WASHINGTON (AP) — After its midnight deadline, the Senate voted early Saturday to reauthorize a key U.S. surveillance law after divisions over whether the FBI should be restricted from using the program to search for Americans’ data nearly forced the statute to lapse.

The legislation approved 60-34 with bipartisan support would extend for two years the program known as Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. It now goes to President Joe Biden’s desk to become law. White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan said Biden “will swiftly sign the bill.”

“In the nick of time, we are reauthorizing FISA right before it expires at midnight,” Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said when voting on final passage began 15 minutes before the deadline. “All day long, we persisted and we persisted in trying to reach a breakthrough and in the end, we have succeeded.”

U.S. officials have said the surveillance tool, first authorized in 2008 and renewed several times since then, is crucial in disrupting terror attacks, cyber intrusions, and foreign espionage and has also produced intelligence that the U.S. has relied on for specific operations, such as the 2022 killing of al-Qaida leader Ayman al-Zawahri.

“If you miss a key piece of intelligence, you may miss some event overseas or put troops in harm’s way,” Sen. Marco Rubio, the top Republican on the Senate Intelligence Committee, said. “You may miss a plot to harm the country here, domestically, or somewhere else. So in this particular case, there’s real-life implications.”

The proposal would renew the program, which permits the U.S. government to collect without a warrant the communications of non-Americans located outside the country to gather foreign intelligence. The reauthorization faced a long and bumpy road to final passage Friday after months of clashes between privacy advocates and national security hawks pushed consideration of the legislation to the brink of expiration.

Though the spy program was technically set to expire at midnight, the Biden administration had said it expected its authority to collect intelligence to remain operational for at least another year, thanks to an opinion earlier this month from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which receives surveillance applications.

Still, officials had said that court approval shouldn’t be a substitute for congressional authorization, especially since communications companies could cease cooperation with the government if the program is allowed to lapse.

House before the law was set to expire, U.S. officials were already scrambling after two major U.S. communication providers said they would stop complying with orders through the surveillance program, according to a person familiar with the matter, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss private negotiations.

Attorney General Merrick Garland praised the reauthorization and reiterated how “indispensable” the tool is to the Justice Department.

“This reauthorization of Section 702 gives the United States the authority to continue to collect foreign intelligence information about non-U.S. persons located outside the United States, while at the same time codifying important reforms the Justice Department has adopted to ensure the protection of Americans’ privacy and civil liberties,” Garland said in a statement Saturday.

But despite the Biden administration’s urging and classified briefings to senators this week on the crucial role they say the spy program plays in protecting national security, a group of progressive and conservative lawmakers who were agitating for further changes had refused to accept the version of the bill the House sent over last week.

The lawmakers had demanded that Majority Leader Chuck Schumer allow votes on amendments to the legislation that would seek to address what they see as civil liberty loopholes in the bill. In the end, Schumer was able to cut a deal that would allow critics to receive floor votes on their amendments in exchange for speeding up the process for passage.

The six amendments ultimately failed to garner the necessary support on the floor to be included in the final passage.

One of the major changes detractors had proposed centered around restricting the FBI’s access to information about Americans through the program. Though the surveillance tool only targets non-Americans in other countries, it also collects communications of Americans when they are in contact with those targeted foreigners. Sen. Dick Durbin, the No. 2 Democrat in the chamber, had been pushing a proposal that would require U.S. officials to get a warrant before accessing American communications.

“If the government wants to spy on my private communications or the private communications of any American, they should be required to get approval from a judge, just as our Founding Fathers intended in writing the Constitution,” Durbin said.

In the past year, U.S. officials have revealed a series of abuses and mistakes by FBI analysts in improperly querying the intelligence repository for information about Americans or others in the U.S., including a member of Congress and participants in the racial justice protests of 2020 and the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol.

But members on both the House and Senate intelligence committees as well as the Justice Department warned requiring a warrant would severely handicap officials from quickly responding to imminent national security threats.

“I think that is a risk that we cannot afford to take with the vast array of challenges our nation faces around the world,” Democratic Sen. Mark Warner, chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said Friday.

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Associated Press writers Eric Tucker contributed to this report.

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Nvidia’s share price plunged by 10 per cent on Friday, helping to seal the worst run for US stock markets since October 2022, as investors shunned risky assets ahead of a flurry of Big Tech earnings next week.

The chipmaker endured its worst session since March 2020, losing more than $200bn of its market value on the day. The decline accounted for roughly half of the 0.9 per cent fall in Wall Street’s S&P 500, according to Bloomberg data.

Netflix, meanwhile, shed about 9 per cent a day after the streaming service’s announcement that it would stop regularly disclosing its subscriber numbers overshadowed stronger than expected earnings. The tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite ended the session down 2.1 per cent.

Stocks that have been powered higher by investor enthusiasm for artificial intelligence also suffered, with Advanced Micro Devices, Micron Technology and Meta closing 5.4 per cent, 4.6 per cent and 4.1 per cent lower, respectively. Super Micro Computer, a server equipment group seen as a beneficiary of the AI boom, closed down 23 per cent.

“It’s a rough day for tech stocks,” said Kevin Gordon, a senior investment strategist at Charles Schwab. “Anything that was doing well earlier this year is unwinding, but banks and energy are doing well with [defensive] staples.” 

Friday’s moves come as investors have begun to take seriously the possibility that the US Federal Reserve could make just one quarter-point cut to interest rates this year, or perhaps none at all. Retaliatory strikes between Iran and Israel have also ratcheted up investor anxiety, denting the market rally.

But analysts said Friday’s sell-off was instead being driven by investors hurriedly repositioning their portfolios ahead of a flurry of Big Tech earnings next week. 

“The stock pullback has very little to do with [interest] rates,” said Parag Thatte, a strategist at Deutsche Bank. “It’s more to do with investors pricing in slower earnings growth [for Big Tech].”

Andrew Brenner, head of international fixed income at NatAlliance Securities, said “there is no relative pressure on rates” in the absence of fresh announcements from the Fed. “But equities are getting crushed.”

Microsoft, Alphabet and Meta all report results for the first quarter next week, while Nvidia’s results are due in late May. Although all are expected to have performed well, they face tough quarter-on-quarter comparisons.

Year-on-year earnings per share growth for Nvidia, Meta, Microsoft, Amazon, Alphabet and Apple peaked at 68.2 per cent in the fourth quarter of 2023. UBS analysts expect the so-called Big 6 to report EPS growth of 42.1 per cent for the first three months of this year.

Wall Street’s benchmark S&P 500 index shed 0.9 per cent on Friday, capping its worst week in more than five months in percentage terms. The index has declined every day since last Friday, its worst run in a year and a half.

All of a sudden, “the dip-buyers are not dip-buying . . . or if they are, they are getting swamped”, said Mike Zigmont, head of trading at Harvest Volatility Management.

The dollar index was steady on the day while oil prices rose modestly.

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(L-R) Kirsten Dunst, Cailee Spaeny

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(L-R) Kirsten Dunst, Cailee Spaeny

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1. A civil war for the silver screen

Civil War, the new A24 film from British director Alex Garland, imagines a scenario that might not seem so far-fetched to some; a contemporary civil war breaking out in the United States.

In this world, the U.S. has split into various factions. The president, played by Nick Offerman – has given himself a third term, and he’s hoping to fend off an assault from one of the more powerful groups.

In what might seem like the most unbelievable narrative twist, California and Texas form an alliance to become the “Western Forces” and fight against Offerman’s regime. Sure, I guess!

2. How far are we from reality?

NPR movie critic Bob Mondello says the movie doesn’t do a lot of explaining to help us understand how the U.S. got to this moment. But he says that makes it stronger.

“What became much more interesting in the moment was what it looks like to transpose things that we’ve always associated with other countries – the bombed out helicopters and things like that – to place that in a J.C. Penney parking lot.”

And while the film has taken heat for little mention of politics, the question of an actual civil war has everything to do with it.

Polling has shown a significant minority thinks a civil war is at least somewhat likely in the next 10 years. So what do the experts say?

3. Division in the U.S.

Amy Cooter is a director of research at the Center on Terrorism, Extremism, and Counterterrorism at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies. Her work has led her to the question that Garland’s movie has put in the minds of both moviegoers and political pundits: Could a second civil war really happen here?

Cooter wants to make one thing clear: “I don’t think that civil war is imminent, but I think there are some people who wish we would have one, and wish that they could be effectively culture soldiers to re-enact a civil order that they see as better for them and their families.”

In her studies of militias and political extremists, Cooter has observed a movement of groups similar to those who joined in on the January 6th riots who feel disconnected from the current political moment, or perhaps want to return to a previous version of society, that they feel served them better.

And while Cooter doesn’t think a civil war will be happening anytime soon, she does say this:

“I think we are at a moment of extreme political division that may get worse before it gets better.”

This episode was produced by Marc Rivers.

It was edited by Jeanette Woods, Jonaki Mehta and Courtney Dorning. Our executive producer is Sami Yenigun.