Mike Johnson's Crusade to Renew Warrantless NSA Spying on Americans Culminates This Week

Speaker Johnson greets President Trump in the East Room of the White House on February 5, 2025. Joshua Sukoff / ShutterstockHouse Speaker Mike Johnson is on a crusade. He is determined to pass a three-year, reform-free renewal of the notorious FISA law that authorizes the NSA to spy on the communications of American citizens, on U.S. soil, without warrants of any kind.Immediately prior to the last (unsuccessful) attempt by Johnson to pass a new reform-free renewal of this spying law — just two weeks ago — I wrote about the bizarre and deeply bipartisan history of FISA domestic spying and how the U.S. somehow became a country that authorizes its surveillance state to target American citizens, all without warrants.I will not recount all of that here, except to note that — like the 2001 Patriot Act — the original law empowering the NSA to spy on Americans without warrants was such a self-evident departure from American tradition that passage was only possible by portraying it as a mere…