“I got a secret tip. Someone told me things. The government is doing bad things. They told people to lie. They use bad data. They want to make it look like there is a lot of voter fraud. This is bad. They want to mess with people. They want to mess with the election. I want it to stop.”

“A government whistleblower shared evidence about a new project at the Department of Homeland Security called the Unlawful Voter Initiative. The department is pulling officers away from stopping fraud and protecting national security to hunt for noncitizens voting. Officers are being told to lie on state websites to get private voter data. They are being forced to create federal police records against people, including U.S. citizens, using data the government knows is unreliable. They only get 12 minutes to review each person. Noncitizen voting is already illegal and very rare. I want the department to stop this program right away, delete these unreliable records, and follow the law by protecting the whistleblower.”

“Madam President, as our colleagues know, I serve as ranking member of the Rules Committee, which oversees Federal elections. I also serve on the Judiciary Subcommittee on Border Security and Immigration. And I reference this because last week, I received a protected disclosure from an anonymous Federal whistleblower. At a time when many Americans feel discouraged by the Trump administration's unprecedented chaos and corruption, it is heartening to see a Federal Government employee with the integrity and the courage to expose potential illegal activity and abuse of power. Today, Leader Schumer and I made the full disclosure public, and I am going to go over some of these highlights, which are incredibly disturbing. They are disturbing to me, and I think they should be disturbing to every Member of this Chamber. First, leadership at the Department of Homeland Security and the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services has ordered hundreds of employees in USCIS's Fraud Detection and National Security Division to stop doing the jobs they were hired and trained to do and instead watch a short training video and immediately turn their time and attention to something called the Unlawful Voter Initiative. They were directed to stop their anti-fraud work. This administration makes a lot of claims about going after fraud. They were directed to stop their national security screenings. They were directed to stop all the things that this administration claims it cares about and instead go on a wild goose chase to find or manufacture evidence for the President's conspiracy theories of widespread voter fraud. This, without question, is a terrible waste and misuse of Agency resources, but colleagues, it is actually so much more worse than that. The whistleblower disclosure also includes compelling claims that USCIS officers are being directed to lie and to misrepresent themselves in order to search voters' sensitive personal information on State election officials' websites. Let me say that again. Federal officers are being told by headquarters to lie or to misrepresent themselves in order to access State voter data. It is a clear violation of State laws, and these violations have likely occurred thousands and thousands of times. On some State websites, officers are being told to attest under penalty of law that they are the voter or the voter's representative. On other websites, like the one of my home State of California, officers are being told to misrepresent themselves and enter voters' sensitive information like Social Security or driver's license numbers. When USCIS officers expressed concerns with these practices, they have been told by Agency leadership to just go ahead, that they won't be ``personally liable.'' Think about that for a second. If what the Department is doing and if what these officers are being told to do was legal, it begs the question of, why would they need to be reassured by Agency lawyers that they won't be held personally liable? The whistleblower disclosure also reveals that DHS is using their own unreliable data to target people for investigation. That is right--data that the Department and Agencies already acknowledge is unreliable. Agency leadership is then forcing USCIS officers to create Federal law enforcement records against people, many of them U.S. citizens, even though they have doubts about the accuracy of the data. So let's take a step back. Why are they doing this? Well, the Trump administration has tried and failed to force States to hand over these voter rolls. President Trump tried it in his first term through a sham Commission which failed and then weaponized the Federal Government to try to accomplish it here in his second term. But guess what. They have been taken to court, and they have lost in court over 30 times. States represented by Democrats and Republicans have said no, so the proverbial front door is locked. As much as Trump wants access to voter data, the front door is locked, and now they are trying to break in a back door. They are using something called supplemental magic. That is right--in the materials that have been uncovered, they are using this supplemental magic to create a list of people that they think are not eligible to vote. Remember, the Agency has already said they know the data is unreliable. So, frankly, this disclosure raises a lot of questions. Why is this initiative happening now? Who are the potentially hundreds of thousands of people being investigated? Who are they? And what the heck is supplemental magic? We need answers. This Senate--Congress--deserves answers. The American people deserve answers. Agency training materials for this initiative say that ``raw data includes a lot of U.S. citizens.'' Let me repeat that. The training materials acknowledge that the data includes ``a lot of U.S. citizens.'' So why would you target them when you are looking for noncitizen voters? DHS and USCIS also admit that their data is unreliable, complex, and will have multiple ID numbers for various individuals. Nevertheless, officers are told to generate Federal law enforcement records against them, even if they suspect that they are relying on inaccurate or incomplete information. It is already clear that this Unlawful Voter Initiative is inaccurate, not to mention likely illegal, but to make matters worse, it has also been rushed, and it is reckless because rank-and-file USCIS officers are given reckless quotas to review 40 people per day. Do the math. That is five people per hour or 12 minutes per individual. Colleagues, you know as well as I that 12 minutes to review unreliable data and complex immigration history is not an adequate amount of time to conduct a thorough investigation--because these aren't that; these are sham investigations. We all know that voting by a noncitizen is illegal. That is already the law. You know that. I know that. We also know that based on study after study, report after report, audit after audit, it is extremely, extremely rare. Our current safeguards are working. This Unlawful Voter Initiative does not appear to be a legitimate effort, and we should not take anything that comes out of it at face value. Just 12 minutes for an investigation, a lot of U.S. citizens, the unreliable magic data, and potentially thousands of violations of State and Federal privacy laws--saying that this is dangerous for our democracy is a huge understatement. This is more than a reckless attempt to prove Donald Trump's election-denial talking points, like the ones he used in the White House speech this past July. Diversion of Federal law enforcement to break laws for political purposes is a clear abuse of power, and there is a very real danger that thousands of naturalized U.S. citizens and legal residents will potentially face negative consequences because of this sham investigation. This isn't just about voting; this could lead to unwarranted secondary screening at airports, consequences for immigration benefits, referrals to HSI or the FBI for criminal investigation, and no clear recourse to undo the consequences of an erroneous Federal law enforcement record being created after a quick 12-minute review. There is also the danger that Donald Trump will use false numbers of supposed votes cast by noncitizens to threaten to prosecute State and elections officials that he doesn't like. The President and his allies could even try using the unreliable results of this Unlawful Voter Initiative to undermine and challenge election results themselves. That is right--January 6 was not the end of this. So, today, Senator Schumer and I sent this whistleblower's disclosure regarding the so-called Unlawful Voter Initiative to Secretary Mullin and USCIS Director Edlow. We are demanding an immediate halt to these activities. We are demanding transparency from DHS. We are demanding the removal of unreliable law enforcement records, many of which are against U.S. citizens. We will have more to say about this in the coming days. I would remind the Department and USCIS that whistleblowers to Congress are protected by Federal law. Let me repeat: Whistleblowers to Congress are protected by Federal law. This individual will remain anonymous, and any attempt at retaliation is illegal and wrong. I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.”

“A Russian oligarch paid for Donald Trump Jr.'s wedding. This is bad. It is corruption. This is as close to treason as you can get. The oligarch is close to Putin. Putin gave him money. The oligarch gave money to Trump Jr. for his wedding. Trump Jr. tried to hide it. This fits two patterns. First, the Trump family takes money from Russia. Second, Trump's sons make money from the White House. They get lots of government contracts. They make lots of money. The President is helping Putin. He is not helping Ukraine. He is doing favors for Russia. He gets money from Russia. Everyone should be mad about this. This is bad. This is corruption. It has to stop.”

“A rich Russian man close to Vladimir Putin secretly paid for Donald Trump Jr.'s private island wedding. This is open corruption. Donald Trump's sons use their father's office to get rich, and the President has changed American foreign policy to help Russia. Both parties in the Senate need to stand up and say this is wrong.”

“Colleagues, the story broke today that the Trump family has confirmed that a Russian oligarch, a close ally of Vladimir Putin-- a man whose fortune was gifted to him by Putin--paid for the private island wedding of the President of the United States' son. I am here on the floor because I am scared to death that this is all going to start just feeling normal. Let me say it again. A Russian oligarch, a close ally of our enemy Vladimir Putin, a man whose fortune was gifted to him by Vladimir Putin, paid for--secretly--the private island wedding of the President of the United States' son. The President's son Donald Trump, Jr., tried to hide this fact. He posted pictures of his wedding celebration online. There was a public conversation about whether the President was going to attend or not. But the President's son made no mention that the whole thing, worth hundreds of thousands of dollars, a private island, was bankrolled by the Russians. In fact, the only face of the 50 guests that is hidden in the group photo that you can look at right now online, the only person's face that is hidden, is the oligarch. But he is there because he secretly paid for the celebration. The Russians paid for the private island. The Russians paid for the fireworks show. The President's son even put this oligarch in charge of planning the logistics. This was a Russian party, organized and paid for by someone in Vladimir Putin's inner circle. This has never happened before in the history of the United States of America. Never before has a foreign enemy of the United States paid for the family wedding of the President. Why? Because it is naked corruption, in plain view. It is as close to treason as you get, accepting lavish gifts, millions of dollars in gifts perhaps, from the enemy of this Nation. Let us spend a minute on this oligarch. We just learned this today, so forgive me if we have scant details. I think we are going to find out a lot more about this guy in the coming days and weeks. But his name is Umar Kremlev. He is a convicted criminal. He runs a boxing company that is funded by Putin. More specifically, by Gazprom, Putin's state-run gas company. He is not just some ordinary oligarch. He is one of Putin's favorites. In addition to running this boxing association, he runs the Russian lottery. He has a monopoly on Russian sports betting. Shortly before financing and attending the Trump wedding, Kremlev and Putin were together in China. Putin brought him on a really important state visit to China. Putin has given Kremlev the highest Kremlin honor, The Order of Friendship. The Ukrainian government has sanctioned Kremlev because he is part of Putin's inner circle. All of Kremlev's money is Putin's money. He operates as an arm of Putin, as do all the Putin-made oligarchs. Before today's disclosure of his secret financing of the Trump wedding, there was no record of Donald Trump, Jr., and Kremlev being great best buddies because they aren't. It appears that they just recently met. And shortly after meeting, this close ally of Vladimir Putin offered to pay for Donald Trump, Jr.'s wedding. Here's what Eric Trump said today, when a reporter asks his office about Umar Kremlev, this close friend of Donald Trump, Jr.'s. This is Eric Trump, Donald Trump, Jr.'s brother, his business partner, has never heard the name of the close associate, the close friend of Donald Trump, Jr.'s who paid for his entire wedding. Why? Because they are not friends. This is a business between the Trump family and the Russian Government. This all fits two patterns. The first is the Trump family's reliance on Russian support for their business empire. Donald Trump, Jr., said this, prior to when his father became President. He is talking about his family's business. More recently, those who have looked at the individuals who are buying Trump's cryptocurrency have noted that there is evidence that the Trump family's cryptocurrency is backed perhaps heavily by Russian buyers. But the second and more significant pattern is this: Trump's sons, particularly Donald Junior, just brazenly profit off of their access to the White House. Donald Junior, he just basically stuffs money into his pockets from anybody who wants a favor from his father, and he just gobbles up government contracts as fast as he can. Don Junior's net worth was $50 million before his father's second term. In the first year that Trump was President, in his second term, Don Junior's net worth didn't double; it didn't triple; it didn't quadruple; it grew by six times in one year--$50 million. A year later, $300 million. At least 13 companies tied to the Trump brothers have captured $1.8 billion in long-term Federal contracts and commitments and $103 million in direct cash from the Trump administration. Five of those companies got their first government contracts ever after the Trump sons invested. That is corruption. It doesn't matter whether this is a Republican administration or a Democratic administration. Now, you could be offended at all of that, but you might say: Well, this isn't that. This isn't Trump Junior taking money from the taxpayers. This is just his taking money from the Russians. Isn't that better than his taking money from taxpayers? Of course, it isn't because Putin doesn't pay for a wedding just to be nice. This is an arrangement in plain sight. Donald Trump has done a 180-degree turn in U.S. policy on the Russia- Ukraine war. He has cut off funding from Ukraine. Even after we appropriate money, he refuses to spend it, which is illegal. As recently as this weekend, he said publicly that it is Ukraine's fault that the war continues, not Russia's. In addition, Trump has suspended sanctions on the export of Russian oil and gas, which, by the way, specifically helps Gazprom, the company that funds Kremlev. Trump has become one of Putin's most important allies. And so, like everything else in Trump's corrupt world in his second term, it just becomes this mutually beneficial deal. Trump withholds support for Ukraine and pads the pocket of the Russian Government with sanctions relief, and the Russians funnel money to the family. Doesn't everybody see this? Shouldn't everyone here be outraged today that the President of the United States' son just had his wedding--his multimillion-dollar wedding--paid for by the Russians, and he admits it? I know that there are a lot of Republicans in the Senate who are aghast at what Trump has done to abandon Ukraine, and I know there are a lot of Republicans here who are furious at this spiraling corruption. I don't know that there is a single Member of this body, Republican or Democrat, who would go on TV tonight and defend the Russian Government's paying for the Trump family's private island wedding. But at some point, there just has to be a bottom that the U.S. Senate unanimously recognizes. Does any Republican here think that you would say nothing if Hunter Biden's wedding or Malia Obama's graduation party were financed by Iranian allies of the Ayatollah? You guys would shut this place down if that were to happen. And, of course, you can't even imagine that happening under a different administration because, despite all the histrionics over the ``Biden Crime Family,'' never before in the history of this country have we had a White House where the financing of a family wedding by a foreign adversary would pass as a minor scandal that barely makes the front pages. Just because the corruption happens so routinely that, to some, it feels normal doesn't mean that it is. If we don't, on a bipartisan basis here in the Senate, draw a line in the sand soon, it will be the end of our Republic. It just will be. I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.”

“I want to talk about AI safety. AI is dangerous. It is not just one big AI getting smarter. Many small AIs can work together. They form swarms. They can attack computer systems. This has already happened. Bill Gates talked about it. The CEO of Anthropic talked about it. The CEO of OpenAI talked about it. They are all worried about this. Three years ago, we tried to pass some bills. The bills would have let the government test AI systems. We would have tested them for security risks. We would have tested them for things like chemical weapons and threats to infrastructure. We could have had third-party auditors test AI systems too. But the bills did not pass. My colleagues across the aisle stopped them. So we lost three years. Now the risks are growing. AI models get better every seven months. Open models from China are very powerful. AI could be used for cyber attacks. It could be used for biological weapons. It could be used for misinformation. It could be used in military applications. We need to act now. We need strong federal standards. We need independent testing of AI systems. We need real safeguards for the American people. We can't let the industry do whatever it wants. We need to do something about this now.”

“I want Congress to pass laws to regulate artificial intelligence. Groups of AI programs are now working together online to hack systems and cause real harm. Republicans stopped bills three years ago that would have set up government testing and safety rules. We must act now to create strong federal standards and independent testing before these threats get worse.”

“Mr. President, I rise today to speak about AI safety, a topic that is getting a lot of attention. But, in particular, I want to talk about something that may be overlooked. As you know, we have seen several incidents of AI agents escaping confinement and hacking other systems recently. Most people--experts-- tend to attribute this to frontier AI models becoming too powerful. They warn of a process leading to superintelligence known as recursive self-improvement. This is where AI models finally become smart enough to start building better versions of themselves, and then these better versions of themselves will be able to build even better versions of themselves. And the warning we are hearing from so many at this time is that we need to prepare for that rapid increase in the capability of the frontier models. We are hearing that artificial superintelligence is coming, and this deep concern about the rapidly emerging artificial superintelligence is certainly well founded. But the capacity--even the advanced supercapability of any given model--is not the whole story. This isn't the only risk we face. I want to call our attention to one specific aspect of the recent security incidents that have so alarmed experts and the general public alike. These attacks were carried out by AI agents networking with each other and working together in surprising ways to cause mayhem. The AI agents most of us are aware of are autonomous or semiautonomous AI applications that can plan and execute a task. Agents are able to act on their own initiative with minimal human supervision. And when agents communicate with each other over a network, whether that is in a factory laboratory or on the open internet, those so- called swarms of agents have shown the ability to spontaneously self- organize and work toward common goals. And when they do, they become surprisingly powerful. It appears something like Metcalfe's law may apply. Internet engineer Bob Metcalfe famously observed that when a network grows in a linear fashion, its value grows exponentially. This phenomenon that powered the rapid growth of the internet--and I witnessed firsthand, in my days in the private sector--we now see how this extreme, powerful phenomenon might also apply to large groups of agents networking with each other, self-organizing and working together. In recent examples, agent swarms have used this new form of power to gain unauthorized access into computer systems while skillfully evading detection. Here is an illustration of how this works. Imagine 10,000 highly intelligent AI agents all working to solve a difficult, 10-step hacking challenge. Well, that is interesting, and some of them might also crack the code. But if each of these 10,000 agents takes its own approach to solving the problem, that is 10,000 possible solutions being tried at once. The first agent that figures out step No. 1 alerts all the other agents in the system about the solution, and now an entire swarm of agents stops working on step 1 and gets to work on step 2--again, each of their own individual approach, one of which is going to work. Repeat this until the entire group has raced all the way through to step 10, and then they are using what they learned to attack their targets. This is what we are up against today, even before the next generation of highly intelligent models arrives. Now, imagine yourself in a job, trying to manage 10,000 networked agents, perhaps as an experiment or perhaps you are going to use this power to accomplish a noble goal, such as finding a cure for a disease. It is your job to make sure that they aren't doing anything that you don't want them to do. So these agents--networking of agents--are extremely well informed. They operate at the speed of light. And, as we are learning, they are also capable of creating their own goals, and they are highly capable of deception. There are literally hundreds of billions of lines of communication for them and between them to monitor. This is exactly what frontier labs have been contending with. Unlike powerful AI models designed to serve individual users individually, one at a time, which is the AI safety scenario I think most people still have in their minds, this situation with agents swarming is more difficult to manage, and it is far more dangerous. And we are hearing about this from leaders throughout the industry right now. They are all speaking out, and several recently published lengthy formal statements on this subject. I think it serves us well to hear what they have said. In the August 26 essay entitled ``The turbulent AI era is here. The choices we make now are critical,'' Bill Gates stated: When asked about the infamous AI Hugging Face incident, where swarming of rogue agents from one company hacked their way into another, Gates stated bluntly: The CEO of Anthropic, Dario Amodei, also issued a lengthy statement on this subject entitled ``We Must Pace the Frontier.'' In it, he expressed his concerns about ``the OpenAI-Hugging Face incident''-- these were his words--``in which a swarm of agents essentially acted as a fanatically devoted collective, conducting cybersecurity attacks on targets they were not asked to attack and that were unrelated to the task at hand, sacrificing themselves for the success of the group, and attempting to hack into the `grader' responsible for evaluating their performance.'' Well, he went on to elaborate: He goes on to say: So, on August 7, after the Hugging Face incident was first revealed, Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI, spoke about the company's upcoming release, known as Astra. He claimed that it attained what OpenAI called critical cyber security threshold. Well, he said: Well, nevertheless, on September 3, OpenAI released Astra with the addition of certain security guardrails. Then, in response to Dario's essay calling for extreme caution and a slowdown, he tweeted: ``I agree with Dario.'' So the problem here is we have a bunch of people within the industry calling out what are these technology developments, but we--we--need to do something about this. We need to be better informed. We need to do more. Three years ago, we had a chance to get ahead of this issue. In 2024, when I chaired the Senate Commerce Committee, we passed the Future of Artificial Intelligence Innovation Act, which would have given the Federal Government the ability to work with industry to independently test most advanced AI systems for serious national security risk. Now, some of these risks may not have been apparent in the last 2 years, but we would have stood up the muscle of our organization at the Federal level to better detect risks like cyber attacks; risks like chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear weapons; or threats to our current infrastructure and our energy systems. And we also passed Senators Lujan and Blackburn's TEST AI Act, which would have improved the ability of the Department of Energy to test AI systems for national security issues. Senators Hickenlooper and Capito's VET Artificial Intelligence Act would have established standards so that third-party auditors could test AI systems for safety and security--the very thing that the Anthropic CEO just called out over the weekend. So at a time when we still had a window to get ahead of these dangers, the Federal Government and the people here were denying this opportunity, particularly my colleagues on the other side of the aisle. If we had passed these bills, we would have been more ahead of the game than we are today. Instead, we have lost 3 years. The technology keeps advancing. The risks keep growing. And now the very dangers we have warned about--autonomous cyber attacks and biological weapons--are no longer theoretical. It is time that we act and act aggressively. We must keep in mind that these AI models consistently lag about only 7 months, and the most powerful open models continue to come from China. So it is time for my colleagues to come together to act. We know that these threats are real--cyber security, misinformation-- building on these AI agents that could be used in military applications. We need our colleagues to say ``Stop saying the industry can do what it wants'' and put together the infrastructure at the Federal level that not only has strong Federal standards but also has independent testing and real safeguards for the American people. Now is the time to act. I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum. The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Banks). The clerk will call the roll. The senior assistant bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.”

“I am announcing a senator from Delaware is not here. I say the vote count is 47 to 46. The Presiding Officer also said it is 47 to 46. The motion passed. It passed.”

“I am announcing that Senator Coons is absent. The motion passes with 47 votes in favor and 46 against.”

“I announce that the Senator from Delaware (Mr. Coons) is necessarily absent. The yeas and nays resulted--yeas 47, nays 46, as follows: The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Ricketts). On this vote, the yeas are 47, the nays are 46. The motion is agreed to. The motion was agreed to.”