{"database": "press", "table": "releases", "rows": [["https://www.barrasso.senate.gov/senate-energy-committee-advances-bills-important-to-wyoming/", "Senate Energy Committee Advances Bills Important to Wyoming", "2025-12-17", "2025", "2025-12", "Republican", "Senate", "WY", "John Barrasso", "B001261", "www.barrasso.senate.gov", "barrasso", "https://www.barrasso.senate.gov/newsroom/news-releases/", "scraper", "Senate ENR Committee advances Barrasso\u2019s American Voices in Federal Lands Act and Lummis\u2019 Wyoming Education Trust Modernization Act\n\nClick here to watch Sen. Barrasso\u2019s remarks\n\nWASHINGTON, D.C.\u2013 Today, U.S. Senator John Barrasso (R-Wyo.) delivered the following remarks at a Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee business meeting after the committee voted to advance S. 2262, the American Voices in Federal Lands Act.\n\nThis legislation was introduced by Barrasso and Senators Cynthia Lummis (R-Wyo.), Mike Crapo (R-Idaho.), Jim Risch (R-Idaho.), Dan Sullivan (R-Alaska.), Steve Daines (R-Mont.), John Curtis (R-Utah) and Tim Sheehy (R-Mont.). It defends the voices of American citizens by restricting foreign adversaries and artificial intelligence from providing input on federal land management rulemaking.\n\nThe committee also voted to advance the Wyoming Education Trust Modernization Act (S. 2273), which was introduced by Senators Lummis and Barrasso. The bill would amend Wyoming\u2019s State Act of Admission to provide the state\u2019s permanent school land fund with enhanced investment flexibility, potentially increasing annual returns for K-12 education.\n\nSen. Barrasso\u2019s remarks:\n\n\u201cWell, thanks so much, Mr. Chairman. I appreciate the positive vote on S. 2262.\n\n\u201cI want to thank you and ranking member for holding this important markup.\n\n\u201cThis bill is called the American Voices in Federal Lands Act.\n\n\u201cI think it\u2019s an important bill.\n\n\u201cI believe it gives necessary guardrails for our land management agencies.\n\n\u201cAnd, I\u2019ve become concerned about this lack of information on who was leaving comments\u2014public comments\u2014on the Bureau of Land Management.\n\n\u201cThis happened at a hearing we had in the past. We had somebody from the BLM testify, and you may remember during that testimony, it had to do with public lands in Wyoming.\n\n\u201cAnd, so many negative comments were coming in, and all the locals were saying one thing, and basically asked who were the people making comments? Do we actually have a record of who\u2019s coming in comments?\n\n\u201cI raised concerns, you know, was communist China allowed to leave comments impacting how we use and manage our national resources?\n\n\u201cAnd, I wasn\u2019t able to get a response that said \u2018oh yeah, we\u2019re checking in to see who was coming in with the information.\u2019\n\n\u201cWe asked, you know, could AI be leaving them? Could bots be leaving them?\n\n\u201cAnd, there was no record. They just said, \u2018well we had all these comments against it.\u2019\n\n\u201cIt was peculiar to the people of Wyoming when you saw the number of comments coming in.\n\n\u201cAnd, at the same time, we hear reports of communist China wanting to buy farmland\u2014ranch land\u2014across the West.\n\n\u201cAnd, it was just enough of an issue that I wanted to put together this piece of legislation, to make sure that we know where comments are coming.\n\n\u201cWe want every U.S. citizen, or groups and organizations representing those citizens, to have an opportunity to have their voice heard, and that\u2019s important.\n\n\u201cBut, I don\u2019t want to hear that AI or bots or foreign adversaries are the ones who are impacting our decisions.\n\n\u201cAnd, these are important policies related to public lands.\n\n\u201cSo, I thank you, Mr. Chairman, for bringing this to a vote today.\n\n\u201cAnd, I thank my colleagues for adopting it.\u201d\n\n###", 1, "2026-03-30T01:40:41Z", "2026-04-06T20:09:11Z"]], "columns": ["url", "title", "date", "year", "month", "party", "chamber", "state", "member_name", "bioguide_id", "domain", "scraper", "source", "date_source", "text", "has_text", "collected_at", "updated_at"], "primary_keys": ["url"], "primary_key_values": ["https://www.barrasso.senate.gov/senate-energy-committee-advances-bills-important-to-wyoming/"], "units": {}, "query_ms": 0.878586433827877, "source": "dwillis/congress-press", "source_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press", "license": "MIT", "license_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press/blob/main/LICENSE"}