TRIBUTE TO SHANNON SMITH

On 2026-06-16, Senator Maria Cantwell (D-WA) delivered a floor speech titled "TRIBUTE TO SHANNON SMITH" in the Senate.

TRIBUTE TO SHANNON SMITH

Congressional Record, Volume 172 Issue 101 (Tuesday, June 16, 2026) [Congressional Record Volume 172, Number 101 (Tuesday, June 16, 2026)] [Senate] [Pages S2865-S2866] From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [ www.gpo.gov ] TRIBUTE TO SHANNON SMITH Ms. 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. I am not sure Shannon ever imagined she would be living in 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. The pull to service was clearly still strong, and she once told me 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. Her time on the committee during the Covid crisis helped us fashion 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. She did a very important task for us in the legislation that we are 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. She also led the 2021 reauthorization of the Minority Business 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. She was also instrumental in drafting the American Privacy Rights Act 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. She helped rally those voices against preemption of these most 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 [[Page S2866]] legislation with my colleagues Senators Booker and Blumenthal on 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. Potentially, this will help us in the college sports system in the current arms race that threatens the future of women and Olympic sports. So we couldn't have done it without her. I want to thank her for her great work to the Commerce Committee and 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. We are going to miss her, but her retirement was very, very well earned, and I thank her for that service to our Nation. I yield the floor. ____________________