WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump called on Congress to extend Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act for 18 months before the surveillance program expires on Monday. Trump posted his support on Truth Social, saying the program had supplied information vital to recent U.S. actions in Venezuela and Iran.

Section 702 authorizes the CIA, the National Security Agency, the FBI and other agencies to collect and analyze overseas communications of foreign persons without a warrant. The program also incidentally collects communications of Americans who interact with surveillance targets overseas.

Trump said he supported renewing the program despite his concerns that political adversaries could use parts of the law against him. He said a different provision of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act had been used to spy on his 2016 campaign. Trump was once opposed to Section 702 before reversing his stance.

Representative Rick Crawford of Arkansas, who chairs the House Intelligence Committee, supports Trump's call for an 18-month renewal. Crawford had previously criticized what he called the weaponization of intelligence. "We can walk and chew gum at the same time," Crawford said.

The Office of the Director of National Intelligence released an annual report showing that the number of foreign surveillance targets increased to nearly 350,000 in 2025 from almost 292,000 in 2024. The report also showed that searches using terms likely to identify an American decreased to 7,724 in 2025 from 7,845 in 2024.

Elizabeth Goitein, senior director of the Liberty and National Security Program at the Brennan Center for Justice, said the reported totals are incomplete because agencies like the FBI have accessed the data without publicly reporting the searches. "They can pretty much target anyone," Goitein said.

A 2024 court order found that FBI officials repeatedly violated their own standards when searching for intelligence related to the Jan. 6, 2021, U.S. Capitol breach and racial justice protests in 2020.