Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard told U.S. President Donald Trump in early February she had reservations about reauthorizing a key spy authority without incorporating reforms to protect Americans’ privacy, according to two people with knowledge of the exchange.
She expressed her concerns to Trump during a White House meeting, as the president was still weighing his position, said the two people, who, like others in this report, were granted anonymity to share details of the sensitive policy discussions.
Gabbard’s appeal to the president was unsuccessful, and Trump has recently been urging Republican lawmakers to extend the program, known as Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, by another 18 months without changes.
In a statement, the White House said Trump’s “entire exceptional national security team is in lockstep with the president in advancing his efforts to achieve a clean reauthorization of FISA 702.”
Trump’s position on the statute marks the latest instance in which he has bucked the advice of Gabbard, one of his senior-most intelligence officials, or outright sidelined her as his administration has pursued some of the highest-profile foreign policy priorities.
Gabbard has been largely absent as the White House has mounted an eleventh-hour pressure campaign to convince remaining GOP holdouts to sign on before the law expires April 20.
Gabbard has scarcely offered any public comments about FISA in recent months, nor has she participated in any closed-door briefings where administration officials have sought to pitch their plan on the Hill, according to two congressional aides familiar with FISA discussions.
The exception to her silence came during questioning at a congressional hearing last month, where Gabbard said she supported an 18-month extension.
“That is the President’s position, and that is the position of the intelligence community,” she responded at the time.
Olivia Coleman, a spokesperson for Gabbard, said the broader ODNI has “participated in and coordinated numerous briefings and discussions at the staff and member levels in both the House and the Senate regarding 702 authorities, as is standard procedure for ODNI when FISA 702 is up for reauthorization.”
In recent days, Trump has turned up the heat on Republicans to support a clean renewal of the law, arguing it is critical to U.S. national security. Other top aides, including CIA Director John Ratcliffe and Joint Chiefs Chair Gen. Dan Caine, have made direct overtures to the Hill this week as part of Trump’s blitz to force the extension through.
Section 702 allows the federal government to surveil the communications of foreigners abroad, including terrorists, spies and narcotics traffickers. But it can also sweep up Americans’ communications, and privacy advocates argue the law should be updated to require intelligence officials to obtain a warrant before reviewing that data.
The director of national intelligence plays a statutory role in overseeing Section 702, and previous leaders of the office have acted as both chief intermediary to the Hill on the subject and its top cheerleader.
Avril Haines, former President Joe Biden’s DNI, penned letters and met with lawmakers repeatedly before the statute last came up for renewal in 2024. And Dan Coates, DNI when Section 702 faced renewal in 2018, played a lead role whipping votes for Trump, and even edited a well-timed tweet in his name.
But Gabbard — and even Trump — have long had reservations about the law.
As a Democratic member of Congress, Gabbard once introduced legislation with Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) to overhaul Section 702, though it fizzled in the House. Massie is now one of the key Republicans opposing Trump’s plan for a clean reauthorization of the law.
Gabbard’s view on the spy authority emerged as a focal issue ahead of her confirmation hearing in January 2025. Facing potential opposition from Republicans on the hawkish Senate Intelligence Committee, Gabbard issued a statement saying changes to the law made in 2024 had dispelled her prior concerns. But she later told the spy panel in writing that she “generally” supports requiring judicial warrants to protect American data.
Trump has claimed that Section 702 was abused to spy on his political campaign in 2016. He nearly tanked the last two votes in Congress — in 2018 and 2024 — to reauthorize the law by launching a barrage of critical social media posts.
But Trump’s grievances with FISA largely concern a separate section of the law that is not up for renewal, as Trump himself acknowledged in one of his posts this week.
Gabbard’s views on other issues have at times been at odds with Trump’s foreign policy agenda, creating friction with the White House.
While in Congress, Gabbard was an outspoken critic of prior wars in the Middle East and opposed hawkish U.S. foreign policy. And in her early days as DNI, she released a video on social media warning of the dangers of nuclear holocaust — a move that irked Trump, as he was weighing an attack on Iran’s nuclear sites.
Trump dismissed Gabbard’s assessment that Iran was not seeking to build a nuclear weapon last summer, and she was not with Trump when he decided to launch airstrikes against three of the country’s nuclear sites.
And when Trump was discussing a larger-scale military campaign against Iran this February, he was at Mar-a-Lago with Ratcliffe and Secretary of State Marco Rubio, while Gabbard and other Cabinet officials monitored events from D.C.
Last month, one of Gabbard’s top aides, Joe Kent, resigned in opposition to the war in Iran. During a pair of Congressional hearings that same week, Gabbard tried to thread the needle between backing Trump’s justification for the war — that Iran posed an imminent threat — and making clear it did not necessarily reflect her personal judgment.
“The only person who can determine what is and is not an imminent threat is the president,” she told Sen. Jon Ossoff (D-Ga.).
