U.S. Rep. Joseph P. Kennedy III plans to introduce a bill today creating the National Russian Threat Response Center, a $20 million agency charged with snuffing out Russian hacking.

It comes as a new report reveals hackers breached 39 state voting systems before the 2016 election and attempted to delete or alter voter data.

In an interview with the Herald, Kennedy said he’s convinced Russian government intelligence agencies have engaged in “sustained, sophisticated attacks against the foundation of our democracy,” and will strike again.

“They do not target Democrats per se, they do not target Republicans per se — they target who they believe will stand up for American interests at the expense of Russian interests,” Kennedy said. “We need to make sure that systems are put in place to safeguard our voting systems and our electoral process.”

The proposed center would fall under the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, and will require agencies to share intel on Russian activity, a coordination Kennedy said was lacking before the election.

“No one quite had a full view as to what was happening,” Kennedy said, citing other cyber attempts to influence European elections.

Kennedy said sponsors of the bill “hope to have a broad array of Democrats and Republicans on board,” saying the measure has gone through a number of iterations.

The proposal comes amid an independent probe of links between Russian agents and the Trump campaign, and as the Senate considers a bipartisan bill to require congressional review before the president alters any sanctions on Moscow.

An explosive Bloomberg report yesterday, citing people with knowledge of U.S. investigations, said Russia’s cyberattack hit election systems in 39 states, much more than originally thought after the leaking of a classified National Security Agency document on the subject last week.

In Illinois, Bloomberg reported, evidence was found that cyber intruders tried to delete or alter voter data after accessing the software used by poll workers. In at least one state, the report said, hackers accessed a campaign finance database.

Bloomberg also reported that federal agents detected signatures in the attacks that pointed to Russia, with 37 states finding traces in their systems. In California and Florida, the traces were found on the systems of private contractors managing those state’s election systems.

Massachusetts was not among the states compromised, said Brian McNiff, spokesman for Secretary of State William F. Galvin.

“We have a closed system,” he said. “We’re not on the internet.”

The Bloomberg report said the Obama administration expressed alarm directly to the Kremlin over the hacks, but opted against going public out of fear it would undermine public confidence in the election.

Russian officials, including President Vladimir Putin, have steadfastly denied its government played any role in the attacks, or sanctioned them. President Trump has mostly brushed off the concerns, suggesting that any number of countries could have been behind the hacking.

Kennedy said the “fact that (Trump) refuses to engage the American public in that discussion or order the law enforcement intelligence agencies to root out exactly what happened … heightens the importance of Congress to act.”

The center’s director would be appointed by the Director of National Intelligence, with concurrence from the secretary of state.