Richard Blumenthal

Mr. President, I am here to talk about the Kids Online Safety Act and receive unanimous consent for its passage, but I cannot begin this conversation without remarking on the colloquy that we just heard because I so strongly welcome the powerful statements made by Senator Tillis.

I hope he reflects a growing consensus on his side of the aisle in favor of action by the United States to help prepare Ukraine for the long, hard, cruel, potentially devastating winter ahead.

I came back from my 11th trip to Ukraine just several weeks ago more convinced than ever that the United States must stand behind Ukraine, not just with words on the floor of the Senate and not just with the Russia sanctions bill--as profoundly and important as it is--but the kind of materiel, self-defense, and other military aid and economic support that will help Ukraine weather the cruel, hard winter ahead.

And there were three requests that President Zelenskyy made to me when I sat face-to-face with him at the National Prayer Breakfast: the Russia sanctions bill, air defense, and Starlink. They are all potentially within the control of the United States of America.

And time is not on our side or their side, and they are fighting our fight. Our national security interests are at stake. In North Carolina and Oklahoma and Utah--all across the country--our sons and daughters will be in harm's way if we allow Ukraine to fall to Putin's slaughterous, murderous aggression.

So I am hoping we can have a conversation in the next 30 days so that when we come back and we do the NDAA, we can make use of this consensus to take that next step.

We are not done with the Russia sanctions bill, significant as it was. And I thank my colleagues for joining in that effort in the memory of Senator Graham and the response to the pleas from Ukrainians for our throttling flow of revenue to Putin's war machine. To bring him to the table and to seek peace, that is the goal--peace in Ukraine, security for the people of Ukraine who are so bravely fighting now.

I thank my colleagues for their support for Ukraine and for the United States standing up and standing strong for the people of Ukraine, and I welcome this colloquy.

I hope the next time we are on the floor, talking about it, we can make it a bipartisan colloquy because support for Ukraine should be and has been bipartisan.

Unanimous Consent Request--S. 1748

Mr. President, I want to share my appreciation--speaking of bipartisanship--for my partner in drafting and advocating the Kids Online Safety Act, Senator Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee. Unfortunately, she had to make a flight and so is not with us physically. I think she is here in spirit.

I don't claim to speak for her, but we have worked together tirelessly on this bill through public hearings--the kinds of advocacy that it has taken to get us this far with whistleblowers, documents showing that Meta and others knew that their products were harming children.

This bill is the result of years of painstaking negotiations with our colleagues, with advocates, with tech companies. And because of those negotiations, and all the work that was done, we were able to pass this legislation through the Senate by a 91-to-3 vote. We have hundreds of endorsements from across the tech industry itself.

But the major reason we have reached this point is very simply the parents and young people who came forward and spoke to colleagues, gained the consensus that we needed to go forward. This bill is a tribute to parents and kids who have been the most effective advocates.

And let me begin by making absolutely clear, the talking points about censorship or privacy are simply a red herring. This bill is about product design, not blocking content. It is about making product design safe, not about censoring.

Those talking points about censorship or privacy are simply misleading and false. None of it exists in this legislation. The Kids Online Safety Act simply imposes the same standards of accountability that every other industry faces. It requires tech companies to be responsible for their own products. It requires transparency. It gives kids and parents the tools to protect themselves.

Now, just very bluntly, the reason this measure hasn't passed is the tech industry's power, its money, its sway, its lobbyists and lawyers-- armies of them. And there is a human cost to delay. The human cost is lives.

One of the most heartbreaking experiences of this fight is meeting parents who have lost their children--some of them who lost children after the Kids Online Safety Act was introduced. If the Kids Online Safety Act had been law, maybe their kids would be alive today.

I meet parents whose children were taken from them in 2023, 2024, 2025.

Holding back this legislation has cost lives.

The excuse was engineered in Silicon Valley and K Street not to adopt our legislation. Those excuses and lobbying have cost several lives. And, frankly, if delayed today--if it occurs--that is potential damage as well. More children will suffer because the tech industry seems to have a powerful veto over the U.S. Congress.

I want to speak directly to all the parents, everybody watching at home, especially parents who have lost children. There are moms and dads who are anxious that social media is doing harm to their children, and young people themselves who know that they are losing control over their lives because of the addictive content, purposefully made addictive and driven to them by algorithms beyond their control and beyond their knowledge--secret algorithms.

We will overcome Big Tech's obstruction. We will overcome Meta and Mark Zuckerberg. We will overcome the Big Tech obstruction that has so far prevented KOSA from becoming law.

Our coalition has grown, and it is growing. We have more cosponsors and more support than last session. We will not go away. We will not surrender. We will not give up. That is a promise.

Senator Blackburn and I will fight as long and hard as necessary to pass this bill. We will pass it again through the Senate. It was approved unanimously by the Commerce Committee. And we will send KOSA to the President's desk after it is passed.

But we need your help. We need your help to contact, literally, Members of Congress over the next 30 days to ask them--as they ask you for your vote: Where do you stand on the Kids Online Safety Act? Will you vote for it?

Put KOSA on the ballot and demand that Congress pass a strong internet safety bill to protect children.

So I want to thank all the cosponsors, all of my colleagues who have supported us, all the parents and children, all of the advocates, and hope that we can actually pass it by unanimous consent today. And if not then, as soon as we return.

And I ask, as if in legislative session and notwithstanding rule XXII, unanimous consent that the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation be discharged from further consideration of S. 1748 and that the Senate proceed to its immediate consideration; further, that the substitute amendment at the desk be agreed to, the bill, as amended, be considered read a third time and passed, and that the motions to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table.

I want to respond very briefly because everything that has just been said in objection to this bill is totally irrelevant.

It is irrelevant because it is based on the misunderstanding that this bill somehow imposes censorship or content evaluation. In fact, it is not a free speech issue.

The bill explicitly focuses on design features. Section 102(a) says a platform must exercise reasonable care in the ``creation and implementation of any design feature'' when that design feature foreseeably contributes to one of the enumerated harms.

The bill even defines ``design feature'' in section 101(4) as a platform feature or component that encourages or increases ``the frequency, time spent, or activity of minors on the . . . platform''-- ``the frequency, time spent, or activity of minors on the . . . platform.''

It couldn't be clearer that we are talking here about the kind of design feature that is involved when a manufacturer makes a defective toaster or a car that goes off the road, or some other harm-causing feature that could be foreseeably corrected.

And, finally, the bill specifically protects a child who goes looking for content.

Section 102(b)(1) says the duty of care cannot be construed to require a platform to prevent a minor from ``deliberately and independently searching for, or specifically requesting, content.''

In short, the duty of care has nothing to do with censorship. It says nothing about allowing government enforcement based on the viewpoint of users expressed through speech. And it preserves the First Amendment and everything that is involved in it.

I know my colleagues understand that America is in the midst of a mental health crisis. And one in four children ages 9 to 17 reports sexually explicit interaction with someone they believe was an adult online. And 59 percent of U.S. teens report having experienced cyber bullying.

This problem will not go away in the next 30 days. It will only become more egregious and urgent. And so I regret that Senator Paul is objecting today, but I am hoping that we will act quickly when we return.

Mr. President, I ask consent to speak for one minute.

I want to thank my partner in this effort, Senator Moody.

This amendment really is about fairness. It is a minor adjustment to the bill that promotes competition by holding the big conferences to schools that want to compete, and it levels the playing field in a way that I think is important to the future of college sports.

Again, thank you to my colleagues for your support, and I ask that the vote be by voice.

Vote on Amendment No. 6831

Mr. President, I am here, thinking about all the Americans who are working on manufacturing plant assembly lines, of all the Americans who are teaching our kids in school or who are patrolling our streets as police or who are working in our hospitals--all of the hard-working Americans who are just working to get by, to make ends meet, to know whether they can afford another $20 or $30 at the supermarket.

Then to think of Donald Trump's making $6 million per day last year-- a total of $2.2 billion just in the first year of his Presidency--I don't think there is a single person in America who thinks that he earned that money. And how could he? He is supposed to be devoting every waking moment to the public interest of the United States--to keeping us safe and our Nation secure.

The fact is that it was the result of corruption as $1.4 billion of it came from crypto. The point of this legislation is, essentially, to end that corruption. We will vote tomorrow on a crypto bill that is, sadly and tragically, riddled with loopholes that enable him to continue this same self-dealing and self-enrichment.

The failure to stand up to the President, I think, is going to be on our Republican colleagues because this amendment--ethics requirements for digital assets--is a sham; it is a charade. If nothing else, Republicans should take a stand and say: In crypto legislation that is supposed to stop wrongdoing, lawlessness, and the funding of terrorist organizations and money laundering, now is the time to also impose a strong conflict-of-interest rule--the Ending Presidential Corruption in Banking Act.

Think of it for a moment, the Ending Presidential Corruption in Banking Act, it bans the President and the Vice President and their immediate families from owning or controlling banks.

When I came to the U.S. Senate, if you had told me I would be supporting an Ending Presidential Corruption in Banking Act because it would be necessary to stop corruption and because the President would be twisting and ignoring and bending norms and precedents of the Presidency, I would have said: That would never happen in the United States of America.

But President Trump has been clear: There is no ethical line separating his role as President from his family's businesses. It is that simple.

Corruption has become the family business.

After President Trump issued an Executive order to assert control over the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, his control over that body--which approves bank charters--surprise, Trump's crypto company, World Liberty Financial, applied for a bank charter.

And, no surprise, on August 14, 2026, World Liberty Financial was granted conditional approval for a national bank charter.

Corruption has consequences. It has costs. That bank charter is worth millions--maybe hundreds of millions--to World Liberty Financial, but it will enable World Liberty Financial to exploit and take advantage of consumers that will cost them money out of those hard-earned wages that they make.

In fact, Donald Trump made $1.4 billion, including 636 million from his meme coin, but nearly a million Americans lost billions of dollars--more than $3 billion--while he was making his huge profits.

Corruption has consequences. It has costs. When the President of the United States is dealing with the Emiratis, who have bought a 49- percent share for billions of dollars in one of his enterprises, and then the Emiratis receive approval for the purchase of chips that have been refused them or defense equipment that is hugely valuable to them, it threatens our national security.

And when the President's son or his family go around the world establishing resorts, making deals, there is always a quid pro quo. There is always a quid to the quo. There is no free lunch. Our security is compromised. There are costs to our taxpayers.

And that plane that was supposedly a gift is already costing us hundreds of millions of dollars, not to mention our being beholden to the Qatar Government. There is no free lunch.

After Donald Trump, Jr., became a partner of the venture capital firm 1789 Capital, its assets ballooned to $3 billion as its portfolio companies rapidly received lucrative government contracts.

Those government contracts impact the taxpayers when they are sole source, when they are granted without proper review and scrutiny and oversight of what the costs will be to taxpayers. There is no free lunch.

So this measure is not only important, it is necessary. And I have to say, the consequences of corruption are

measured not only in dollars and cents but also in our moral standing around the world.

Just this morning, ProPublica reported that Donald Trump, Jr.'s, lavish wedding in the Caribbean was, in effect, heavily bankrolled by a Russian oligarch with close ties to Putin. His name is Umar Kremlev.

Umar Kremlev is also involved in an organization that reeducates Ukrainian children who have been abducted.

I have been to Ukraine 11 times. On a number of those trips, I have met with children who have been abducted and kidnapped by Vladimir Putin. It is the reason he has been judged and charged as a war criminal. And one of his henchmen, apparently, is Umar Kremlev in reeducating those children so that they will forget their past, forget their language, forget their culture, forget their religion.

This is truly criminal. And Kremlev has paid likely hundreds of thousands of dollars for Donald Junior's lavish wedding. He is in a photograph of the wedding party.

That picture haunts me. Sometimes a picture is worth a thousand words. And the picture of a man who has, in effect, been complicit in abducting and reeducating children, separating them--and not just a few but literally tens of thousands, as many as 35,000, maybe 50,000 or more--separating them from their families. I wouldn't want to be caught on the same island with him, let alone having him rent the island for a wedding of a family member.

Let me put it another way: Those Americans who are working hard to make ends meet, wondering whether they can afford another $20 or $30 at the supermarket while Donald Trump averaged $6 million a day in 2025, ought to demand of all of us that we pass the Ending Presidential Corruption in Banking Act.

It is the least we can do. It is a first step. And I hope that we will also pass a crypto measure that is worthy of this body and its name.