Congress
Leader of House Epstein investigation rolls out bill to protect victims of sexual assault
House Oversight Chair James Comer has introduced legislation that would ensure survivors of sexual abuse can speak freely about their experiences, even if they signed a nondisclosure agreement.
The measure comes the day after the Kentucky Republican’s panel voted to recommend the House hold billionaire investor Leon Black in contempt of Congress for refusing to turn over all of his non-disclosure agreements related to the late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
It’s also the first piece of legislation Comer has produced as a direct result of the committee’s ongoing Epstein investigation. Members have been working for over a year to collect information about the web of powerful people who may have enabled Epstein to prey on young women and girls for years without consequence.
In all, the Oversight Committee has facilitated 19 depositions and transcribed interviews of individuals with ties to Epstein and his accomplice, Ghislaine Maxwell, who is now in federal prison.
“The federal government for decades failed the survivors of Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell’s crimes,” Comer said in a statement. “We sadly cannot undue the harm and abuse inflicted upon these women. However, we have an obligation to take action to reform our laws to ensure survivors are protected and abusers can be held accountable.”
Comer also said members have, through their investigation, “learned how powerful men weaponized nondisclosure agreements to silence survivors of sexual abuse,” inspiring him to introduce legislation called the Survivor’s Voice Protection Act.”
The bill would, specifically, render a non-disclosure agreement “void and unenforceable” in instances where it would prevent people, including victims of alleged sexual abuse, from disclosing information about it. It would apply retroactively to any non-disclosure agreements entered into prior to the bill becoming law.
The legislation also would establish a fiduciary responsibility to report grooming of a minor to law enforcement and defines the term as behavior directed toward a minor that is, among other things, “intended to establish an emotional connection with a minor through manipulation, trust building, or influence to facilitate future acts of sexual conduct or normalize or desensitize the minor to acts of sexual conduct, even if no in-person meeting or act of sexual conduct is completed, and includes directing or conspiring with another person to engage in such a course of conduct.”
Speaker Mike Johnson said Wednesday he is canceling planned Thursday votes and sending members home for a seven-week recess a day earlier than expected.
The decision lops another day off a pre-election legislative schedule that Johnson had already truncated by two weeks. It also allows members to avoid having to take a vote on an impeachment resolution introduced by Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) targeting Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, which would have hit the floor no later than Thursday under House rules.
Leadership staffers indicated in a notice to members that other votes expected Thursday, on overturning some EPA regulations, would now take place Wednesday evening.
A key House Democrat involved in developing an artificial intelligence framework for his party called Wednesday for committee consideration of a bipartisan bill to regulate the most advanced AI models — even as he has held off on endorsing it.
Rep. Ted Lieu of California is a co-chair of House Democrats’ AI commission, as well as vice-chair of the House Democratic Caucus. He has previously taken a careful approach to the FRONTIER Act, which is the only comprehensive AI safety legislation that has bipartisan support.
“I absolutely believe that the Energy and Commerce Committee needs to do a markup of that bill, but we’re going to go on vacation in a couple days because that was Speaker Johnson’s choice,” Lieu said at a news conference Wednesday.
It’s the first time Lieu has said that the bill should move forward, explaining that he wants to “support the legislative process” as the commission works to release its own policy recommendations in the coming weeks.
Lieu appeared alongside other Democrats Wednesday, including FRONTIER Act co-author Rep. Lori Trahan of Massachusetts. They gathered to demand Republican leaders facilitate a process for members to come together to discuss an AI regulatory framework amid growing threats that the technology is developing faster than humans can control it.
But Democrats have been divided over whether the answer on AI safety is to put guardrails on the technology or ban certain advancements altogether. They’ve also sparred internally over whether to preempt states from setting their own AI guardrails.
The FRONTIER Act, led by Trahan and Rep. Jay Obernolte (R-Calif.), would establish tiered requirements for AI labs that would include independent audits, incident reporting and risk-management frameworks.
Trahan made the case for her bill at the news conference as the product of many meetings with industry and members.
“Incident reporting — that’s mandatory, which by the way, we don’t have today,” she said, saying it would have required transparency around this summer’s hacking incident by a rogue swarm of AI agents: “The only reason why we know about the Hugging Face incident is because OpenAI chose to tell us.”
She responded to concerns from others in her party who say her efforts with Obernolte simply do not go far enough to protect Americans from runaway AI technology, saying it was a meaningful compromise bill that has a path to become law.
“In a perfect world, if I had my way writing that bill, would it look different? Absolutely,” she said. “I chose to legislate in the reality that we’re in right now, which is, we’re going to need this to be bipartisan. If we’re going to pass it tomorrow we will likely need it to be bipartisan.”
Republicans have also been slow to galvanize around the Obernolte-Trahan proposal. In an interview Wednesday during the Blue Light News Decoded Summit in Washington, Energy and Commerce Chair Brett Guthrie (R-Ky.) would not commit to putting the bill up for a markup but gave the bipartisan duo some credit: “Everybody says we need to do something and nobody has put a product on the table except for Jay and Lori.”
Meanwhile, the Democratic AI Commission that is likely to recommend more aggressive controls on frontier models is still working through its process with no defined due date.
“We’re still taking input from stakeholders,” Lieu said, deferring to House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries on timing.
Rep. Greg Casar (D-Texas) is objecting to the notion that America should be focused on winning the AI race.
“The AI race is not an arms race that you win,” Casar said during the Blue Light News Decoded Summit in D.C. “It’s an arms race that we need to end, and we need to protect the American people.”
Casar also questioned the idea that competition with China should dissuade the U.S. from putting guardrails on AI, and noted he plans to release bill text for a proposal banning superintelligence. He further cast doubt on the impact of a pending bill to mitigate utility cost increases from data centers, reiterated his push for CEOs of the leading AI companies to testify before Congress.
“Over 30 members of Congress sent letters to these companies, and in the example of OpenAI, we asked if there were other incidents where AI got out of its sandbox, hacked into other companies,” Casar said. “Is there anything else we should know about in addition to hugging face?”
Speaking Tuesday at the Pro-Human Assembly, a conference on AI organized by the Future of Life Institute, Casar called for activists and whistleblowers to speak more forcefully about threats arising from advanced AI, saying the time for “tempered rhetoric has passed.”
His latest comments follow an array of warnings from employees at labs developing advanced AI models, including Anthropic whistleblower Jacob Coxon, which have fueled public concern about the technology’s advancing capabilities.
Public opinion over the risks associated with AI has hardened, with new results from The Blue Light News Poll underscoring the depth of anxieties about the rapidly developing technology. Overall, about two out of three Americans say there is at least a “moderate” risk that advanced AI could destroy humanity, with majorities across parties, genders and age groups holding that view.
Ahead of a House vote on a bipartisan bill designed to curb data center costs, Casar said he plans to vote for the bill —- but poured cold water on how much of an impact it will have.
“It’s not going to make a huge difference on the electric rates, especially right now,” Casar said. “There are way stronger proposals and I don’t really think that this one is gonna come off as much of a win for the Republicans who are flailing to hold on.”
One of the guardrails Casar proposed during the summit was a new cabinet-level agency to enforce AI safety measures. “
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