Congress is racing toward an April 19 deadline for the expiration of Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) Section 702. Nearly all members agree that the program needs changes, particularly after a series of damning reports about abuses in the top-secret program. But lawmakers disagree on how far to go.

The House is slated to take up the fight first with a bill reaching the floor this week, after several previous false starts. National security officials have mounted a full-court press in recent weeks to try to head off major changes to Section 702 — widely understood as the government’s most important snooping authority.

Terrorists, they warn, will benefit if lawmakers require the FBI to get a warrant before querying American citizens’ names in its massive trove of data. From stopping terrorist plots and spotting cyberattack victims to derailing the flow of fentanyl, FBI Director Christopher A. Wray and other top officials say, few areas of law enforcement aren’t affected by the government’s ability to collect and analyze reams of electronic data under Section 702.

Threat Status recently examined all aspects of the debate in an exclusive Influencers video interview with former NSA General Counsel Stewart Baker.

President Biden’s red line against putting U.S. and Western combat boots on the ground in Ukraine is under fresh attack, with French President Emmanuel Macron leading the charge by outlining how leaving the door open to Western troops in Ukraine is just the sort of “strategic ambiguity” that could keep the Kremlin guessing and perhaps even pave the way to eventual peace.

National Security Correspondent Ben Wolfgang examines the situation, quoting former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine John E. Herbst, who says the placement of NATO or European ground forces in Ukraine would actually be a positive step. Mr. Herbst, now senior director of the Atlantic Council’s Eurasia Center, argues that Western troops in Ukraine might represent a shift in a long-running dynamic that has seen Russian President Vladimir Putin use the threat of escalation as an effective weapon to keep NATO at bay.

Just by openly discussing idea, he says, Mr. Macron has shifted the debate on Ukraine in a serious way. “It reflects the fact that Macron finally sees Putin as a danger to the West, to France,” Mr. Herbst told Threat Status. “And Macron loves to tweak the United States and sees weakness in Biden’s policy.”

Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer has made it clear that restricting TikTok or forcing the social media platform’s China-based owner ByteDance to divest is not a pressing matter for Senate Democrats with the clock running down on the legislative year.

Mr. Schumer wrote in a letter to colleagues on Friday that House-passed legislation to stifle TikTok is on his radar, but low down on the priorities list. He wrote that senators will have a chance to review the legislation over the “weeks and months ahead,” but that top priorities for the Senate will be confirming Mr. Biden’s nominees, debate over the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), and taxpayer funding for Ukraine.

House lawmakers on March 14 passed a bill pressuring China-based TikTok owner ByteDance to sell or shut down its U.S. operations. The outlook for the TikTok crackdown in the Senate has long appeared grim, but Mr. Biden has said he’s ready to sign the restrictions into law.

Wednesday’s National Assembly elections in South Korea will be a referendum on the country’s conservative President Yoon Suk Yeol, and will be watched closely by U.S. adversaries and allies alike in the region.

Washington Times Asia Editor Andrew Salmon examines in depth how Mr. Yoon has dismayed both China and North Korea by seeking to improve relations with fellow U.S. ally Japan — long a difficult political sell for most Koreans with memories of Tokyo’s 1910-1945 colonial rule of the peninsula. In essence, Mr. Yoon’s bold and unusual policy fueled long-held hopes in Washington for tightened trilateral strategic cooperation with its two key allies in Northeast Asia.

Analysts predict Mr. Yoon’s People Power Party will take a hit in Wednesday’s contest. While the South Korean president will retain ultimate control over foreign, defense and North Korean policies, in practical terms, he could face weightier shackles on his freedom of action for the final three years of his term. Opposition lawmakers could nix potential legislation aimed at formalizing the still-fragile partnership with Japan.

Russia has used the March 22 terror attack in Moscow as an excuse to ramp up attacks on Ukraine, writes regular columnist Jed Babbin, who notes that Russian forces have concentrated their attacks on Ukraine’s civilian power plants and military.

Despite having been warned weeks ahead of time by U.S. intelligence of a potential ISIS-K attack, Mr. Putin and his top aides have repeatedly suggested the terrorist incident was somehow orchestrated by the West and linked to Western support for Ukraine, writes Mr. Babbin.

“Soon after the attack, some of the alleged perpetrators were caught in Russia and Tajikistan. At one point, the Russians claimed that the people they caught were trying to flee toward Ukraine. With most of the Russian army between them and freedom?” he writes, arguing that the Russian narrative is a continuation of “the disinformation campaign that began before [Russia’s] 2014 conquest of the Crimean Peninsula and continued in the aftermath of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline sabotage in September 2022.”