mr. cortez. he served as the first commissioner of elections for virginia under former governor terry mcauliffe. mr. cortez pulled off a bit of a miracle last year when he oversaw virginia's transition away from voting machines to statewide paper ballot voting systems just in time for virginia's 2017 elections. welcome and friendly are joined by jamil jaffer. mr. jeffers up under the national security institute at the anthony scalia's school of law at george mason university in virginia where he is also a professor. mr. jaffer also recently served under justice nail course which. prior to his current position he's held senior roles on the senate foreign relations committee the house intelligence committee and the george w. bush administration so welcome to each of you. therefore i start questioning and hopefully we will have time for audience q&a i just want to share with you all our thanks at the center for american progress to all of our coalition allies and partners. many of you are here in th

mr. cortez. we are joined by jamil jaffer, the founder of the security institute at the antonin scalia school of law at george mason school where he is a professor. he recently served as a clerk to justice neal gore such of the court.upreme prior to his current positions he held senior roles on the intelligence committee and in the george w. bush administration so welcome to each one of you. before i start questioning and hopefully we'll have a few q&a, i want audience to share with you all our thanks center of american progress to all of our coalition allies and partners. in the you are here room. all of you have been working as you ly and i think heard from senator klobuchar and not aary johnson, this is challenge that we are going to overcome by one person or one organization. to be a collective effort and i want to really call out verified voting and common so many other organizations for your incredible work. so please welcome our panel. [applause] ok. edgardo, i'll start with you, the elect

cortez masto: mr. president, i ask that we dispense with the quorum call. the presiding officer: without objection. ms. cortez masto: thank you. mr. president, like my colleagues today that you're hearing from, i also rise to talk about the importance of protecting dreamers, not just in the state of nevada, but across this country. i want to talk specifically about a term that i constantly hear during this debate on how we need to protect dreamers and at the same time address this issue of chain migration. you know, i have to call on my colleagues and president trump to really stop using that term and abandon the offensive and misleading term of chain migration because it paints a picture that does not reflect reality. immigrants can't sponsor entire families to come here. our system allows american citizens and green card holders to join their families in the united states. there are numerous steps that families must take to legally immigrate to the united states. it is a long and arduous process that leaves husbands, wives, brothers, parents, waiting for d

cortez masto: thank you. mr. president, like my colleagues today that you're hearing from, i also rise to talk about the importance of protecting dreamers, not just in the state of nevada, but across this country. i want to talk specifically about a term that i constantly hear during this debate on how we need to

cortez masto: thank you. mr. president, like my colleagues today that you're hearing from, i also rise to talk about the importance of protecting dreamers, not just in the state of nevada, but across this country. i want to talk specifically about a term that i constantly hear during this debate on how we need to protect dreamers and at the same time address this issue of chain migration. you know, i have to call on my colleagues and president trump to really stop using that term and abandon the offensive and misleading term of chain migration because it paints a picture that does not reflect reality. immigrants can't sponsor entire families to come here. our system allows american citizens and green card holders to join their families in the united states. there are numerous steps that families must take to legally immigrate to the united states. it is a long and arduous process that leaves husbands, wives, brothers, parents, waiting for decades. many people die before they have a chance to be reunited with thei

mr. chairman, thank you. >> thank you, senator cortez. >> thank you. gentlemen, thank you. i apologize, i had another committee hearing going on at the same time, but i appreciate your written comments and the conversation today is so important, and as somebody who from nevada and worked on consumer protection issues, obviously, weeding out any type of fraud is important in this space as well. so, let me though start with a couple of questions that i have. i understand that companies that originated outside the cryptocurrency space like kodak and burger king have jumped into the cryptocurrency space and some critics have warned that some companies are using block chain as an opportunistic venture without having a clear business plan. one company long island iced tea trained to long block chain and watched the prices soar. are you concerned that they're changing to both of you. >> the short answer is yes. i've put out a warning in this space and to securities lawyers as well. nobody should think it's okay to change your name to something that involved block chain when you ha

mr. chairman, thank you. >> thank you, senator cortez masto. >> thank you. i apologize i've had another committee hearing going on at the same time. but i appreciate your written comments. and the conversation today is so important. and as somebody who was attorney general of the state of nevada and worked on consumers protection issues, obviouslily weeding out any time ype of pros important as well. let me start with a couple of questions. i understand that companies that originated outside the cryptocurrency space, like kodak and burger king, have recently jumped into the cryptocurrency space. however, some critics have warned that companies are using block chain as an opportunityist venture to pump up stock prices without having a clear business plan. one company, long island ice tee i understand changed name to long block chain and watched stocks soar. so are you concerned that companies might be using block chain as a scream to pump up their stock prices? >> the short answer is yes. the longer answer is i've put out a warning in this space. and i've put

cortez. senator lee. >> thank you, mr. chairman. thanks to each of you for being here. we live in an exciting world. we live in a time when companies represented at this table today 15 years ago were just ideas. and today they change the way we interact with the world around us. today these companies have made it possible, in ways never imagined just a couple decades ago, for few people with very few money to have an impact not only in their community but across the country and throughout the world. but with that comes a lot of challenges. and those challenges are the reason why we are here today at this hearing. in some parts of the world, there has been a suggestion that i can summarize only as an effort to make public utility companies out of social media enterprises that would rather comprehensively attempt to regulate social media imposing escalating fines and other penalties on companies that fail to report certain types of information to the government. some of these recommendations for policies like this have been made in the united kingdom and the european unio