WASHINGTON – Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) penned this op-ed in the Washington Examiner warning that the SEC’s Consolidated Audit Trail (CAT) places the private information of 158 million American investors at risk. He urges his colleagues to join him in prohibiting the SEC from collecting information on every transaction that investors make and in requiring the SEC to delete the information it has already gathered.

Key excerpts of Kennedy’s op-ed include:

“The Securities and Exchange Commission is supposed to protect investors, not stalk them. However, under a new regulation, the SEC has paved the way for the federal agency to follow an investor’s every move.

“Here’s just a bit of the information the SEC is forcing brokers to fork over: their customers’ full names, birth years, addresses, which stocks they bought, which stocks they sold and when those transactions occurred. The SEC never had this level of access to personally identifiable information previously. The brokers would often have to store the information, and then the SEC could request the information for investigations. Now, the SEC wants all this information directly. In its own words, the SEC wants to ‘efficiently and accurately track all activity throughout the U.S. markets.’ Every single transaction.

“The SEC stops just shy of asking each investor to name their middle school crush before it receives all this customer information and stuffs it into one massive government-owned database called the Consolidated Audit Trail. The CAT is a ticking timebomb of sensitive personal information that hackers cannot wait to detonate.”

. . .

“The SEC’s disregard for privacy is as dangerous as it is un-American. That’s why I introduced the Protecting Investors’ Personally Identifiable Information Act, a bill that would prohibit the SEC from forcing financial institutions to turn over every investor’s personally identifiable information and require the SEC to delete any information it has gathered since the agency implemented the rule.

“Roughly 158 million Americans invest in the stock market. The CAT is a privacy and financial disaster waiting to happen. My colleagues in Congress should join me in working to shut down the CAT and restore the privacy of American investors.”

The full op-ed is available here.

Text of the Protecting Investors’ Personally Identifiable Information Act is here.  

WASHINGTON – Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) today joined Sen. Jerry Moran (R-Kan.) in demanding that President Joe Biden enforce sanctions against Iranian oil sales and permanently freeze the transfer of $6 billion in assets to Tehran from the Biden administration’s September hostage negotiation.

“For far too long, Iran has evaded consequence for its complacency in funding radical terror. To prevent further atrocities and to fulfill our promise of providing unwavering support to our most important ally in the Middle East, we urge your administration to take the necessary means in severing financial avenues available to Iran, specifically cracking down on oil exports,” the senators wrote.

“We ask that you take immediate action to permanently freeze the funding mechanism established in September’s hostage deal with Iran. This $6 billion would free up money for Iran to use not for the well-being of its own people but for nefarious purposes in the region and beyond. Blocking the world’s largest state sponsor of terrorism from accessing this $6 billion—rescinding or revising all waivers and licenses involved—will hinder the regime’s ability to support the death and destruction of our allies,” they continued.

“We also demand that you take immediate action to fully enforce U.S. oil sanctions and interdict Iranian oil exports. The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) estimated that exports of crude oil and condensate from Iran fell from 2.5 million barrels per day in 2017 to a mere 400,000 in 2020 amidst the ‘maximum pressure’ campaign. But that pressure campaign evaporated in 2021 and today is practically non-existent. Iran’s crude exports alone surged to more than 2 million barrels per day in August reportedly as part of the administration’s nuclear deal with Iran. That’s an estimated $26 to $30 billion in additional annual revenue for Tehran,” the lawmakers concluded.

The lawmakers also raised concerns about reports that indicate U.S. officials are aware of a gradual relaxation of congressionally mandated sanctions against Iranian oil sales.

Kennedy has also led efforts to prevent an additional $4.9 billion from flowing to Iran through the International Monetary Fund (IMF). The Biden administration greenlit $4.5 billion for Iran in 2021, and Democrats are calling on the White House to do it again.

Kennedy’s No Dollars for Dictators Act would prevent Iran and other perpetrators of genocide and state sponsors of terrorism from receiving special drawing rights through the IMF without congressional authorization.

The full letter is available here.

Watch Kennedy’s comments here.

WASHINGTON – Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) today spoke on the Senate floor to commend school choice as a path to success for Louisiana students and families.

Key comments from Kennedy’s remarks include:

“I regret to say, Mr. President, that roughly half of my students in Louisiana, in grades K through three, are not reading at the grade-level. Half. Only one-third of my kids in grades three through 12 are at grade-level in the four subjects that the Louisiana Educational Assessment Program, we call it the LEAP, tests.

“In fact, we have, in Louisiana, 24 school systems—24—in which fewer than a quarter of our students—fewer than a quarter—have proficient LEAP exam scores.  

. . .

“The truth is that pre-K to 12 education in America and in Louisiana was in trouble well before the pandemic, and we all know that. Yet leaders in many states remain hesitant, to say the least, to change anything—anything—about our public school system.”

. . .

“The fact is—the unhappy fact, the miserable fact—is that too many of our schools in America and in Louisiana are failure factories. They're failure factories where violence is common and learning is rare.

“But, there are a few states that are bucking the status quo, and they’re doing it, in part, by adopting school choice programs. And, so far, they've seen a lot of success. Now, school choice programs . . . can take many different shapes, but they all boil down to one thing, one foundational principle: Parents should be allowed to take their kids out of failing schools.

“Parents should be allowed to take their children out of failing schools and put them in schools that can help those children thrive and certainly do better. It's not complicated. You know, American parents today, they can go to the grocery store, and they can choose from 40 different—maybe more, but certainly 40—different breakfast cereals to feed their child in the morning.

“But, in many states, those parents have absolutely no control over which school their child can attend. . . . And, there's little that most parents—too many parents—can do to change that, even though it is patently absurd to force children to attend failing schools when parents could enroll those kids, and invest the money that pays for their education, in better schools.”

. . . 

“I believe as much as I'm standing here that America's future and Louisiana's future can be better than our present, and it can be better than our past—but not if we don't improve our schools, and no one is coming to save our schools in Louisiana but ourselves.”

View Kennedy’s full speech here.

WASHINGTON – Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) joined Sens. James Lankford (R-Okla.) and Jacklyn Rosen (D-Nev.) in urging the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations (UN), Linda Thomas-Greenfield, to bring a resolution to the UN Security Council recognizing and imposing sanctions on Hamas as a terrorist organization. 

“Recent events have demonstrated that Hamas’ actions, tactics, and stated goals are in many ways indistinguishable from Al Qaeda, ISIS, and other terrorist organizations the United Nations (UN) has sanctioned. Therefore, we write to urge you to bring a resolution to the UN Security Council recognizing and imposing sanctions on Hamas as a terrorist organization,” the senators wrote. 

“Hamas terrorists have committed and continue to commit abhorrent, grizzly attacks that not only impact Israelis but also directly impact Americans citizens, with at least 32 Americans killed and countless more held [captive] as a result of the terrorist attack on October 7. In fact, Hamas hostages come from 25 countries around the world. Hamas’ reign of terror is not just an Israeli problem, but one that impacts us all,” they continued.

The senators raised concerns about the consequences of the UN not recognizing Hamas as a terrorist organization, including a lack of a unified voice among the international community in responding to one of the worst terrorist attacks in history.

“The absence of UN sanctions on Hamas is a glaring loophole, circumventing U.S. financial controls, such as the rigorous standards set by the U.S. Department of Treasury, potentially allowing Hamas to evade U.S. sanctions. Furthermore, the lack of UN sanctions on Hamas enables them to bolster their capabilities by exploiting international financial channels, including accessing financial systems and soliciting donations from charities,” the lawmakers said.

The letter states that Hamas diverts aid for civilians to fund terrorist operations by:

• Imposing "taxes" on humanitarian consignments at border checkpoints. 

• Seizing a segment of donated goods intended for Palestinian civilians and later selling them illicitly for financial gain.

• Seizing donated supplies, as Hamas did on Oct. 16, 2023, when the group took fuel meant for Gazan hospitals from a UN Relief and Works Agency site.

• Dismantling and repurposing humanitarian facilities, like water and sewage components, to create rockets and missiles, some of which misfire and land in Gaza, causing Palestinian civilian casualties and posing threats to aid workers.

The full letter is available here.