Cloture Motion

Floor Speech

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Mrs. BLACKBURN. Madam President, if there is one thing we have learned from last month's election, it is that President Trump has a clear mandate from the American people to get this country back on track, and one of the things that Tennesseans talk to me most about is the need to restore law and order all across this country.

I am so encouraged by President Trump's nominees who are going to take the lead in reforming our Federal law enforcement Agencies, and, today, I want to touch on two of those who are reforming law enforcement Agencies.

I will tell the Presiding Officer, next week, I am going to come and talk about the nominees for our military and national security. I want to talk about the qualifications of Pete Hegseth, who is going to be a great Secretary of Defense; but, today, we are going to talk about Kash Patel at the FBI and Pam Bondi at the Justice Department.

Now, these two Agencies--I think everybody agrees--are in desperate need of a course correction. Under the Biden-Harris administration, they have repeatedly undermined the rule of law with a two-tiered justice system. Its rules are simple: If you break the law and you are a Democrat, then you are off the hook--that is the way they have operated--but if you are a conservative or you dissent from the left's radical agenda, the government will end up targeting you for your beliefs.

What we know is that, under Mr. Patel and Ms. Bondi, this abuse of power will come to an end, and few people are better qualified to get this job done and enforce the rule of law than Ms. Bondi and Mr. Patel.

As a former prosecutor for the Justice Department--and, by the way, he worked under Democrats and Republicans--Mr. Patel led the successful prosecutions of criminals that were tied to terrorist organizations like al-Qaida and ISIS.

On the House Intel Committee, he worked with Congressman Devin Nunes, the chair of that committee, to expose the FBI and the Justice Department's abuses during Russiagate, or the Russia hoax, as it became known.

In the first Trump administration, he served as the Deputy Director of National Intelligence. He served at the Security Council and the Defense Department as Chief of Staff.

This is a varied background. It is a credible background for the job in front of him of restoring law and order in our cities across this country, in countering terror threats, and in ending human trafficking, and that is the job of the FBI.

I will say this on the human trafficking: I am especially encouraged by his support for releasing the Jeffrey Epstein flight logs and black book. We know the abuse spanned decades from Mr. Epstein, and it harmed many vulnerable young girls, and we know a large network of high- profile, high-dollar predators participated in this horrific abuse on a global level. So, by releasing the flight logs, we can start to break apart the sex trafficking rings and ensure that the predators are put in jail where they belong. This effort will go a long way in restoring public confidence in the FBI and in ending the left's two-tiered justice system. On this front, he will work closely with Pam Bondi, who is President Trump's excellent choice for Attorney General.

Earlier this week, I had my official meeting with Ms. Bondi, whom I have known and worked with for over the past decade. Our meeting only reaffirmed my conviction that she will be fearless in rooting out corruption, taking on the deep state, and restoring the Justice Department to its core mission: enforcing equal justice under the law.

To be certain, her accomplishments speak for themselves. With more than 18 years of experience as a prosecutor, she became the first woman to serve as the attorney general of Florida in 2011. While there, she worked to protect the most vulnerable among us by taking on drug dealers and human traffickers.

During the first Trump administration, she also worked to end our Nation's drug epidemic as a member of the Opioid and Drug Abuse Commission. This experience will be invaluable to her as she leads this top law enforcement Agency.

Kash Patel and Pam Bondi are just two of Trump's incredible picks, but they are representative of the talent, experience, and determination shown by his Cabinet selections and nominees. As we head into the new year, I will look forward to supporting them and ensuring that they can get to work as soon as possible for the American people. Kids Online Safety Act

Madam President, although we have a busy end of year ahead of us, there is at least one thing Congress must do before the end of the year, and that is to pass the very bipartisan Kids Online Safety Act.

Back in July, this Chamber passed KOSA by an overwhelming bipartisan majority. The vote was 91 to 3. The reason is very simple: Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle recognize that Big Tech must be held accountable for putting our children's safety at risk. They have put profit ahead of our children's safety, and they want to continue to do that.

KOSA puts the priority on safety by providing parents and kids with tools, safeguards, and the transparency that they need to protect against online harms. Among its provisions, the legislation would create a duty of care for online platforms to prevent and mitigate specific dangers to minors, including the promotion of suicide, eating disorders, substance abuse, and sexual exploitation.

Since KOSA's passage in the Senate, more and more evidence has emerged showing that this legislation is desperately needed. In October, for example, reports emerged showing that Chinese-owned TikTok purposefully developed algorithms to keep children scrolling as long as they could. Of course, the more time a child spends on the platform the more data TikTok can collect, then the more valuable that platform becomes.

While this happens, TikTok executives privately acknowledge that such addiction does lead to mental health issues, including a loss of memory and cognition. But do you know what? They don't care. When your child is online, they are the profit. They are a profit center for these platforms.

Now, other platforms, from Facebook to Instagram, have also developed addictive algorithms that expose children to unthinkable harms, including sexual abuse and lethal drugs. But, again, these platforms don't care. They do not give a ripping flip about your child.

This tragedy has got to come to an end, but for months, KOSA has been held up in the House because of blatant falsehoods that are being pushed by Big Tech lobbyists. We know who they are, and we know what they are saying. Let me just read some of these falsehoods to you.

They say that KOSA would censor free speech, and it will not. KOSA is a product design bill. It is not a contact bill.

There are some out there who say: Well, it is going to give all of this authority to the FTC. It does not. It does not increase the authority of the FTC. It is important to note that there is no new rulemaking power for the FTC in KOSA or any ability to create rules about content. So they are lying. The lobbyists and some of these House staffers who are listening to these lobbyists are spreading falsehoods. It should come to a stop. Our children deserve better.

We know that what KOSA will do is put in place tools for parents, and, of course, Big Tech is out here spreading lies and having their lobbyists spread lies because they want to evade accountability on this. I have even heard this: I have heard of staffers in the House and lobbyists bragging that they have been able to kill KOSA, that they are going to keep this profit center going, that they have been able to kill this bill. It is absolutely disgusting that they would agree with Big Tech and put that number--that dollar figure--on our kids' heads.

Do you know, when we were doing the hearings on this, what did we hear from kid after kid who came in? They came in wearing a T-shirt, ``270,'' saying: I am worth more than $270. That is the value that some of these platforms have assigned to the amount of time a child spends on their platform. That is the profit they make.

You know, if you listen to some of these staffers and some of these lobbyists, you would think, my goodness, if we don't need to have some kind of protections in the virtual space, why do we have laws in the physical space to protect kids? Minors can't enter into a contract. Minors can't go buy alcohol and tobacco. If you have got a store that sells liquor and you sell to a kid, they will come, put the chains on your store, and close you down. It is the same thing with alcohol and the same thing with pornography.

The Presiding Officer and I are parents. I am a grandparent. We see what is happening to these precious children, and they are being subjected to drugs, to alcohol; they are being subjected to pornography; they are being subjected to sexual exploitation, and it is done 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days of the year, and yet Big Tech--they don't care. They do not care about protecting your children. So the only thing we are left to surmise is, if they don't protect them in the virtual space, they are, for sure, not going to support protecting them in the physical space. I would surmise that people who are against KOSA would do away with all of these laws that protect children.

Society has decided our precious children are worth the fight, that they are worth the protection. And it is disgusting--disgusting--when you hear these Big Tech platforms say there is a value to keeping that child scrolling, that there is a value to holding their eyes online-- and when you hear it repeated by people in our Chambers--staffers--it is sickening.

This is not a political game. Protecting our children is something that we in the Senate have agreed to do on a bipartisan basis. This bill has been stuck in the House since July. We know why it has been stuck, and we know that falsehoods are being spread. This is a bill that deserves a vote on the House floor because what we do know is this: By an overwhelming bipartisan majority, Members of the U.S. House of Representatives support this bill. It is time for those who are standing in the way of passing this bill to put aside--to put aside-- their objections and to allow protections for our children to take place in the virtual space.

Since 1998, there has not been any additional protection placed in the virtual space. Why is that? It is because Big Tech sees our kids as a product. They make a lot of money--a whole lot of money--when those kids are scrolling. It is killing our kids. Just as in the physical world we put in place laws to protect them, they deserve the same protections in that virtual space.

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