Floor Statements

Mr. President, we are here on my Congressional Review Act motion, and I understand that the Chair of the Environment and Public Works Committee has already spoken in opposition, so I want to make the case for why we should vote yes on this.

Months before the 2024 election, President Trump offered his Big Oil and Coal cronies a deal: If they gave him a billion dollars to take the White House, he would pay them back one hundredfold. Well, he doesn't keep a lot of promises, but he seems to have kept this one. Since taking office in January, Trump has bent over backward to make big polluters happy, and Americans pay the price.

This sweetheart billion-dollar deal for polluters has meant a number of things: one, basically a driveby window handing out regulatory exemptions to individual coal plants and other toxic sources to pollute with impunity. Quite the driveby window. That sweetheart deal meant ordering coal plants to stay online so that the coal dealers can continue to fuel them even against the wishes of the local communities and even the utilities themselves.

This sweetheart billion-dollar deal meant--and this is relevant to this particular motion--rolling back toxic pollution standards for every coal- and oil-fired powerplant across the country. EPA's Mercury and Air Toxics rule established lifesaving standards, restricting emissions of the most dangerous air pollutants from coal- and oil-fired powerplants. And, naturally, the Trump EPA rolled these health standards back.

As dirty power sources go, coal is the dirtiest. Coal plants are the largest source of mercury emissions in the United States. Mercury pollution is bad stuff, and coal and oil plants also emit massive volumes of other toxic pollutants, including arsenic, lead, and cadmium--more bad stuff.

Approximately 80 million Americans, including about 17 million children, live within 3 miles of one of those toxin-spewing, fossil fuel-fired powerplants. Without strong rules limiting their toxic pollution, all those millions of Americans are exposed to unacceptable risk to their health and well-being.

But in the Trump ``put polluters first'' world, that doesn't matter. We can do something about it, however, because the Congressional Review Act gives Congress the opportunity to vote on such evil regulations.

With the Trump administration engaged in an effort, at breakneck speed, to tear down protections of Americans' health and safety and our environment, Congressional Review Act resolutions like this one can help hold the administration to account and protect Americans' health and safety while doing so. For those reasons, I urge my colleagues to vote in favor of this measure, in favor of the protection of those 17 million children in the harm zone of these toxins.

Mr. President, I now move to proceed to Calendar No. 409, S.J. Res. 188.

I ask for the yeas and nays.

Vote on Motion

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. President, I come to the Senate this afternoon with a simple proposition and a resolution that recognizes that simple truth, and that is that: Climate change is real.

Earlier this year, I came to the floor, and I asked my colleagues if they could all agree on this simple scientific fact.

On this occasion, I also asked my colleagues to acknowledge what the fossil fuel industry has known for nearly 60 years, which is not only that climate change is real but also that they are the primary cause of climate change--their emissions. Unfortunately, Republicans refused to acknowledge those facts.

So I came back and asked for a simple recognition that sea levels were rising as a result of climate change, and Republicans refused to acknowledge that.

I came back and asked that we recognize, very simply, that oceans are warming because of climate change, and Republicans refused to acknowledge that fact.

So let's try this. It is super simple.

Resolved, That the Senate recognizes that climate change is

real.

That is the text of this resolution. It is a simple, four-word proposition that I hope we can agree on.

But just to show the fact base that this simple fact stands on, we can start with NASA. NASA has pretty good scientists. They are actually driving rovers around on Mars. They are pretty good at what they do. And here is what NASA maintains:

There is unequivocal evidence that Earth is warming at an

unprecedented rate. [And that] human activity is the

principal cause.

And if you don't trust NASA, if you don't want to take their word for it, you can just take a look at the data. It is pretty straightforward.

This graph reflects the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. It is a known thing. It is done by measurement. I hope we still believe, in the Senate, in measurement. This chart shows what is called the Keeling curve--daily atmospheric CO2 concentrations measured at scientific observatories. The historic data going back is actually collected from testing air bubbles frozen in ice sheets. And I have been to the Ohio State lab where some of those ice cores from old glaciers are maintained, from where they take those measurements. The Ohio State scientists know what they are doing. The measurement is not that complicated. So that is the track of CO2 in the atmosphere according to the Keeling curve.

Here is the next fact: Global average temperature is increasing at an accompanying rate as the CO2 emissions climb. You can see how well it tracks. Global temperature is not that hard to measure. Again, we are dealing with measurement--in effect, thermometers. It is not that hard.

And if you look, as I said before, at what is going on with the heat in the oceans, here is how that tracks. And the reason that the ocean heat tracks the CO2 concentration and the land heat measures is because most of the excess heat that fossil fuel emission causes gets absorbed by the oceans. We would already be on an unlivable planet if it weren't for the oceans absorbing 90 percent of that excess heat.

And the amount of heat that the oceans absorb is pretty astounding. You have to measure it in zettajoules.

Last week, I explained that we are now warming the oceans by 23 zettajoules a year, breaking the ocean heat content record for the ninth consecutive year.

As I said before, what is a zettajoule? A zettajoule is the unit of heat measure--the joule--with 21 zeroes behind it. That makes it a very big number. That is actually a billion trillions or, to put it the other way, a trillion billions. It is an enormous amount of heat. It is more than 40 times the total amount of energy that human beings generate on all of planet Earth to warm ourselves, cool ourselves, drive our cars, run our motors, push refrigerators--whatever it is we are trying to do. The whole energy footprint of humankind on planet Earth is half a zettajoule. And the oceans, because of that excess fossil fuel emission, are absorbing more than 40 times that much. It has a huge magnifier effect.

And that does things like drop the Antarctic ice shelf. And when the Antarctic ice mass shrinks, the ice that is on the land that goes into the water does what? Raises the sea level.

You can test that proposition for yourself by putting ice in a cup and letting it pour into another cup as it melts, and you will see the level of the cup rise.

So here is where global sea level has been going. Again, we are not dealing with complicated stuff here. We measure heat with thermometers. We measure sea level rise with tide monitors. It is basically a yardstick, and you go and look at the time of day when the tide is the same, and you measure where on the yardstick the sea level is. This is not something that is complex or amenable to much legitimate confusion or dissent.

Here we can look at the areas burned by wildfires. It is not just coasts and oceans that are getting clobbered by our emissions, but the area in the United States burned by wildfires keeps climbing and climbing. And the harm that this causes goes on and on. Hurricanes driven by warmer seas are becoming stronger and wetter. Wildfires driven by drought and wind are burning far more land.

And it is not just scientists who are reporting what they measure. You can actually go back to a very interesting and somewhat unique dataset. In Japan, in Kyoto, believe it or not, the Japanese people have been measuring the peak bloom of their cherry trees for 1,200 years. It is one of the longest datasets on the planet: 1,200 years of when Kyoto's cherry trees hit peak bloom.

And you can see, going back to the year 800, it moves fairly steadily along

until you get to the Industrial Revolution, until you get to the fossil fuel emissions barrage that drove the CO2 concentrations so high. As CO2 went up and as the planet heated, spring came sooner. And so you see here, earlier and earlier and earlier and earlier comes the day of peak bloom. I thought that was interesting because I thought a 1,200-year dataset kept by the Japanese people was interesting.

So that is where we are. We have more violent storms. We have more ferocious and damaging wildfires. We have hotter temperatures. We have a dramatically warming ocean.

And as I have said, climate change has moved from the science department to the economics department because all of those science measures bring costs onto the American public. Droughts, wildfires, and hurricanes disrupt agriculture and the transit of groceries, and they make food more expensive for Americans.

These climate impacts drive up homeowners insurance in regions where the climate risk becomes unmanageable. And they drive down property values, because when your homeowners insurance cost doubles or triples and threatens to double or triple again, that cost knocks down the value of your home. And we are seeing that right now in Florida.

And then, of course, all of this drives up energy bills at a time when oil prices are already extremely high because of Trump's mad war in Iran.

All of this is real in family budgets today, and it is a big deal. It is a big cost when homeowners insurance, which starts as a big number, doubles, as it has in Iowa in recent years. It is a big deal when you get told by your insurance company that you are fired, they are not going to insure your property any longer, and now you have to scramble to find insurance. And when you do, it is worse. It is more expensive, provides less coverage. There is a huge cost factor, and there is a huge hassle factor for real Americans right now.

That is our reality. Climate change is real. Can we agree on that simple truth? That is my question today.

Mr. President, therefore, I ask, as if in legislative session, unanimous consent that the Committee on Environment and Public Works be discharged from further consideration and the Senate now proceed to S. Res. 553; further, that the resolution be agreed to, the preamble be agreed to, and the motions to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table.

Mr. President, I just want to make sure it is absolutely clear that that argument is what Republicans have sent to the floor of the U.S. Senate to question the measurements and the facts of climate change. That is what they sent to the floor.

The questions are the talking points of the fossil fuel industry. To what extent does man cause it? Here is what NASA says:

There is unequivocal evidence that the Earth is warming at

an unprecedented rate. [With] human activity . . . the

principal cause.

And lest it be not clear that human activity is fossil fuel burning and emissions. That is not a question. That is a known thing, just ask

I ask unanimous consent that the vote scheduled for 2 o'clock be called immediately.

I ask for the yeas and nays.

Mr. President, I move to proceed to Calendar No. 399, S.J. Res. 155.

Mr. President, as the Trump administration has walked back from protecting American consumers to help all of its creepy billionaires who it loves so much, States have had to step up into the breach and enact commonsense protections for regular consumers. That includes 15 States, like my State of Rhode Island, helping to make sure medical debt does not send consumers, American families, into a financial tailspin, blocking their access to credit.

While the Fair Credit Reporting Act continues to provide some key protections for consumers, this rule is particularly concerning at a time the administration has sidelined the CFPB at every turn. Rhode Island consumers have filed almost 13,000 complaints about credit reporting with the CFPB in the past year.

We need its help again. We need vigorous, empowered State enforcement more than ever as well.

I yield back.

Vote on Motion to Proceed

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. President, I am here now for the 307th time with my trusty and increasingly battered ``Time to Wake Up'' chart to warn this Chamber about how America's worst polluters have occupied the Trump administration from within.

These polluters are up to no good. They are desperate--desperate--to pollute for free. That is their business model, to pollute for free, even though polluting for free is wrong--wrong under the laws of economics, wrong under the laws of morality, wrong under the laws of nature. But they are desperate to pollute for free because the stakes are huge. And the stakes are really huge. The International Monetary Fund has calculated that the fossil fuel industry's subsidy from being allowed to pollute for free is over $700 billion every year.

Mr. President, $700 billion every year is a lot of money, and it is a lot of motive to fund a lot of mischief.

The polluters deny the science of what their emissions are doing to Earth's natural systems. Indeed, they have mounted a massive fraud operation to propagate their climate denial. As I have said in earlier speeches, that is actually phase 2. Phase 1 was when their own scientists warned them what their emissions would do to Earth's natural systems and they chose to hide that information and cover it up.

But once it became more standard science to know that, then they went into the phase 2 part--a massive fraud operation to propagate their climate denial.

Phase 3 was to spend massive amounts of dark money--massive amounts of dark money--to influence and control American politics, specifically to control the Republican Party. I was here when it was OK to be a Republican on a serious climate bill. That was true until January of 2010, the day that Citizen United was decided. And at that point the amount of money that fossil fuel offered made it irresistible for the Republican Party to become the party of climate denial.

And that fossil fuel industry doesn't operate in its own name. It operates through many, many front groups, front groups which they play like piano keys. It amounts to corruption at epic scale.

Today, I highlight the polluters' latest corrupt trick, which is to use the powers of government, a Federal Government that is theirs now to corruptly command, to block low-cost clean energy from getting to the grid.

What is happening is that the polluting industries' expensive polluting plants are being outcompeted--outcompeted by reliable renewable clean energy like wind and solar. The polluters know that their only chance of survival against less expensive, cleaner power is to interfere using government.

So what did they do? They poured hundreds of millions of dollars into the Trump campaign. We know it is hundreds of millions. It could have been the whole billion that Trump asked for; but given how complicated dark money is, it is hard to tell. We do know they put at least hundreds of millions of dollars into the Trump campaign.

And the result is a Trump administration that is paying them back to the tune of billions of dollars. And here is the rub: They are using your money to pay them.

From the Environmental Protection Agency to the Department of the Interior to the Department of Energy, polluters have infiltrated the government itself and are using its levers to shut down their clean energy competition.

From EPA Administrator Zeldin to Interior Secretary Burgum to Energy Secretary Wright, the Trump administration first started by telling the big lie--the big lie that clean energy is more expensive than dirty, polluting fossil fuel energy. That is, in fact, a lie. But that was the opening premise, and then they went to work killing clean energy.

At EPA, Administrator Zeldin went after congressionally appropriated and obligated funds that supported the rollout of affordable clean energy. He attacked the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund, costing consumers potentially $52 billion in lost energy savings, money out of consumers' pockets.

He went after Solar for All funding, costing Americans as much as $350 million per year in lost energy savings--billions lost to consumers over time.

Zeldin canceled grants totaling over $1.7 billion, including congressionally

appropriated and obligated funding for clean energy projects. The result of all of that was clean, renewable energy kept off the grid, increasing the costs that American consumers have to pay.

The trick is that the extra cost paid by consumers was more money in the pockets of fossil fuel polluters--Trump's big donors. That is EPA.

Over at Interior, Secretary Burgum went after the companies trying to build and operate affordable clean energy projects. Early in 2025, Burgum halted construction on two offshore wind projects off the coast of Rhode Island and New York. Later, he ordered a second halt to five offshore wind projects--the two he had already stopped that were back operational and three more projects in Massachusetts, Virginia, and New York.

That stalled nearly 6 gigawatts of clean electricity. If those gigawatts were off the grid, that would mean polluting oil, gas, and coal plants would be picking up the slack. That extra 6 gigawatts of polluting oil, gas, and coal would, in turn, mean billions of dollars to the polluters.

Thankfully, the courts stepped in again against the illegal Trump orders. And the projects continued, but they were stalled.

Now Interior has a new plan: With taxpayer money, pay off companies to walk away from offshore wind leases and, instead, invest the payoff money on fossil fuel projects--again, clean renewable energy off the grid; increased costs for consumers but more profits for polluters-- Trump's big donors. Three different companies have made these dirty deals so far. That is Interior.

Over at the Department of Energy, Secretary Wright made it his mission to ``revive''--their own word--beautiful, clean coal, even where no one seems to want it. Trump's Energy Department announced that it would provide 625 million taxpayer dollars for retrofits, recommissioning, and life-extension projects for coal plants, including at least one instance where neither the grid operator nor the local utility wanted this intervention.

DOE then announced $175 million more from taxpayers to extend the life of six coal-fired power plants in Kentucky, North Carolina, and Ohio. The Department of Energy may have illegally repurposed funds Congress had appropriated for carbon capture programs to subsidize those coal plants.

The net result of all of this--increased costs for ratepayers because of the expense of running these polluting plants but more profits in the pockets of fossil fuel polluters--Trump's big donors.

These attacks from polluters, who have infiltrated the government, drive up costs for consumers by billions. The excess costs consumers must pay flows to fossil fuel. You know how the grid works. They run the clean energy first because it is least expensive. If you can back off that low-cost clean energy, the grid has to climb up the generation stack to more and more expensive fossil fuel plants. And all that added money goes straight to fossil fuel industry pockets--from consumers to the fossil fuel industry, a crooked money pump driving up costs for consumers.

You don't even have to kill the plant. Every day that low-cost clean energy is delayed is another day that money is steered from consumers' pockets into the pockets of the owners and fuel dealers of the expensive, polluting fossil fuel units. Those billions are the polluters' rewards from Trump.

In an America deeply concerned about the cost of stuff, this corrupt extraction of money from consumers to pay off Trump's big donors won't go over well. Cost and corruption are what most concern voters, and this scheme is on the wrong side of both, which brings us to the coming election.

Trump is in desperate political trouble. Costs are exploding, and corruption is epidemic. Voters are angry. So the big polluters need to corrupt the election. A corrupt attack on our elections is the last gasp of the big polluters' and creepy billionaires' grasp on power. They would rather rule corruptly in an oligarchy than live lawfully in a democracy.

Their attack on democracy uses the corrupted Federal Government as its agent. It is an attack coming from inside our own house.

Just recently, the captured Supreme Court delivered yet another vote- suppressing service to billionaire-funded Republicans with its destruction of the Voting Rights Act in Louisiana v. Callais.

The Callais case is the culmination of a yearslong ``judicial project to destroy the Voting Rights Act,'' quoting Justice Kagan.

As we all know, in a normal world, judges are supposed to, as Roberts once said ``call balls and strikes,'' not have projects to destroy legislation crafted by Congress.

So Justice Kagan using those words is powerful. Discarding decades of precedent and ignoring mountains of factual findings made by Congress, the Court supercharged Republican partisan gerrymandering across the south. And, boy, did it work.

In just 2 weeks, we have already seen Louisiana, Florida, Alabama, Tennessee, and Mississippi begin redrawing voting maps to disenfranchise minority voters and benefit Republican candidates.

This all comes on top of the Court's other persistent mischief-- defending, for instance, billionaires' dark money flooding our elections and defending Republican red map gerrymandering.

Even here, Republicans desperately tried to pass the vote-suppressing so-called SAVE Act, supposedly based on the bogus claim that undocumented immigrants are committing widespread voter fraud. That, as experienced in States that have looked at similar legislation shows, is unequivocally false.

What would have happened is that the bill's excessive restrictions would have disenfranchised millions of legitimate voters, just not the kind that Republicans wanted voting.

As we close in now on the November election, the Trump Federal Agencies are already seizing voter files. At least 48 States have received requests for their complete voter registration lists. The Department of Justice sued 30 of those States and Washington, DC, for their refusal to turn over the voter information.

The administration even faked a criminal investigation to seize records in Fulton County, GA, after the DOJ had failed to obtain those records through civil proceedings. I won't explain that here because I have given a speech on that subject, laying out all of the mischief and shenanigans behind that search warrant.

Even the Director of National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, seized voting machines in Puerto Rico.

The plot here is simple. It is to make sure the corrupt billionaires keep their control of the government so that they can use their control of the government to prop up their pollute-for-free business model and keep gouging you on cost. Well, to keep gouging Americans on cost and to keep polluting for free and to maintain their corrupt influence over the Trump administration, they have got to mess with the election. So be alert.

I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. President, here is a simple truth: Climate change is real.

Earlier this year, I came to the floor and asked my colleagues if they could all agree on this simple scientific fact. This being the Temple of Mammon, run by fossil fuel, to no one's surprise, they could not.

So I hoped that if I broke down the reality of climate change into smaller simple truths, we could then find areas of agreement. But 2 weeks ago, when I asked on the floor if we could all agree to the simple truth that sea levels are rising, I was once again met with an objection.

So let's give it another go. Today's simple truth: The oceans are warming. Can we agree on that?

I have come to the floor several times to talk about the fact that the oceans are heating by the zettajoule. So let's talk for a minute about what a zettajoule is.

A joule is the standard unit of energy--heat energy. A zettajoule has 21 zeroes behind it. It is a spectacularly enormous number.

In the past, I have reported that our oceans are measured absorbing around 14 zettajoules of excess heat every year. If you want a comparison, you can image that that is the equivalent of seven Hiroshima atomic bombs detonating in the ocean every second. That is the size of the heat transfer, and, indeed, that is the number in this resolution.

Sadly, since we introduced this resolution, that measure has increased. Our oceans now are warming by 23 zettajoules a year. We are breaking the ocean heat content record for the ninth consecutive year.

To put that in context, the total energy consumption of all humankind on planet Earth is about one-half of a zettajoule per year--all of it, every turbine, every boiler, every engine. All of our energy is one- half of a zettajoule.

That means that, for the fossil fuel component of that one-half of a zettajoule that human beings create, we add 23 zettajoules of excess heat to the oceans. It is a 50-to-1 magnification, nearly, and it is driving ocean temperatures skyward.

Since 1955, the top 2,000 meters of the global ocean have gained approximately 372 zettajoules of heat. And, as you can see, the trajectory is that things are going to get a lot worse.

By 2100, it is projected that the rate of ocean warming will be somewhere between two and six times greater than the rate of warming at the 14-zettajoule level of annual excess heat. A world in which the ocean is warming at six times 14 zettajoules of excess heat every year rapidly becomes an unlivable world for a great many human beings.

This amount of heat has horrific effects on biodiversity and sea life, happening already--happening already. Fisherman know that fish populations are moving across international boundaries or out into the high seas, causing economic uncertainty and harm for fishermen.

Warming sea surface temperatures shrink populations of the world's most abundant phytoplankton, significantly damaging the ocean food webs on which so many humans ultimately depend. Warming and acidification combined prevents species from being able to create their calcium carbonate shells.

I have often spoken on the Senate floor about the humble pteropod--a species that I think nobody cares very much about here, but they are enormously abundant in the oceans. They have been measured as suffering extreme shell damage in the oceans. And they are not a very long trophic hop from things we do care about, like salmon. When you kick the foundation out from under a food chain, it collapses.

Harmful algal blooms grow in warmer water and become more and more severe, taking a toll on fisheries, on public health, on recreation and tourism. If you want a description of what rotting algae on beaches does to tourism, just look at the stories about what Florida has experienced.

Warmer oceans increase evaporation rates, which increases atmospheric humidity, which fuels extreme precipitation and stronger hurricanes. Those stronger, wetter storms and other climate change-induced threats crashing into insurance markets pose a roughly $25 trillion risk to the global housing market over the next 25 years. When the climate risk gets so severe that it crashes insurance markets, that cascades into mortgage markets, and that cascades into property values. That is where the $25 trillion estimate comes from. If you want to look more locally, Florida now leads the country in property value loss as the first and worst exposed to this climate risk.

The threats don't end there. The risks that stronger, wetter storms pose to agriculture and food production, insurance, tourism, infrastructure, the energy sector, and more are very, very real. Mature and responsible warnings abound.

As we noted in my last resolution, 30 percent of Americans live in coastal areas. Ten trillion dollars of goods and services are produced in coastal counties across the United States each year. There is a lot in jeopardy due to our warming oceans.

It is the simple truth: Climate change is real. Sea level rise is real. Ocean warming by the zettajoule is real. And all of it is already disrupting American lives, pocketbooks, and families, and it is getting steadily worse.

Mr. President, as if in legislative session and notwithstanding rule XXII, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation be discharged from further consideration and the Senate now proceed to S. Res. 552; further, that the resolution be agreed to, that the preamble be agreed to, and that the motions to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table.

Mr. President, I would just note for the record that the University of Wisconsin in the good Senator's home State teaches the science of climate change, teaches courses with names like ``Climate and Climate Change,'' ``Climate Change, Human and Planetary Health,'' ``Climate Change Ecology,'' ``Ice and Climate Dynamics,'' ``Climate Change and Health Disparities,'' ``Soils and Climate Change,'' ``Climate Change Medicine,'' ``Climatic Environments of the Past,'' ``Agricultural Weather and Climate,'' ``Climate Action Planning: Sustainable Transportation,'' ``Case Studies Exploring Infrastructure, Sustainability and Climate Change,'' ``Climate Change Governance,'' ``Climate Change, Sustainability, and Education,'' and as a lawyer, I would add ``Climate Change, Human Rights, and the Environment.''

I would strongly recommend that all of my colleagues who are unfamiliar with what is happening in the real world with climate change go to their home State universities that teach the stuff and listen to what their home State universities have to say.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record the following statement from medical professionals and their names into the Record on behalf of myself and Senator Reed.

Mr. President, I am speaking in advance of my colleague from Colorado Senator Bennet's effort to seek redress in this body for a wave of pollution that is being unleashed in his State and neighboring States as well.

One of the things about our failed Environmental Protection Agency right now is that one State can't regulate pollution that comes to it from another State. And yet the good neighbor policy that somebody has to be able to say ``Hey, wait a minute; you can't pollute my State from another State'' is one that EPA has just walked away from.

In this case, the problem is a coal facility in Colorado. And just start with coal. It is really indisputable that coal is America's dirtiest, deadliest, and most expensive energy source. It is a dying industry for market reasons. It can't compete because it is dirty, deadly, and expensive.

And yet, since taking office, President Trump has worked desperately to keep coal on life support, perhaps because the coal industry paid $3.5 million in 2024 to help him get elected, and Trump is a man who understands a quid pro quo.

The Trump administration has taken every possible action to benefit the coal industry; never mind our health. Remember, it is the deadliest of energy sources. And never mind our bank accounts. Remember, it is the most expensive of energy sources.

He even rolled back health-protecting standards for mercury and toxic emissions from coal plants. Mercury is pretty seriously, deadly stuff; and he rolled back those standards.

He exempted one-third of all coal plants nationwide from toxic pollution standards. Who loses? Anybody exposed to the toxic pollution they emit. Who wins? Trump's big donors.

He even directed the Secretary of Energy to issue orders under the Federal Power Act to force coal plants to stay online, driving up consumer costs against the wishes of the utilities and even the plants' owners. But they still had to buy and burn coal. So there is somebody out there who is going to make money off that.

And now Trump has perverted the Clean Air Act to trample on States' rights to protect their own citizens.

Coal plants are the Nation's most significant source of haze. The same coal pollutants that drive health issues and deaths nationwide drive haze formations. Under the Clean Air Act's Regional Haze Program, States establish plans to reduce haze-causing pollution. States may choose to include coal plant retirements in their plans. Often, that is consistent with the utility and the plant owner's wishes, as an old plant ends its useful life. When the EPA approves these plans, the retirements then become enforceable.

In 2022, Colorado submitted a regional haze plan to the EPA that included coal plant retirements that Colorado utilities had independently and voluntarily planned for. ``They do better with cheaper, cleaner renewable energy'' is the simple answer.

In January of this year, the EPA turned around and disapproved Colorado's plan, making the argument that Colorado's plan, voluntarily entered into with these utilities, could represent a ``taking'' under the Constitution.

So we have here a really flagrant abuse of Federal authority: Make it more difficult for Colorado to protect its own citizens from toxic pollution and to provide affordable energy. And the resulting pollution won't just endanger Coloradans. This is a national issue because the haze blows, with prevailing winds, toward eastern States.

My State of Rhode Island, for instance, has occasions when we have bad air days. And if you are driving into work in the morning and you are listening to the talk radio, they will say: Today is a bad air day. Children should stay home. Elderly people and people with breathing difficulties should not go out.

It looks like a beautiful summer day. Kids will want to be in the yard, but it

is a bad air day. And so that health warning gets issued by the State of Rhode Island.

And there is nothing the State of Rhode Island can do about it. If every car in our State was an EV, if everything ran off of clean electricity, we would still be out of compliance because we are a downwind State.

And huge powerplants that push their pollution up into the sky, far enough that prevailing winds carries it out of their State and onto ours, they are the ones that are to blame, and there is nothing we can do about it.

So I am very sympathetic to concerns that the EPA has a particularly important job when neighboring States are polluting one another and can't reach a regulatory solution because it is out of State, and that is exactly the predicament that we are creating here today.

When Congress enacted the Congressional Review Act in 1996 to give Congress the opportunity to vote on regulations, well, that is why we are here today. We have a chance to undo this, and I hope we will because everybody here has a good chance of being a downwind State. Even California is often a downwind State from China. So you have got to be able to have protections from upwind pollution, and this would strip that.

So the Trump administration's effort here--at breakneck speed--to tear down protections of Americans' health, safety, and environment we have a chance to claw back. Congressional Review Act resolutions like this one can help hold the administration to account.

I will conclude by saying I just left the EPW hearing with EPA Administrator Zeldin. The point that I made in that hearing was that we are now headed into an election cycle in which the American people are desperately concerned about the cost of stuff. Stuff costs too much, and the Trump administration is ignoring the problem, if not making it worse. Those are basically the two buckets. They are either ignoring it completely or they are deliberately making it worse.

With respect to electricity costs, the Trump administration is deliberately making it worse. They are raising costs for consumers on purpose.

How are they doing it, and why are they doing it? Well, the ``how'' is that they are keeping inexpensive clean energy off the grid. We just went through this in Rhode Island. Our Revolution Wind offshore power facility was stalled by illegal orders of the Trump administration not once but twice, and the result was that power was delayed from coming ashore. Well, Revolution Wind has a contract to sell power onto the grid. That contract specifies a price. The price is 9 cents--9 cents. ISO New England--our grid operator--can do fairly easy math to show what the average grid price is for electricity. And guess what. It is 18 cents. So this 9-cent power was stalled going into an 18-cent grid.

Because it is 9-cent power, what would it have done? It would have been called up first by the grid because every grid calls up the least expensive power first. So that 9-cent power would have been flowing into the grid. It would have been filling up demand, and that would have meant that some dirty fossil fuel-polluting units would not have been called up. They were too expensive to run.

So, when they push all that clean energy off the grid and buy time for the dirty, polluting fossil fuel plants--that is money directly to the fossil fuel industry--two things happen: One, costs go up for all consumers because those new, more expensive plants called online raise the price for everybody. So electricity bills go up. They are driven up on purpose by the delay of clean energy getting onto the grid.

Where do those billions of dollars in extra costs that are extracted from American consumers go? Guess where--to the owners of those fossil fuel plants that are in the margin, the ones that get run because the clean energy has been kept off of the grid.

It is a ginormous money pump out of the pockets of ordinary American ratepayers and into the pockets of the fossil fuel billionaires who put so much money into getting Trump elected. That is being done on purpose. Electricity costs are being driven up on purpose.

Don't tell me that the Department of Energy or the Environmental Protection Agency or the Department of the Interior, for that matter, don't understand how the grid works. They have people who know exactly how the generation stack works. They know exactly that the least expensive units get run first and that the least expensive units displace the more expensive units, which is good for consumers, until the heavy hand of a fossil fuel-influenced government steps in and tries to prevent consumers from getting low-cost clean energy. Then the hole that that leaves that would have been filled by clean energy--you have got to go fill that hole by going up the stack to more and more expensive units, and virtually every time, that more expensive unit is a fossil fuel unit.

So, like I said, what the Trump administration has created on purpose is a ginormous money pump to extract billions of dollars from regular consumers who would otherwise be enjoying the benefit of low-cost clean power, and they have done it as a reward for Trump's big fossil fuel donors, the ones who threw hundreds of millions of dollars at his campaign and who are now reaping a multiple-times reward with that investment.

With that, I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I am here with regard to a unanimous consent resolution.

I have tried one before to pursue a simple truth that climate change is real. Earlier this year, I came to the floor and asked my colleagues if they could all agree on that simple scientific fact. Sadly, given the nature of this body, they could not.

So we are going to break it down into smaller bits because the reality of climate change is made up of many, many simple truths; and I hope that by breaking it down piece by piece, I can find areas where my colleagues will agree.

Today's simple truth: Sea levels are rising. Can we agree on that? The resolution specifically says: ``recognizing that sea levels are rising at accelerated rates due to human-caused climate change.''

As global air temperatures rise, obviously, so do the temperatures of the oceans. Here is a graph showing the increase in ocean heat content. It is measured in zettajoules. ``Zettajoules'' is a very big number. ``Zetta'' means it has 18 zeroes. It is a billion trillions or a trillion billions, depending on which way you want to go about it.

To put it at a more practical scale, the entire production of energy by the human species on all of planet Earth adds up to one half of a zettajoule. The price we pay for the fossil fuel component of that half zettajoule of energy is an ocean whose temperature is increasing by around 15 zettajoules a year. It is a 30-times magnifier because of the effect of fossil fuel emissions.

And as ocean heat content grows, seawater expands. The physical nature of seawater is to expand as it warms. And it also melts nearby glaciers, and both result in higher sea levels.

Combined, glacier melt and thermal expansion of water cause global sea levels to rise, and the rates are accelerating over time.

Here is the curve of global sea level rise. It is one of the most unambiguous indicators of what emissions are doing on our Earth to our natural systems.

Sea level rise has been going at accelerated rates since about 1863, which lines up right with the dawn of the Industrial Revolution when greenhouse gas emissions began to rise as we burned coal, natural gas, and oil.

Depending on the trajectory of greenhouse gas emissions, sea level rise in the United States could range between 2 and over 7 feet by the end of this century. That is a particularly dangerous proposition when you consider that 3.7 million Americans in the contiguous United States live on land less than 3.3 feet above high tide.

And it doesn't come up like the bathtub; it comes up and is still subject to tide and storm, so it can be driven ashore at far higher levels than 2 feet or over 7 feet.

Most of the impact will be in Florida, Louisiana, California, New York, and New Jersey. My home State of Rhode Island and my colleague Senator Markey's home State of Massachusetts will share that unfortunate experience.

Sea level rise isn't just evidence of a change in climate; it has real consequences. Thirty percent of people living in the United States live in coastal areas which puts them at risk from rising seas, increased flooding, shoreline erosion, and storm hazards.

And it is not just people at risk. Mr. President, $10 trillion in goods and services are produced in coastal areas of the United States.

Rising sea level will not only cause what we call increased sunny day flooding, like when there is no rain to cause flooding; it is just tide and sea level rise, but it will also increase the amount of flooding from storms and from storm surges, and that will cost lives and money.

Indeed, it is already disrupting insurance, mortgage, and real estate markets. I have spoken elsewhere about the meltdown in Florida in those markets. Florida was recently described as the biggest loser for real estate values of all the 50 States, and it relates back to this cascade from climate risk to insurance being unavailable or too expensive to afford, to mortgages being compromised, to property values taking a hit.

There is some lessons we should learn from what has already happened. Mr. President, $8.1 billion of the $62 billion ascribed to Hurricane Sandy connects back to the rise in sea levels. Could have saved $8 billion were the sea level rise not happening.

Everywhere, high water levels that were once rare--1-in-100-year events are becoming 1-in-10- or 1-in-5-year events. Up to 13 million Americans will face displacement from sea level rise by 2100.

That is assuming that all goes smoothly, but all doesn't always go smoothly. There are tipping points in life. My favorite example is a rowboat.

If you put more and more weight in the rowboat, the water goes up and up the side of the boat. And there is not much change as the water goes up and up the side of the boat. But then you hit a tipping point where the water flows over the gunwale and into the boat. That is a big tipping point difference because suddenly it is not just more and more of the hull down in the water; it is the whole boat catastrophically falling, flooding, sinking to the bottom of the lake or the sea. So tipping points are to watch for.

Most ice is found in polar regions with as little as 1.5-degrees celsius of warming. The Greenland and West Antarctic ice sheets could be destabilized. That would be a major tipping point. Our Earth has already warmed 1.2 degrees celsius. So getting to 1.5 is not far away. And Greenland, for instance, is warming four times faster than the global average. So that puts us at the risk of the polar ice tipping point very soon.

Sea levels are expected to rise by 20 to 25 feet. Not 2 feet to 7.2 feet; 20 to 25 feet if the Greenland ice sheet melts and an additional 10 to 17 feet if the West Antarctic ice sheet melts.

The disintegration of either ice sheet would render major cities uninhabitable and completely destroy America's coastal communities.

So here is the simple truth: sea level rise is real. It is happening. Fossil fuel-caused climate change is accelerating its effects. Indeed, it is already disrupting American lives, pocketbooks, and families.

Mr. President, I will yield to Senator Markey from Massachusetts and return to make the actual unanimous consent request.

Mr. President, to accommodate the distinguished Senator from Wisconsin, I will move the unanimous consent now and then the Ranking Member of the Commerce Committee will speak.

I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation be discharged from further consideration and the Senate now proceed to S. Res. 551; further, that the resolution be agreed to, the preamble be agreed to, and that the motions to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table.

Would the Senator yield for a procedural question?

I yielded Senator Cantwell's time in order to convenience you, and I am interested in how long you are going to speak because--

--you are now inconveniencing our other colleague Senator Cantwell.

Mr. President, I would wrap things up this evening by simply pointing out that the views expressed by the Senator from Wisconsin related to climate change are not shared by the University of Wisconsin, which actually teaches climate science. It has programs in the Atmospheric and Ocean Sciences Department. It has programs in the Environmental Sciences Department.

Courses include Climate and Climate Change; Climate Change, Human and Planetary Health; Climatic Environments of the Past; Climate Change Ecology; Ice and Climate Dynamics; Soils and Climate Change; Climate Change and Health Disparities; Climate Change Medicine; Agricultural Weather and Climate; Climate Change Economics and Policy; Climate Change Action Planning; Case Studies Exploring Infrastructure Sustainability and Climate Change; Climate Change Governance; Climate Change, Sustainability, and Education; and for the lawyers in the room, even a law class: Climate Change, Human Rights, and the Environment.

I yield the floor.

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the 5:30 scheduled vote begin immediately.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. President, people following the Senate floor will know that hundreds of times I have come to the floor with my trusty, increasingly beat up ``Time to Wake Up'' poster to describe the various manners in which the fossil fuel industry has corruptly obstructed our ability to solve the problem of climate change that is caused by fossil fuel emissions.

They might also remember that I have come to the floor dozens of times to give my ``Scheme'' series of speeches about the corrupt manner in which the Supreme Court has been captured and put into the service of a gang of rightwing billionaires who tend to be fossil fuel billionaires.

In this speech, the ``Time to Wake Up'' series and the ``Scheme'' series converge. I don't know quite how to describe it, but maybe it is ``Time to Scheme Up'' because, for sure, that is what has been done in this country by the fossil fuel industry to blockade our efforts to solve the pollution hazard that they have created for our people--a pollution hazard that is now real and immediate in our economy.

Look no further than the State of Florida, where climate risk has thrashed the home insurance markets to the point where the home insurance market collapse has cascaded into mortgage markets, which has, in turn, cascaded into real estate values--property values.

Last year, Florida led the country in lost property values. This year, there was an article in Newsweek just a few days ago about how 6 to 8 percent losses are predicted in Florida real estate values because of that cascade. Property is very hard to sell if you can't get a mortgage on it, and it is impossible to get a mortgage on it if you can't get insurance on it. And even if

you can get insurance, if the insurance costs $14- or $15- or $20- or $30,000 a year, you add all that up, and it comes off the value of the home, which is why you are seeing people unsuccessfully trying to sell homes in Florida for hundreds of thousands of dollars or more less than they paid for it.

So this is on its way. It is coming right now. I am just going to continue to dig into how it is that we got here because how we got here involves a lot of mischief, a lot of real problems. One of those problems came to light just recently in the form of a number of memos from within the Supreme Court from the Justices to each other that were released or leaked--somehow came to the New York Times--that describe how it was that the captured Court put an end to the Clean Power Plan of the Obama administration before it even came to life.

Before even a court decision had been made about the merits of the rule, five Republican-appointed Supreme Court Justices stepped in and killed that rule in the crib before it could have any real effect.

Charles Pierce has written a pretty good summary of that New York Times article. He said:

The New York Times published a trove of personal memos from

the members of the Supreme Court outlining the court's

promiscuous use of the so-called shadow docket. It has become

the carefully constructed conservative majority's favorite

work-around to kill policies it doesn't like and support

causes that it and its corporate patrons do.

What appears to have happened here is that the shadow docket was born in the crib-killing of the Clean Power Plan.

This is quoting the New York Times story:

By a 5 to 4 vote along partisan lines, the order halted

President Barack Obama's Clean Power Plan, his signature

environmental policy. They acted before any other court had

addressed the plan's lawfulness.

Not a Court of final impression, a Court of first impression--the first one to look at it. That is not the way it ordinarily works.

The decision consisted of only legal boilerplate, without a

word of reasoning.

That is similar to the way the shadow docket has been working--before briefing, before argument--a decision without legal reasoning provided.

It continues about the Chief Justice:

Chief Justice John G. Roberts, Jr., has cultivated a

reputation for care and caution. [These] papers reveal a

different side of him. At a critical moment for the country

and the court, the papers show, he acted as a bulldozer in

pushing to stop Mr. Obama's plan to address the global

climate crisis.

I will get into this a little bit further as I continue through my remarks, but the basic summary is that the Court concluded that without stopping the EPA's rule before it went into effect, before any court had actually considered it, that would cause irreparable harm to the fossil fuel industry--specifically, mentioning that private industry will suffer irreparable harm--this, at a stage in the proceedings, where the question of whether that harm even existed had still not been properly litigated.

So I go back a ways on this. In 2015, in one of my ``Time to Wake Up'' speeches, I said:

The Supreme Court has handed the polluters a heavy cudgel

with its misguided Citizens United decision, allowing big

corporations to spend--or more important, threaten to spend--

unlimited amounts of undisclosed money in our elections. More

than anyone, polluters use that leverage to demand obedience

to their denial script.

Another one, 2017:

The Supreme Court's Republican appointees got in the habit

of doing what they were told by the forces that appointed

them (which include the fossil fuel industry, which asked for

the Citizens United decision), and in a fateful combination

of obedience and political ignorance, they wrecked our

politics.

A year later, I described how:

Republican strategists are expanding their grip to the

Supreme Court, building there a reliable Republican majority.

I warned that we mustn't try to replicate that apparatus. We must expose it. And when we expose one part of the apparatus, we expose all because it is the same crew behind packing the courts and denying climate change and running the dark money machine.

In January of 2010, I said:

The five Republicans on the Supreme Court gave the fossil

fuel industry the Citizens United decision.

I said:

In January 2010, the five Republicans on the Supreme Court

gave the fossil fuel industry the Citizens United decision;

the industry instantly turned its new political weaponry on

the Republican Party; and bipartisanship on climate change

was stamped out by fossil-fuel threats.

This integration between the fossil fuel industry and the Supreme Court and the dark money power that the fossil fuel industry has used to crush climate action in Congress is something that has been apparent for some time.

In 2020, I added:

Citizens United unleashed toxic doses of money, and

unprecedented doses of virulent dark money, into our

political atmosphere. [Once] democracy is poisoned, stunned

by secret fossil fuel money and threats, [it fails] to listen

to plain warnings.

In 2022, I called this ``the Court that dark money built.''

In 2022, I said:

[I]t is probably more accurate to say that we now have the

Court that dark fossil fuel money built.

So it comes as little surprise that these memos from within the Court should reveal that linkage between the Republican-appointed Justices and the fossil fuel industry. And, of course, it should come as no surprise that the roots of this shadow docket that has been used so politically by the Republican majority on the Court--the roots are found in an act of service to the fossil fuel industry billionaires who captured the Court.

If you look at the scheme to maintain the fossil fuel industry's free-to-pollute business model where they get away with polluting as much as they like with no cost or consequence, you have to look at the Supreme Court facilitating this.

Citizens United, of course, signaled the end of climate legislation because the unlimited dark money that the fossil fuel industry could use to shut down climate action in this body was successful. Unlimited fossil fuel dark money was brought to bear on Congress, and our ability to solve this problem collapsed.

Look before the Citizens United decision. Look back to 2007, 2008, 2009. My first years here, there was robust negotiation on major climate legislation--four different strategies here in the Senate; three major bills, bipartisan bills; and a Presidential candidate in John McCain who ran on a perfectly legitimate climate platform. All of that dead--dead--the day the Citizens United decision came down and the fossil fuel industry pounced with its new dark money power.

But it is not enough to stop legislation. If you want to protect your free-to-pollute business model, you also have to stop regulation, and that is where this Clean Power Plan decision came in. That is where the subsequent major questions doctrine came in. That work by the Supreme Court signaled the end of climate regulation as the Supreme Court intruded into a decades-long regulatory process and rebooted it to protect against regulation that would limit the free-to-pollute business model of the fossil fuel industry.

As I have said in other speeches, that major questions doctrine did not pop from the heads of the Supreme Court Justices in that decision. It was cooked up in fossil fuel-funded doctrine factories, massaged, maneuvered into conferences, propagated by the Federalist Society, called up at conferences. It was groomed and grown so that the Supreme Court could pick it up in a decision, which, of course, they did.

So if you shut down climate legislation and you shut down climate regulation, what is left is climate litigation--that people harmed by all this damage, by all this pollution, usually have a right to bring a lawsuit. And sure enough, lawsuits are emerging. So the next project of the Court is to attack climate litigation, and sure enough, the fossil fuel industry is all over that Court, asking for it to shut down the prospect of climate litigation.

And guess what. That little rascal Leonard Leo, who was the fixer, the implementer of the Court capture scheme, who worked with Trump's counsel, McGahn, to get the three Supreme Court Justices Trump supposedly appointed--separate argument: I think they were actually selected by the Koch brothers' political operation, and Trump was the chump at the end of the deal who signed off on it.

But Leonard Leo and his billionaires were the ones who put that whole

scheme together. They put the whole concept of a Federalist Society list together and the completely untrustworthy President Trump being obliged to say publicly that he would pick off that Koch brothers' list. They called it the Federalist Society list because calling it a fossil fuel billionaires list wouldn't sell so well. And then they ended up with these Justices. The guy in the middle of all of that was this little fixer, Leonard Leo.

Guess what Leonard Leo is doing now. He has an array of maybe 25 front groups that he orchestrates. Some of them are actual corporate entities. Some of them are what are called fictitious names for his corporate entities. So you have a front group, which has a fictitious name, that you operate through. Why you need to do that is a little hard to say, but if you are up to no good, I suppose you want as much camouflage as possible.

What Leonard Leo and his front groups are all over right now is trying to shut down climate litigation, to make it a clean trifecta so that one industry is free to pollute as much as it wants with no legislation, no regulation, and no litigation that can stop it.

Again, it goes without saying that pollution is not something that should be allowed. It is certainly not something that should be allowed for free. But money will buy you a lot, and the fossil fuel-funded phony flotillas of front group amici who come into the Court to tell it what to do--and have, I would say, a 100-percent winning record before the Court--are starting to gather around shutting down climate litigation as well as regulation and legislation. In other words, a captured Court is delivering the goods for the billionaires who captured it.

So let's go through these different memoranda as they came out. The first is from Chief Justice John Roberts dated February 5, 2016. He is responding to emergency applications seeking to have the EPA's Clean Power Plan stayed.

On the very first page, he communicates to the other Justices:

Absent a stay, the Clean Power Plan will cause (and is

causing) substantial and irreversible reordering of the

domestic power sector.

That is a factfinding. It is a factfinding made without any court having found that fact. It is a factfinding by a Court that is not supposed to engage in factfinding in the first place. It is a disputed fact in the case before the case is even litigated. Yet here is the Chief Justice of the United States going with the factual argument of one of the parties even before arguments related to an emergency stay.

He has to admit to his colleagues that ``the rule does not require emissions reductions until 2022.'' It is dated 2016. Six years later, it might require emissions reductions. But then, February 5, 2016, he says that ``its impact is being felt now.''

He is taking the side of one party on a contested fact and saying that the impact of that contested fact, as he sees it, is actually being felt now, 6 years ahead of when anything has to happen.

He says that ``the applicants indicate''--again, an assertion by a party--the applicants untested, unchallenged--``applicants indicate that they are currently in the process of committing time and resources to compliance.''

That is the reason to shut down the Clean Power Plan?

He says that ``the impact of the rule will reduce coal production for power sector use by 2.0 percent.''

Over a 2-percent reduction, he jumps completely out of his lane, makes factfinding, and shuts down the regulation before it has even been considered by the lower courts.

Then he says that the ``harm . . . is irreversible.''

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to have the Chief Justice memorandum printed in the Record at the end of my remarks.

That memorandum was responded to rather quickly by Justice Breyer, who noted:

First, it is unusual for this Court to issue a stay of an

agency's order during the time that the Court of Appeals is

considering its lawfulness.

It is a live legal dispute in the court of appeals, and the Supreme Court is jumping in to stay it? That was not just unusual; it was unprecedented. As Justice Breyer points out, ``it is difficult at this point to say that the absence of a stay will cause irreparable harm.''

Even among the Justices, that is a contested fact, and yet the Chief Justice is willing to rely on his view of that contested fact even though it is supposedly not a factfinding body in the first instance.

As I mentioned a moment ago and as Justice Breyer points out, ``the order does not require any company to take action for six years.'' So it was hardly an emergency.

Finally, he pointed out that ``all of the applicants'' were ``free to renew their applications for a stay'' once the DC court of appeals had done its work and come right back to the Court and get the stay then rather than to jump ahead of the circuit court of appeals. And it notes that the circuit court of appeals has agreed to proceed on an expedited basis.

Well, it didn't take long for the Chief to respond to that. He wrote right back saying that ``private industry will suffer irreparable harm from a rule that is--in my view--highly unlikely to survive.''

So now he is not only making factfindings that are contested even within his Court and that he shouldn't be making in the first place, but he is also predicting the legal conclusion of how this is going to end up in his Court.

He says that the ``Court will not issue a decision until 2018 at the earliest''--still 4 years before that date--``long after the real-world impacts of the rule would have been felt in the absence of a stay.''

Again, more and more factfinding.

He says there will be ``on-going, cumulative, and irreversible harms that private parties are incurring each day.''

Again, that is a contested fact, but he is willing to say that as if it were an actuality and not a point in contention.

Justice Kagan comes back to him to say:

As far as I can tell, it would be unprecedented for us to

second-guess the D.C. Circuit's decision that a stay is not

warranted, without the benefit of full briefing or a prior

judicial decision.

She calls this a ``drastic and unusual remedy'' and points out that this fact that Chief Justice Roberts has so readily lurched to--the applicants' assertion--``is both entirely speculative and highly doubtful.''

So now you have another Justice challenging the fact that the Chief Justice offers as Gospel.

She says:

It is implausible that such a minor emissions reduction--

Two-percent reduction in coal--

to be achieved six years hence will require substantial and

irrevocable commitments of resources in the coming months.

Then in comes Justice Sotomayor.

I agree with Steve's [Breyer] proposal and Elena's [Kagan]

supplement to that proposal. As Elena notes, it would be

unprecedented for us to grant a stay before any court has

reviewed this complicated and complex case.

She says:

[N]o applicant has identified a single real plant--

An actual, real facility--

as opposed to a hypothetical ``model plant''--that is in

immediate danger of closure absent a stay.

She challenges the costs that have been discussed by the Chief Justice, and she points out that ``an emergency stay on limited briefing before the D.C. Circuit will hear argument on this regulation in just four months.''

Just wait 4 months and get the proper order--circuit court of appeals, then Supreme Court.

Faced with that, in chimes Justice Alito, brought onto the Court with Leonard Leo at the White House helping make the selections. He concludes saying:

A failure to stay this rule threatens to render our ability

to provide meaningful judicial review--and by extension, our

institutional legitimacy--a nullity.

Instead of robust judicial review, our opinion will be a

mere postscript.

Remember, this is a rule that won't have effect for 6 years, where there will be a proper appellate court decision below in 4 months, and all of that is intolerable to Justice Alito, a product of the ``billionaires/Leonard Leo'' court-packing operation.

And the closer is Justice Anthony Kennedy, who writes an unusually brief

decision, compared to all the others, or a memorandum, compared to the others, simply concluding: ``[F]airness to the parties counsels that we should grant [the stay] now,'' and ``I agree with the recommendation of the Chief.''

That gave the Chief the votes. They granted the stay, and the Clean Power Plan died.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the remaining memoranda that I referred to be printed in the Record at the end of my remarks in the sequence in which I described them.

Mr. President, what is the backdrop to all of this? The backdrop to all of this is the massive amount of harm that is caused by fossil fuel emissions. The pollution is really astounding.

The International Monetary Fund most recently assessed the cost of fossil fuel pollution and of its free-to-pollute business model in the United States of America at $770 billion in 1 year--$770 billion in benefit to the fossil fuel industry, a form of subsidy, from being allowed to pollute for free and not being obliged to clean up its mess. They are allowed to cause $770 billion worth of harm to Americans for zero dollars.

When you are allowed to cause $770 billion worth of harm to ordinary Americans for zero dollars, you have a massive motive to corrupt. You have a massive motive to apply political influence. You have a massive motive to take advantage of the dark money that you pressed the Supreme Court to allow and authorize, and bring that to bear on Congress to make sure that your $770 billion annual pollute-for-free subsidy is protected.

What did you note about my discussion about the Court's conversation on harm? What you should have noted is that 100 percent of the Court's conversation on harm was on harm to the polluters. It was the only harm that the Chief Justice mentioned or considered.

The entire argument about staying the Clean Power Plan hinged on analysis of harm that only looked at the harm to the polluter. There was no mention of climate change. There was no mention of the harm of emissions. There was no discussion of the health damage from climate change and what it is doing now and could be projected back then to do to insurance markets; what it was causing in sea level rise; what the ancillary pollution of fossil fuel that isn't climate change pollution but is lead, mercury, SOX, NOX, particulate matters, is doing.

They literally turned a blind eye to fossil fuel pollution measured at $770 billion worth of harm, most recently--total blind eye to it-- and focused only on the harm that would be done to the fossil fuel industry from having to comply with clean power rules.

Other studies have shown that the amount of money spent on the operation to capture the Court--a short word on Court capture, it goes back to the well-acknowledged notions of Agency capture or regulatory capture in the bad old days. Mining interests would make sure that all their friends were appointed to the mining safety commission so they could know the mining safety commission would always give them the answer that they wanted.

That is Agency capture.

In the bad old days, railroad barons would make sure that all their friends and lackeys were appointed to the railroad rates commission so they could be sure that all the railroad rates that were set were advantageous to them and that they could make sure that they got the rates that they wanted. That was called Agency capture.

It is a renowned phenomenon. It is written about constantly in administrative law. There is a whole field of economics that studies it.

What happened here is that Agency capture or regulatory capture was brought to bear on the Supreme Court, and it has now turned into, in essence, a captive body that does this bidding.

The number that I am referring to is the amount that was spent on that Court-capture operation. People who do really good research have dug into this, and at this point--more research will make the number bigger certainly. But at this point, it looks like about $600 million-- million with an ``m''--was spent on the Court-capture operation.

Now, that is a lot of money. But it is not a lot of money if you are defending a $770 billion annual subsidy that lets you pollute for free when you shouldn't be allowed to do that and nobody else is allowed to do that.

Protecting that $700 billion for $600 million is probably the most lucrative investment the fossil fuel industry has ever made.

And if you pile up the years since the Clean Power Plan was stopped-- that was in 2016. Now, it is 2026--so 10 years. That subsidy number has grown over the years as the International Monetary Fund has done a more and more detailed and better job of figuring out all the added harms, as harms are piling up.

So if you look at 10 years, it is not $7.7 trillion. It is probably a number closer to $6 trillion. But think about that. What the Supreme Court did in this one decision, by breaking all of its own rules and looking only at the fossil fuel industry's harm, is to set loose $6 trillion worth of harm over the next 10 years that all of us have had to pay for in health, in harm, in lost property values, in increased insurance, in a myriad of different ways--$6 trillion, call it, over those 10 years.

That makes $600 million to capture the Court that made that decision an amazing payback, but a really, really dangerous payback for the American public.

I will conclude by saying that whether you look at this as an aspect of the scheme to capture the Court or whether you look at it as an aspect of the endless fossil fuel pollution that is causing us to need to wake up before it is too late--either way you look at it--the rot runs deep around fossil fuel, and it seems to have infected the Court right over there.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I rise today to honor my constituent Phou Vongkhamdy, my favorite Lao cowboy.

Phou is the former USDA NRCS State Conservationist for Rhode Island. Since moving to Rhode Island in 2009 and joining the Natural Resources Conservation Service, Phou has become a cornerstone of the northeast agricultural community. His journey, from his beginnings as a student intern to over 15 years leading the State's conservation efforts, is a testament to his dedication to the land and the people who steward it. His leadership and knowledge have led the service to bring exemplary conservation practices to many farmers, forest landowners, cities and towns across the State. A respected leader, Phou has aggressively worked to maximize the effectiveness of the service and, in doing so, has always given 110 percent to everything he works on. While others would often say something could not be done, Phou always strove to find a way to say yes. He made NRCS in Rhode Island the little engine that could.

His commitment is defined by his inclusive approach to conservation, ensuring that the benefits of soil health, water quality, and sustainable forestry are accessible to all. A tenacious public servant, he has actively built the capacity of the conservation districts by developing cooperative agreements with associations. His signature hands-on approach ensured swift and effective collaboration. Under his leadership, the service has seen a substantial increase in utilization of its most popular programs, the Environmental Quality Incentives Program and the Conservation Stewardship Program. These programs are particularly useful for specialty crop growers and forest land managers, who represent the vast majority of Rhode Island agriculture.

Phou has also been an indispensable partner in our mission to protect Rhode Island's natural beauty and strengthen our communities against the growing threats of climate change. Together, we secured critical investments for our State, most notably the landmark $48.5 million Federal project to prevent flooding along the Pocasset River, a transformation that will protect families in Cranston and Johnston for generations to come. From our early days restoring migratory fish passages on the Pawtuxet River to his steady leadership in the wake of the historic 2010 floods, Phou has consistently turned Federal resources into real-world results. His dedication as State conservationist preserved thousands of acres of our farmland and wetlands and ensured that the Ocean State remains resilient and vibrant for all who call it home.

I thank and applaud Phou for his work, his devotion, and his friendship. Under his guidance, Rhode Island has seen transformative growth in climate-smart agriculture and farmland protection, securing a more resilient future for the Ocean State.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. President, I am here for the 305th time with my increasingly weathered and battered ``Time to Wake Up'' chart to warn this Chamber about a corrupt danger to our country--a danger powered by fossil fuel industry money, orchestrated by dark money front groups, and now executed at the highest levels of a corrupted executive branch.

In previous speeches, I described the four phases of climate denial.

Phase 1 was bury the evidence. The fossil fuel industry scientists told them what the science was. They ignored it, and they buried it.

Phase 2 was lie about the evidence, pretend it wasn't true, as the rest of the scientific establishment came on board with what their scientists had already told them.

Phase 3 was flood our politics with dark money to protect fossil fuel's pollute-for-free business model. After Citizens United, out poured the money.

Now we have entered into phase 4, the most dangerous phase yet-- weaponizing the government itself to attack clean energy, protect polluters, and steamroll lawful government process.

Today's speech is about a lie. We are now so deep in phase 4 that heads of executive Agencies feel entitled to lie to Congress if it helps carry out President Trump's fossil fuel-captured agenda.

Notice what distinguishes phase 4. Phase 1 involved buried evidence kept secret. Phase 2 involved lies filtered through think tank reports with plausible deniability for the fossil fuel interests behind the front groups. Phase 3 flooded politics with dark money through anonymous front groups--all hidden. But phase 4, using the government itself to execute the polluters' agenda--against the law, against Congress, and against the courts--that must be done out loud, under oath, before judges, and before this body, in plain view. In phase 4, the lying becomes official, brazen, on the record.

There once was a time when lying to Congress mattered; when swearing an oath to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth meant exactly that; when if someone lied to Congress, even Members of the liar's own party would hold them to account. Unfortunately, those days are gone. But truth should still matter.

So this evening, I present to you the story of Lyin' Lee Zeldin. I will show you what happened when EPA Administrator Zeldin came before two congressional committees in May of last year. Our review of thousands of pages of sworn court filings, internal EPA emails, and other communications and documents produced under the Freedom of Information Act proves it. Let me walk you through the sorry saga.

At the beginning of his term, Trump, following the Project 2025 blueprint, instructed Agencies to cut off funding that his fossil fuel donors didn't like. Remember, Candidate Trump had promised Big Oil a massive return on their investment if they donate $1 billion to get him elected. Well, fossil fuel companies indeed donated massively--hundreds of millions, maybe even the full billion--and Trump dutifully provided the payback in innumerable policies benefiting fossil fuel and kneecapping fossil fuel's clean energy competitors. The heavy hand of government was put to work for fossil fuel.

As soon as Zeldin arrived at EPA, he diligently obeyed President Trump by freezing and then terminating as many as 781 grants with awards totaling over $1.7 billion. These grants were congressionally appropriated and obligated to the grantees to fund projects in clean energy, coastal resilience, lead pipe removal, and improving air quality for children.

EPA's own inspector general found, after reviewing one of the grant programs that had awarded $1.5 billion in canceled funds, that the Biden EPA had done so in a fair, transparent, and legally compliant way.

There simply was no excuse to claw back this money except that the fossil fuel donors wanted it done. You won't be shocked to learn that it is actually illegal for the executive branch to unilaterally roll back appropriated and obligated congressional grants. So it prompted a swath of lawsuits against the EPA.

From Washington, DC, to Rhode Island, from Maryland to South Carolina, from Biden judge to Trump judge alike, Federal courts over and over reached the same conclusion: The grant freezes and terminations were likely illegal, and the grant money should go to the recipients.

One Federal court ruled that EPA had to conduct individualized grant- by-grant reviews and could only cancel grants based on specific findings related to the unique characteristics of a particular grant.

It is a pretty simple rule grounded in separation of powers. The executive branch cannot veto congressionally appropriated and obligated funds outside the veto process, particularly not based on big donors' political resentments. That is the law. To cancel a grant, EPA must review each grant itself, its terms, its conditions, its obligations and have a specific reason for doing so.

Note here the difference between individually reviewing grants versus reviewing entire grant programs under which may fall dozens or even hundreds of individual grants. The review can't be grant program by grant program; it has to be individual grant by individual grant.

In response to court orders, EPA made a huge production of documents. After sifting through the ``thousands of documents'' EPA offered up, the court found this:

Not one document showed any individualized review.

The court said it went through thousands of documents and looked at them and said:

Not one document showed any individualized review.

There was no grant-by-grant analysis, nothing that met the legal individualized review standards. Instead, what the court found was illegal targeting based on the grant containing general terms that the big donors didn't like, like ``climate,'' like ``greenhouse gas emissions,'' like ``environmental justice.''

Entire grant programs were canceled en masse. Internal emails said ``cancel them all.'' It was the opposite of what the law requires. In short, the court found, after extensive review, that Administrator Zeldin did not follow the law.

Administrator Zeldin then made an astonishing move. That same day, May 20, 2025, that the court rejected the EPA's claims as ``hard to believe,'' Zeldin walked into a House Energy and Commerce subcommittee hearing and repeated the same discredited story he had tried to sell the court, plus an added new twist.

He claimed that he personally conducted the individualized review of what he called ``every single grant'' before he canceled them.

The court, based on the actual evidence from those thousands of EPA documents, had not bought that story, but Zeldin figured that a Republican-controlled congressional subcommittee just might. The very next day Zeldin came to our Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, and--under oath--told me the same false story; that he had personally reviewed every grant, this time adding that his deputy

also individually reviewed every single grant.

The problem with all of this? The evidence shows that the opposite is true. Remember what the court found after reviewing those thousands of pages EPA had produced:

Not one document showed any individualized review.

But wait, there is more. That deputy that Zeldin claimed also reviewed every single grant individually? He filed a sworn declaration to that same court averring only that he had conducted a review of grant programs. Remember the difference between grant programs which contain dozens of potential grants and the individual grants.

All he would say under oath is that he had reviewed grant programs, not individual grants. Under oath in court, the deputy in charge of coordinating the grant review would only swear his name to a declaration about a review of programs, not of individual grants.

Other circumstantial evidence also cuts against Zeldin. We looked at detailed EPA calendars obtained by FOIA requests showing that the Administrator held five meetings with EPA staff related to grants. Total time across all five meetings: 2 hours and 45 minutes. His calendar showed no entries for other personal time to review grants.

So do the math: 2 hours 45 minutes to review 781 grants individually. That is about 13 seconds per grant. That math ain't ``mathing,'' as they say.

And then look at what eventually happened within the five grant programs at issue. Every single grant in every single program was canceled except one outlier, a government-to-government grant, the only one to a single State. All the rest, swept clean.

Another tell here was Zeldin's behavior in our committee: his madcap yelling, accusing, fist-banging. It is Trump administration standard operating procedure to yell and shout and accuse when they can't answer a legitimate question. We have seen that play run over and over and over.

So all the evidence points plainly in one direction: Zeldin didn't follow the law, and he lied about following the law. Why? Why lie about that? Well, here is why: Trump demands two things from his Cabinet; one, fawning flattery; and two, slavish implementation of his political instructions.

Zeldin admitting that he messed up the grant cancellation process would batter EPA's chances in litigation. He would be guilty of failure to execute on Trump's big donors' political agenda. He would have to face the White House's ire.

So Administrator Zeldin became Lyin' Lee, desperate to keep Trump's illegal plans alive to carry out the political purge of clean energy grants, all to satisfy that audience of one by rewarding Trump's thuggish fossil fuel Kingmakers.

This kind of gangster and ``Gong Show'' absurdity, this kind of brazenness, shows what happens when fossil fuel private interests own the executive branch of the U.S. Government.

Follow the money. This is phase four. This is what it looks like when government is captured by polluters and put to their service.

Zeldin's testimony was no inadvertent statement; it was a calculated stratagem to lie and try to shout his way out of the pickle he was in.

Let's be clear who is hurt here, what the real costs are. Lying to a court is bad. Lying to Congress is bad. Lying to frustrate judicial review is bad. Lying to thwart Congress' constitutional power of the purse is bad. All of that is bad.

But behind all of that were real people trying to earn a living on the other end of those grants that Zeldin lied about and canceled. Those grants funded tangible projects that would cut people's energy costs, protect people from natural disaster, create real jobs for real people. It was real stuff.

Here is some of the real stuff the illegal grant cancellations held up: In North Carolina, residents were relying on a nearly $20 million grant to replace residential water service lines to get dangerous lead out of their drinking water. Other lead drinking projects were canceled in Indiana, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, and Ohio.

Another one, Kipnuk, AK, lost a nearly $20 million grant to stabilize its riverbank. Those consequences were real and immediate. In October of 2025, the remnants of Typhoon Halong swept through, flooded the river, leveled the town, killed 1 person, and displaced over 1,500 people.

A climate specialist at the University of Alaska had noted a pattern. Three devastating ex-typhoon storms hit Western Alaska in 4 years. Zeldin's canceled grant did not just fail to prevent a predictable flood; it may actually have contributed to the permanent erasure of a Native community's home.

Just last week, Kipnuk Tribal members voted to relocate away from their flooded ancestral village. The Leech Lake Band of Ojibwe was planning to use nearly $20 million to create a Tribal resilience hub that would have provided essential services during emergencies. Anybody who has had to evacuate in an emergency knows how important that is-- gone.

Texas A&M University would have received $14 million to install wastewater treatment systems throughout 17 counties in Alabama that had inadequate plumbing capacity where residents suffer from preventable conditions like hookworm, but I guess that was too woke for Lyin' Lee.

A $500,000 grant for the Childhood Lead Action Project--a project launched in 2018 to reduce lead exposure in children--gone. The list goes on, but the mass cancellations share the same characteristic.

Zeldin and his merry band of DOGE boys killed off grant programs based on ideas and phrases they didn't like and wanted to cancel: ``environmental justice,'' ``DEI,'' ``climate change.''

None of this was based on the required individualized review he pretended to have done. That is the Zeldin lie under oath, the Zeldin lie that is sanctionable, but it is not his big lie. His big lie is Zeldin repealing EPA's 2009 Greenhouse Gas Endangerment Finding, the bedrock scientific and legal determination that greenhouse gas emissions endanger public health and welfare. He boasted it was the ``single largest deregulatory action in U.S. history.''

What he did not say is this: EPA's own scientists disagreed. The National Academy of Science had just reaffirmed the Endangerment Finding, saying it ``was accurate, had stood the test of time, and is now reinforced by even stronger evidence.''

So EPA, having trouble challenging that science, argued that the Clean Air Act does not authorize EPA to regulate greenhouse gases at all, which was an argument the Supreme Court had already rejected back in 2009 in Massachusetts v. EPA.

The science has not changed. The law has not changed. The fossil fuel industry's complete infiltration of our government is what changed.

Lying to Congress about grant reviews is serious, but lying about science, that is big. Even bigger and even more consequential for the American people is the enormous lie which Zeldin, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, and Department of Energy Secretary Chris Wright spout constantly.

The enormous lie is that clean energy is more expensive than dirty polluting energy; the fact of the matter is that it is not. And the easiest way to prove that it is not is to look at what is called the generation stack of the electric grid. As we all turn on lights and air-conditioners and electric appliances, powerplants get called up to provide the power to meet the demand.

For obvious reasons, grid operators call up the lowest cost power first. Here is what that looks like for two of our electric grids: ERCOT covers Texas; PJM runs westward from the Mid-Atlantic to the Midwest.

This shows the order in which, in real life, they actually call up their powerplants, least expensive first. And guess what? Solar and wind and hydro come before coal and gas. Same here, solar, wind, and hydro come before coal and gas.

In real life, based on real prices actually bid into the electric grid, that is how they stack up. Solar, wind, and other renewables come first because they are less expensive. So it is indisputable that Burgum, Zeldin, and Wright are lying.

Here is another proof point. This time series compares costs on the Texas grid ERCOT at various levels of demand in 2018 and in 2024. This line shows the demand cost curve of ERCOT in 2018. This line shows the same information for the same grid in 2024 after a

huge clean energy surge went onto the Texas grid--17.6 gigawatts of new clean energy joined the grid.

Look here at the high point in 2018 when demand peaked at about 68 gigawatts. What was the price point? Mr. President, $75 per megawatt hour.

You hit that exact same level of demand 6 years later with all of that new clean energy on the grid and the price had fallen by two- thirds. It is now $25 per megawatt hour--$75 before the clean energy surge, $25 after. In real life, in real time, Texas saw clean energy press prices down.

It is a before-and-after look at how clean energy reduces prices of electricity. With power costs down when clean energy goes up, this is more evidence that Zeldin, Burgum, and Wright are lying.

Here is another example: Australia. Australia is loading up on clean energy. They are loading up on residential, solar, and other clean energy arrays. And that allows them now to have their grid propose 3 hours of scheduled free electricity every day.

Three hours a day, no matter who you are. If you are using electricity, you plug in, you run your dryer, you run your washing machine, and for those 3 hours you know, that is free electricity. It is free electricity from Australia's abundant clean power strategy. Literally, clean power so cheap it makes electricity free.

One last data point on costs. The court filings of the state attorneys general fighting the illegal Trump stop work orders against offshore wind farms off Rhode Island and Connecticut.

Here is what our States asserted about Revolution Wind in court where lying is sanctionable.

Once operational, Revolution Wind alone will provide

hundreds of millions of dollars each year in energy bill

savings to New England.

Hundreds of millions of dollars each year in energy bill

savings to New England.

The ISO New England's grid operator wrote that had offshore wind been online, it would have saved regional production costs by $80 to $85 million over a 2-week cold snap in 2017 to 2018, resulting in $11 to $13 per megawatt hour, less costs in what the grid charged ratepayers.

Zeldin, Burgum, and Wright could have come into that courtroom and offered their evidence to the contrary, filed affidavits asserting the cost savings of fossil fuel. It was a great opportunity for them to make that case in court that they were spouting on FOX News and on X. Well, guess what? In the forum where lies are subject to court sanction, they had nothing to say.

The Trump administration's attack on clean energy may reward Trump's big polluter donors, but people, people who already face the Trump affordability crisis, they see their costs go up when clean energy is kept off the grid.

When the Big Oil cartel hikes prices, families pay the cost. When volatile natural gas prices spike, families pay the cost. When cheaper clean energy is blocked from the grid, families pay the cost.

In this case, Texas families, had it not been for that clean energy, would have paid an additional $50 per megawatt hour. In this Trump clean energy scam, money goes from regular people's pockets, from customers' pockets, straight to Trump's big fossil fuel donors, in billions. In billions. It is the biggest payback for political support that I can remember.

Banning clean energy, it hurts homeowners and renters. And as climate disasters surge, insurance markets falter. They are already staggering in Texas and Florida.

The Economist magazine has warned of a potential $25 trillion collapse in global real estate value as properties become uninsurable and unmortgageable, and in some cases, even unlivable.

The chief economist at the mortgage giant Freddie Mac predicted a cascade. Climate risk makes regions uninsurable, which makes properties there unmortgageable, which crashes property values, which all collapses in a 2008-style economic recession.

Canceling clean energy investments to help out big polluter donors accelerates that dangerous trajectory until property values crash.

Clean energy is where the jobs are. Over 400,000 had been created since 2020, with a faster growth rate than the rest of the energy sector.

Fossil-fueled sabotage of this sector means fewer of those jobs in America, more in China, and a shrinking economic future for American workers. And, yes, attacking clean energy means more emissions, more disasters, more billion-dollar storms, more hits to communities like Kipnuk.

NOAA shows that Americans suffered over $100 billion per year in disaster costs in each of the past 5 years, half a trillion dollars. And that cost gets worse. And that harm cascades, from the families struggling with a soaring property insurance bill, to the worker whose clean energy job never materializes, to the taxpayer footing the bill for ever more costly disasters.

These are the real consequences of government by falsehood. When truth is denied, when science is ignored, when courts are defied, the public ends up bearing the cost. And that cost grows every day that the polluters' evil machinery is left to run unchecked.

Zeldin lying about his review of grant programs is obviously a lesser matter than the wholesale lies designed to mislead the public and prop up the failing and polluting fossil fuel industry. But those lies to Congress were under oath--under oath--and that ought to matter.

There is no exception to the duty to tell the truth for lies that benefit Trump's big fossil fuel donors. For years, fossil fuel interests believed that they could pollute for free, deceive the public, buy elections with dark money, and do it all without consequence.

They have bought and paid for this administration and now use operatives like Zeldin to run the Federal Government from the inside. The brazenness of executive branch officials on the polluter payroll is there for everyone to see.

Zeldin's own EPA colleagues are saying so too. Over 1,200 EPA employees, career scientists, lawyers, and enforcement staff have signed a public letter to Zeldin laying out their concerns that he has spread misinformation through official EPA channels; that he has promoted a culture of fear among his own staff; and that he has redirected the Agency's mission from its legal mission to protect public health to the service of big polluters.

Separately, a watchdog organization has sued the EPA in Federal court after the Agency failed to produce any documentation backing up a Zeldin claim made in front of the President at a Cabinet meeting that EPA employees were absent or were ``ghost workers.'' Zeldin doesn't just lie to Congress, he lies about his own people at the EPA.

Accountability is coming. The courts are waking up. The public is waking up. Even some in the business community are waking up to the looming peril.

And President Trump is losing steam, losing cases, losing credibility, losing his popularity, losing the illusion of invincibility that cowed so many into silence.

It is long past time for Republicans to discover their oaths of office, to stand up for the Constitution and for Congress as an institution, and to defend our American constituents from Trump and his gangster government.

One place to start is with a really simple rule for our witnesses: You do not lie.

So for that reason today, I am calling on Lee Zeldin to go. It is bad enough that he has weaponized the EPA to do the bidding of the giant fossil fuel and chemical corporations that donated to Trump's campaign.

But if he can't be relied on to tell the simple truth to Congress, to answer simple questions honestly, how could anybody in this body believe him? Or is the new rule that lying is OK if it is done for big polluters?

Late last year, Moms Clean Air Force and their 1.6 million members called on Zeldin to resign. Earlier this week, a coalition of over 160 organizations, led by the Climate Action Campaign and Moms Clean Air Force, demanded that Zeldin resign or be fired.

Moms Across America and many others in the Make America Healthy Again movement are fed up with Zeldin flip-flopping on toxic regulations and failing to respect the core mission of EPA to keep Americans healthy and safe.

People across America on both the left and the right are waking up to the dangers of Lyin' Lee Zeldin running a

corrupted EPA. It is time for us here in the Senate to do the same.

I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.