Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., keeps getting under the skin of the NSA’s biggest supporters with his warnings about intelligence agency abuses — and the latest dispute resulted in a high-profile dustup on the Senate floor on Thursday.
Wyden said the public needs to know about a secret court opinion that found fault with the Trump administration’s use of data collected by the National Security Agency, prompting Senate Intelligence Committee Chair Tom Cotton, R-Ark., to warn of “consequences” for “distorting highly classified material.”
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The unusually pointed back-and-forth came amid a fight over the reauthorization of a controversial domestic spying program. The barbs exchanged by the senators highlighted how much Wyden has angered colleagues aligned with the NSA who want the spy program to be renewed without changes.
By the end of the day, Congress voted to give the program a 45-day extension to allow further negotiations over its fate.
Wyden had argued for a shorter extension, but he was able to secure a concession. Cotton and the top Democrat on the Intelligence Committee, Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia, agreed to pen a letter to the executive branch asking for the court opinion to be declassified within 15 days.
Wyden says that opinion details serious violations of the program’s guidelines.
“That ruling found serious violations of Americans’ constitutional rights and how the Trump administration has used Section 702,” Wyden said. “Congress should not vote — should not vote — to renew Section 702 when Americans are left in the dark about these troubling abuses,” Wyden said.
Wyden has a long history of trying to pry loose evidence of civil liberties violations by intelligence agencies. Most famously, in 2013, he attempted to force then-Director of National Intelligence James Clapper to acknowledge the existence of a phone record dragnet months before NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden’s disclosures made it public.
His sometimes-cryptic statements warning about secret spy programs have been dubbed “the Wyden siren.”
Most recently he has zeroed in on the court opinion. He irritated supporters of the NSA program on Thursday by initially refusing to give his consent for a 45-day extension of the program, until he secured the letter from Intelligence Committee leaders.
While speaking on the floor about why he opposed that extension, he accused Cotton of ducking the court opinion, prompting a pointed response.
“I am ducking nothing. I am pointing out the senator from Oregon’s long-standing practice of distorting highly classified material in public,” Cotton said. “One of these days there are going to be some consequences, and it may be while I’m the chairman of this committee.”
Cotton’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Members of Congress are protected from prosecution for comments they make on the floor under the speech or debate clause of the Constitution.
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Little has been revealed about the court opinion besides a New York Times report earlier this month that it centered on searches of information about Americans in a vast database of communications that gets around laws on domestic spying because the data is collected abroad.
Wyden noted that current law already requires the court opinion to be declassified and released to the public at some point. He wants that process sped up so that it can take place before Congress votes on a long-term extension of the surveillance program.
“It sure feels like the other side of the aisle is covering the abuses up.”
“Congress must use a short-term extension to openly debate the critical issues in front of the American people. I am disappointed that, instead, it sure feels like the other side of the aisle is covering the abuses up,” he said.
Although the debate that was resolved later in the day hinged on a seemingly mundane issue — whether Congress should have three weeks or 45 days for further negotiations — it exposed hard feelings between the committee colleagues.
Wyden said a three-week extension was “more than reasonable,” given that Congress has had months to work on the issue.
Cotton said a longer extension was necessary because Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., the rankin member of the committee, recently suffered a family tragedy. Warner’s 36-year-old daughter died earlier this month, and he returned to the Senate this week after taking time off. As the highest-ranking Democrat on the Intelligence Committee, Warner will play a key role in the negotiations in extending the law.
“I would suggest that comity also counsels that we give a little bit longer than two weeks to a grieving colleague who just had a terrible family tragedy,” Cotton said.
Warner’s office did not immediately return a request for comment.
Update: April 30, 2026, 5:29 p.m. ET
This story has been updated to include Congress’s extension of FISA after publication.
The post Ron Wyden Is Pissing Off the NSA’s Biggest Backers. Tom Cotton Warns There Will Be “Consequences.” appeared first on The Intercept.
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