILL FISA,” he wrote in his typical all-caps style on Truth Social. “IT WAS ILLEGALLY USED AGAINST ME, AND MANY OTHERS.” Now, the dreaded Section 702 of FISA is up once again for yet another 18-month renewal, and Trump has changed his tune. Trump, the so-called limited government candidate, is now a champion of secret warrantless spying on Americans, in direct violation of the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Government hacks can tap into your emails, texts or other communications and you would never even know it, because they can go before a group of largely unknown “judges” with secret evidence that never has to be made public and claim that you are a national security risk and need to be placed on a watchlist. On Wednesday, April 15, Trump again took to Truth Social as Congress was debating a possible extension to Section 702 of FISA, which allows intelligence services to scoop up electronic communications between Americans and individuals overseas. Astonishingly, Trump now says he’s willing to “risk” the rights of Americans in order to keep those secret spying powers in the government’s arsenal of technocratic tools. He wrote on his Truth Social account: “I am willing to risk the giving up of my Rights and Privileges as a Citizen for our Great Military and Country! We need to stick together when this Bill comes before the House Rules Committee today to keep it CLEAN!” And yet, you won’t hear a peep of criticism from the so-called conservative media giants. They’re all silent today. They are terrified of going against Trump on even the most obviously anti-conservative actions coming out of his administration. Leo’s Newsletter is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. The following is an excerpt from Reason magazine: The context here is the April 20 deadline for reauthorizing Section 702. As Reason‘s Joe Lancaster detailed a few weeks ago, that deadline provides opportunities for members of Congress to demand changes to how FISA works. Rep. Thomas Massie (R–Ky.), for example, tried to offer amendments that would, among other things, require law enforcement agencies to obtain a warrant before trolling through communication records that end up in the FISA database. On the other side of the aisle, the Congressional Progressive Caucus has vowed to vote against a ‘clean’ reauthorization. But Trump no longer wants to “KILL FISA.” In fact, he doesn’t even want to see any basic reforms that might better protect Americans from unlawful surveillance. That happens a lot, as I’ve written before. In 2021, for example, the FBI used its FISA powers to run more than 3.3 million queries through the Section 702 database. A Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court report unsealed in 2023 showed that the FBI improperly used its warrantless search powers more than 278,000 times during 2021—targeting “crime victims, January 6th riot suspects, people arrested at a protest in the wake of the police killing of George Floyd in 2020,” and donors to congressional candidates. The 2024 reauthorization implemented some reforms that limit how broadly the FBI and other law enforcement agencies can use the records in the FISA database. Despite that, The New York Times reported this month that federal law enforcement agencies have been using a new “filtering” process to search records without properly logging those queries. That’s proof that more guardrails are needed, civil liberties groups say. “This warrantless surveillance system is broken, and extending it absent reforms would be an abdication of the fundamental responsibility to protect Americans’ privacy,” Jake Laperruque, deputy director of the security and surveillance project at the Center for Democracy and Technology, said in a statement to Reason. “The answer for fixing the problems and endless abuse of queries is simple: If you want to query an American’s private messages, get a warrant. It’s time Congress enacted a warrant rule and closed this backdoor search loophole.” Trump, in this latest about face, exposes himself as perhaps the biggest hypocrite to ever emerge on the national political scene. As long as he himself was the target of these government surveillance powers, he was arguing for them to be abolished and promised that he would do exactly that once back in office. But now that those powers are ones he gets to use against others, as opposed to being on the receiving end, he throws his principles out the window and says such powers are good and necessary “for our great military and country.” Maybe that’s because he never had any principles to begin with, only a commitment to writing the rules as he goes according to what benefits him personally, not the nation. Trump has always been a narcissist, so that’s no surprise. The shocking part of this story is that almost none of his conservative backers are willing to call him on the carpet. Share Subscribe now