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Congressional Daily Record
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June 16, 2026
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Download official Senate Record PDFReturn to issue contextMs. CANTWELL. Mr. President, I rise to recognize the recent retirement of one of my most respected staff members: Shannon Smith. Shannon is a native of Washington and is returning home to be in Seattle.
Washington, DC, serving on the Senate Commerce Committee, especially after a long, successful career with the Washington State attorney general's office, where she led the consumer product division, investigating fraud and deceptive practice and holding bad actors accountable for their actions.
that she expected that Washington, DC, would be a good place for her to continue that growth. She lasted here 5 years, and we are so grateful for that because, during that time, she led an impressive effort on the Consumer Protection, Technology, and Data Privacy Committee.
legislation that was important in stopping bad actors from hawking online products that clearly had no solutions to the impacts of Covid. She worked very hard, especially on children's online privacy, and working hard on college sports issues.
talking about now, but it was really her real world experience that was so valuable on the consumer product and safety issues of our committee. I think it is very important tonight to thank her for that work. And while I wish that our consumer products organization was a better organization than today, I know she helped stop some very bad cases from moving forward.
Development Agency, which was for the first time established as a permanent Agency—a very important organization to help deliver resources to communities and grow minority businesses, a great victory for them.
that I introduced with then-Representative Cathy McMorris Rodgers who served as the chair of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce. So we worked very hard, so when the Trump administration and Republicans sought to override State laws protecting consumers from the harms of AI, Shannon understood exactly what that would mean for our State and attorneys general across the Nation.
important consumer issues. Most recently, as I mentioned, Shannon led the drafting of the Protect College Sports Act. Actually, before that, she led the drafting of
sports, legislation with Senator Blackburn and Cornyn on sports and agents, and legislation with, recently, Senator Schmitt on the Sports Broadcasting Act. I want to thank her for all those efforts—but clearly, efforts that are now enshrined by all of those bills in the Protect College Sports Act that helped student-athletes' protections be made into Federal law.
current arms race that threatens the future of women and Olympic sports. So we couldn't have done it without her.
for protecting Americans from harm. I told her, when she recently left, I was going to make her a jersey that said “Shannon Smith-Njigba” because she is like Smith-Njigba, our famous Seahawk player that had very deft moves on the sidelines and caught lots of passes. That is what Shannon did for consumers; that is what she did to protect us from online privacy faults and to protect us from AI and now, hopefully, to protect us from the ills of college sport.
I yield the floor.