%1

The federal judge who lost her only child when a gunman opened fire at her home and the Director of the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts (AO) expressed gratitude on Friday for the passage by Congress of the Daniel Anderl Judicial Security and Privacy Act, according to a U.S. Courts press release. New Jersey District Judge Esther Salas said, “I want to thank Congress for honoring my son Daniel’s memory, and for helping protect my brothers and sisters on the bench. On behalf of the federal Judiciary, Judge Roslynn Mauskopf, the AO Director, also expressed her appreciation. In a statement today, she said, “We are grateful to Congress for taking this important step to protect federal judges and their families. Our democracy depends on judges who are free to make decisions without fear of reprisal or retribution." The bill was strongly endorsed by the Judicial Conference of the United States, the national policy-making body for the federal courts. It cleared the final hurdle in Congress on Thursday when the Senate voted 83-11 to pass the annual defense authorization bill with the Daniel Anderl Judicial Security and Privacy Act attached. President Biden is expected to sign the bill. Daniel Anderl was fatally shot in July 2020 and Salas’s husband Mark Anderl was critically wounded when a former litigant came to the family’s door posing as a deliveryman. The gunman found the judge’s personal information on the internet. Daniel, a student at Catholic University in Washington, D.C., had just turned 20. The bill, which had broad bipartisan support in both the House and Senate, will protect judges’ personally identifiable information from resale by data brokers. It also will allow federal judges to redact personal information displayed on federal government internet sites and prevent publication of personal information by other businesses and individuals where there is no legitimate news media or other public interest.

The Senate yesterday passed a short-term funding bill that punts Friday’s government shutdown deadline through next week as negotiators race to patch together a larger government funding deal for fiscal 2023, The Hill reported. The Senate voted 71-19 to pass the continuing resolution (CR), sending the legislation to President Biden for approval after it passed the House the night before on a vote of 224-201. The bill freezes funding levels through Dec. 23 to buy time for ongoing spending negotiations, preventing a shutdown that would have otherwise begun on Friday at midnight. Leaders on both sides of the aisle have been working to pass an omnibus spending package by the end of the month, with sights set on final passage by Christmas Eve.

U.S. crypto miners would be forced to disclose greenhouse gas emissions under a new bill, adding pressure to a fast-growing industry criticized for its heavy toll on the environment and power grid, Bloomberg News reported. The legislation, introduced by Sen. Edward Markey (D-Mass.), would require crypto miners using more than 5 megawatts of electricity — a threshold that most Bitcoin mining companies would pass — to report emissions and the source of power, according to a copy of the bill shared with Bloomberg News. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency would conduct a study on the impact of existing and planned digital mining operations — including the level of stress on the energy grid and fossil fuel usage — and offer any measures state regulators can take to reduce their energy demand. Mining digital currency is energy-intensive, with companies including Riot Blockchain Inc. and Argo Blockchain often running thousands of specialized computers around the clock, solving equations that award crypto assets. About 60% of global currency mining is fueled by coal and natural gas, as opposed to renewable energy sources, according to data from Cambridge University’s Centre for Alternative Finance. U.S. mining operations produce the equivalent greenhouse gas emissions of 7 million cars on the road for a year, according to a statement from Markey.

After the demise of cryptocurrency exchange FTX, Senate Banking Democrats anticipate a bigger role for their committee in legislation for the industry in the next Congress after taking a back seat to the Senate Agriculture Committee this year, Roll Call reported. Senate Banking Chairman Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) said the committee so far had focused on drawing attention to shortcomings in the cryptocurrency sector, but it would play a more active role in the next Congress. Brown and other Democrats criticized the efforts by the Agriculture Committee as too friendly to the industry. “Our role so far has been to continue to show the skepticism that I felt from the beginning, to put them on notice, to push the SEC to move,” Brown said in an interview. “But I look in the new Congress to be increasingly aggressive.” The fall of FTX, valued at $32 billion before a run on customer accounts forced the exchange to declare bankruptcy last month, underlined the gaps in oversight of the cryptocurrency sector. A report that Alameda Research, FTX’s affiliated trading arm, stood on shaky financial ground prompted the run. FTX reportedly lent Alameda billions of dollars, and the two had closer financial ties than previously known. With Democrats retaining control of the Senate, Brown will remain chairman of the committee. But the Republican majority in the House next year means Brown will have to work with a House Financial Services Committee that is expected to be led by Rep. Patrick T. McHenry (R-N.C.) to get legislation to the president’s desk.

Senate Banking Committee Chair Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) yesterday pressed U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen for help in securing legislation to better regulate cryptocurrency, the latest sign of pressure for tougher regulations following the collapse of crypto exchange FTX, Reuters reported. Brown also urged the Financial Stability Oversight Council (FSOC), a U.S. regulatory panel comprising top financial regulators, to find ways to enhance crypto asset disclosures and bolster market integrity. "It is crucial that risks in this area are contained and do not spill over into traditional financial markets and institutions, and we draw the correct lessons regarding customer and investor protection," said Brown, who is chairman of the Senate Banking Committee. FTX filed for bankruptcy on Nov. 11 after traders pulled $6 billion from the platform in three days and rival exchange Binance abandoned a rescue deal, sending shock waves across the crypto market. In his letter to Yellen, Brown also urged the FSOC to press forward with recommendations made by the council in an October report stemming from U.S. President Joe Biden's executive order this year "on Ensuring Responsible Development of Digital Assets." In that report, regulators identified several gaps in the oversight of cryptocurrencies, including in the crypto spot market for tokens that are not securities. Read more.

In related news, the Senate Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry Committee will hold a hearing at 10 a.m. ET today titled "Why Congress Needs to Act: Lessons Learned from the FTX Collapse." Commodity Futures Trading Commission Chair Rostin Behnam is scheduled to testify. Click here for a live web stream of the hearing.