President Trump said on Sunday that he will not support renewing a key government surveillance authority unless Congress also passes the SAVE America Act, his stalled elections overhaul, tying together two measures that have nothing to do with each other and complicating an already stalled effort to revive the spy powers.

The authority in question, Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, expired Friday for the first time since it was created in 2008. In a post on Truth Social, Trump made his price plain. "I'm against FISA if it doesn't come with The Save America Act (Full version!) firmly attached to it," he wrote, brushing aside Democratic objections to his interim choice to lead the intelligence community.

The demand adds a fresh obstacle to a renewal fight that was already tangled, and it folds the surveillance program into Trump's broader, monthslong campaign to tighten voting rules before the November midterms.

What the voting bill would do

The SAVE America Act, formally the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act, would require proof of citizenship to register to vote in federal elections and a photo ID to cast a ballot. Trump and his allies cast it as essential to election integrity; critics warn it could keep millions of eligible Americans from voting. Audits and studies by election officials and researchers have found that noncitizen voting, already illegal and subject to steep penalties, is rare.

The bill has been stuck in the Senate, where most legislation needs 60 votes to advance. It drew 50 votes earlier this month, short of the threshold, and an attempt to attach it to the recent $70 billion immigration enforcement package failed when four Senate Republicans joined Democrats to block it. Trump has pressed Majority Leader John Thune to scrap the filibuster and pass the measure on a party-line basis, but Thune has said the votes "aren't there." Trump has also vowed not to sign other legislation until the voting bill clears.

How 702 came to lapse

Section 702 lets the government collect the communications of foreigners abroad without a warrant, sweeping up Americans' messages when they are in contact with those targets. Intelligence officials describe it as central to national security; by one government estimate, more than 60 percent of the president's daily intelligence briefing draws on it.

Its renewal has grown harder each cycle as lawmakers in both parties press for privacy reforms. This year, that friction produced a series of short-term extensions, the last of which ran out Friday. The House passed a three-year extension in late April with an unrelated ban on a central bank digital currency attached to win over conservatives; the Senate declined to take it up and instead approved a 45-day stopgap, setting up this week's deadline.

When the deadline arrived, Congress could not act. The House failed Thursday to pass even a short-term extension, with 19 Republicans joining Democrats, then left for a recess that runs into the week of June 22. Senate Republicans made two unsuccessful attempts of their own, which would have been moot with the House already gone, before adjourning until Monday. A separate Senate bill that would extend the program for three years with modest changes is thought to have the bipartisan support to pass, but Democratic senators are blocking it.

The Pulte fight and a possible off-ramp

At the center of the standoff is Trump's decision to install Bill Pulte, his housing finance chief and a close ally with no intelligence background, as acting director of national intelligence in place of the departing Tulsi Gabbard. Pulte has used his housing post to refer criminal allegations against several of Trump's perceived adversaries, including Sen. Adam Schiff, New York Attorney General Letitia James, and Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook.

Democrats say that record makes him unfit to oversee the nation's surveillance tools, and they have conditioned any 702 extension on his removal from the role. "It doesn't matter what else they do. Pulte's gotta be gone," Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer said. The unease is not confined to one party. Thune told reporters, "We don't need a weaponized DNI," and the Senate's top intelligence Republican, Tom Cotton, declined to vouch for Pulte's qualifications.

Trump moved to ease the fight by nominating Jay Clayton, the U.S. attorney in Manhattan and a former SEC chairman, as the permanent intelligence director, but he made the announcement only after Congress had left town, and he still wants Pulte to hold the job briefly in an acting capacity. Pulte is slated to take over on June 19. Clayton's confirmation hearing is set for Wednesday, and Sen. Mark Warner, the top Democrat on the Intelligence Committee, said he hoped Clayton could be confirmed by week's end, clearing the way to move quickly on FISA. Even so, Democratic support for Clayton has not translated into lifting the hold.

What the lapse means now

For all the warnings, the program does not immediately go dark. It operates under a yearlong certification from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court that runs through March 2027, and legal analysts say collection can continue under that authorization even with the statute expired. Companies remain legally bound to comply, facing fines of $250,000 a day if they refuse.

The complication is indemnification. Warner cautioned that telecommunications and technology firms may balk at turning over data without the legal protections the statute provides, calling it a "high-risk proposition." Any court challenge, analysts note, would likely be resolved within about 30 days and is expected to fail.

Republicans pushing for renewal have framed the lapse in stark terms, with Thune warning it would "shut the lights off" on the program and Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin saying it makes monitoring threats harder at a moment he described as carrying the highest threat level ever, with the country's 250th-anniversary events and the World Cup underway. Whether the program is restored now turns less on the surveillance debate itself than on Trump's insistence that any deal carry his voting bill, a condition that, as it stands, neither chamber has the votes to meet.