Washington | April 17, 2026, 5:32 a.m. ET | 7 min read With a statutory deadline fast approaching, Congress is immersed in what has become one of its most enduring and internally divisive fights: whether – and how – to preserve government foreign surveillance powers while protecting the civil liberties of Americans whose communications get swept up in the intelligence-gathering. The U.S. House of Representatives voted early Friday to approve a 10-day stopgap extension to Section 702 of the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), which had been set to expire April 20. That came after a five-year extension, with new provisions to address critics’ concerns, failed on the House floor. Now the Senate must also pass a short-term extension, to buy Congress more time on the issue. The votes, defying a simple party-line split, reflect a debate that has simmered for decades. The renewal is opposed by a mix of liberals and privacy-minded conservatives.…