Floor Statements

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of S. Res. 762, which was submitted earlier today.

I further ask 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 with no intervening action or debate.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that when the Senate completes its business today, it adjourn until 10 a.m. on Wednesday, September 14, and that following the prayer and pledge, the morning hour be deemed expired, the Journal of proceedings be approved to date, the time for the two leaders be reserved for their use later in the day, and morning business be closed; that upon the conclusion of morning business, the Senate proceed to executive session to resume consideration of the Montecalvo nomination postcloture; further, that all

postcloture time on the Montecalvo nomination be considered expired at 11:30 a.m.; finally, that if any nominations are confirmed during Wednesday's session, the motions to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table and the President be immediately notified of the Senate's action.

For the information of the Senate, there will be two rollcall votes starting at 11:30 a.m., with additional votes possible later in the day.

Mr. President, if there is no further business to come before the Senate, I ask that it stand adjourned under the previous order.

Mr. President, I will proceed with my trusty, battered ``Time to Wake Up'' chart and my--I don't know--280-something speech.

For once, I can start with some good news, which is that the Democrats, at last, passed a climate-focused reconciliation bill this year. This is a huge step and essential, given the cascade of harms climate change is already inflicting: wildfire in Yosemite National Park, billions of dollars in flood damage; Europe broils in heat wave; extreme heat led to ``brutal'' rise in sea temperatures; dangerous heat hits United States; emissions rising of methane, glacier tragedies; Houston slogs through brutal heat; climate change is forcing massive wildlife migration. Wherever you look, you see the news of what is happening--heat waves, droughts, wildfires, collapsing glaciers, rising seas, record carbon dioxide and methane concentrations in the atmosphere.

It is a bombardment of hard evidence that the Earth is fast becoming less hospitable for human life. The costs of our political negligence are high and rising.

My friends across the aisle like to fixate on the price of gasoline, which undeniably affects family budgets. But climate change imposes costs on American families much worse than gasoline prices. Climate change causes effects that raise insurance premiums, snarl supply chains, reduce crop yields, sicken people, and damage cars, homes, and businesses.

A lot of thoughtful groups have quantified this damage. The International Monetary Fund estimates this ``climate tax'' on American families at over $5,000 per year based on their calculation that we subsidize fossil fuel by allowing them to get away with doing all this pollution and harm for free to the tune of $660 billion every year. That is the International Monetary Fund--5,000 bucks per family from climate change harms.

They are not alone, of course. Resources for the Future, which is a well-regarded, well-trusted calculation shop, has just looked at what the social cost of carbon should be, and they pegged it at $185 per ton of carbon emissions. Right now, the nominal social cost of carbon left over from the Obama administration is $51 per ton. Resources for the Future has done a more rigorous calculation and puts it at $185 in harm per ton of carbon emitted.

What does this all add up to? Well, you can go to corporate consulting firm Deloitte, which is a corporate consulting firm. We are not talking about, you know, Green New Deal folks here. This is a corporate consultancy. They say that inaction on climate change could cost the world's economy $178 trillion over the next 50 years.

Now, the bad news is climate change harms could cost $178 trillion. The good news is if we got after this and behaved responsibly, you could gain $43 trillion in economic development in that same time period. So if you put the two together, that is a $220 trillion swing depending on decisions that we make today. So it kind of matters to getting this right, and we are not yet getting this right.

The reconciliation bill, good as it is, won't decarbonize our economy in time without a lot more action. The bill likely takes expected emissions reduction from around 25 percent, which we are assuming right there--that is our baked-in number--and it raises it to about 40 percent. So it is a 15-percent increase in emissions reduction, from 25 percent to 40 percent. So that is good. That is good, but it still leaves much to do, because, remember, net zero is the target, and if you have reduced by 40 percent, that still leaves 60 percent that is work to be done.

So soon we are going to need another bill, and the contours of such a bill, if it is going to be effective, are pretty clear.

There is bipartisan interest in a carbon border adjustment, which would make American manufacturing more competitive and reduce carbon pollution worldwide. We export pressure against carbon pollution with a carbon border tariff.

There is also bipartisan interest in commonsense permitting reform to safely and quickly build out the clean energy infrastructure of the future. My coastal State needs it for offshore wind. The Presiding Officer's Mountain State needs it for transmission lines to connect to the grid the capacity we have for solar and wind.

And the fossil fuel industry at least pretends to be interested in a price on carbon emissions. Now, that is just pretense. They put their whole political operation into effect to make sure none of that happens, but it is a good sign. It is a step on the path when they have to pretend to support a price on emissions. That is a step on the way to actually supporting a price on carbon emissions.

I will do everything in my power to do all of those things. But let's be clear. It would be much easier if corporate America were not a wall of opposition to serious climate bills.

And it is not just the fossil fuel industry. Banking, insurance, retail, tech--pick your industrial sector. You name it--in this building, useless on climate. Or worse, there is a huge spread between what they tell their shareholders and their customers and the public and what they send their emissaries into Congress to tell us.

And until that is solved, until corporate America aligns what it is telling the public with what it is doing in Congress, legislation is going to be tough to do.

So that leaves the executive branch, and that is what brings me to the floor today, because there is a lot that the executive branch can do under existing executive authorities. And in this recent article, the White House said they were going to get started:

Biden Prepares More Actions to Cut Emissions.

Regulations from the E.P.A. and elsewhere will help the

president meet his aggressive climate goals.

``The president has not chosen to just look at Congress,

he's chosen to recognize that he has presidential authorities

and responsibilities under the law to keep moving this

forward.''

Well, he sure does, and there is plenty of room to do different things and new things.

So what can be done by executive action?

Let's go through the largest sources of greenhouse gas emissions since that is our target. The No. 1 source--by the way, these 11 sources of carbon pollution amount to almost 70 percent of our carbon emissions. So if we can tackle these, we are making a big dent in that remaining 60 percent left undone.

So cars and light trucks is the largest category. It generates almost a fifth of total U.S. carbon pollution.

The EPA and DOT restored Obama-era greenhouse gas emission standards. So now go further, as California has. Start with model year 2027 and begin a ramp-up to 100 percent zero-emission vehicles by 2035.

There is authority for this under the Clean Air Act and the 2007 Energy Independence and Security Act. And, by the way, when you double your car's energy efficiency, doubling your fuel economy is exactly the same thing as cutting oil prices and gasoline prices in half. So push in that direction.

And, by the way, getting off of fossil fuel for cars and light trucks will help us get off the Big Oil treadmill of cartel prices that are set with the help of foreign despots in Russia, in Saudi Arabia, in Venezuela, outside the rule of American law. But Americans have to pay because our oil industry goes along with the international cartel instead of charging market-based prices. We just saw them do that and reap record profits. So there is a lot to be done on cars and light trucks.

Coal-fired powerplants is the next biggest one. Coal-fired powerplants belch carbon pollution, but also a lot of other pollutants. So if you regulate for health against those other pollutants, you get a lot of cobenefits with carbon pollution.

Among the worst is fine particulate matter, which is also known as soot or, more technically, PM 2.5. It is the leading cause of the estimated 100,000 to 200,000 air pollution-related premature deaths each year. So it is causing real harm.

And then you add in coal ash, which is the toxic sludge left after you burn

coal, loaded with arsenic, mercury, lead, and uranium, and often stored in lagoons which sometimes burst, just as you see in this picture, not only swamping this farmhouse but also poisoning rivers and ground water.

This should be a ``never event.'' This should be a ``never event,'' but it is not. It is all too frequent, and poor communities often take the hit. EPA regulations can eliminate these threats and produce carbon reduction cobenefits.

Nothing in the recent West Virginia v. EPA decision prevents EPA from requiring that coal-fired powerplants install carbon capture technology. And carbon capture technology can eliminate up to 95 percent of the carbon pollution. Add EPA's authority under the Clean Air Act and the Clean Water Act to regulate fine particulate matter and coal ash, and you can make real progress.

That brings us, then, to gas-fired powerplants, the next category. They are big carbon polluters, and they are still being built. EPA regulations for new and existing gas-fired plants can limit their carbon pollution the same way. Carbon capture can be one option. Co- firing with zero carbon hydrogen could be another option.

Next on the list is heavy-duty vehicles, trucks, and buses. Now EPA has a proposed rule, and that proposed rule on trucks and buses does nothing to reduce carbon pollution. EPA and DOT have ample authority here, and they should use it. California has its own ``advanced clean trucks rule'' requiring increased zero emission heavy-duty vehicles. If EPA can't do any better, then follow California's lead.

Next comes methane, spewing from oil and gas facilities as leaks, vents, or flares. EPA has a proposed rule--no actual rule yet--but even the proposed rule has flaws. First, it doesn't cover low-producing wells. A low-producing well can be a very high-leaking well.

So whether it is high or low producing should matter less than whether it is a big leaker.

Second, the rule does little for venting and flaring, which are major pollution sources. Now one development is that satellites can now very precisely locate methane leaks. So we can aggressively pursue and punish big methane polluters, and we should do that. Set up a task force. Have people go hunting for the big methane leaks. Find who is responsible and get after them.

If you do all that, it would cover more than half of gross carbon emissions in the United States. So let's do it. No more complaining about not enough staff. EPA has more employees than all of Congress combined. If you don't have enough staff, then detail folks in from the regional offices, borrow from your State counterparts. Do what it takes to get after this like you mean it, because we need to.

There is a list that I tweeted out of things that the administration could be doing within its existing executive authorities. Within the White House, OMB, or the Office of Management and Budget, 18 months in, needs to finalize its social cost of carbon, the costs and the harms from each ton of carbon pollution emitted. That is the number that I mentioned earlier that Resources for the Future just calculated at $185 per ton.

OMB needs to finalize the social cost of carbon, set the number, and require its use throughout government decision making. All the regulatory agencies should use it, even the quasi-independents.

And you can add in procurement decisions. The Federal Government contracts for over $600 billion in goods and services every year. We buy buildings, vehicles, planes, cement, steel, appliances. You name it, the government buys it. Plug the social cost of carbon into procurement, as many private companies do, and you engage the power of government contracting against the climate threat.

And when you do that, that then drives economies of scale that make those low-carbon projects and products cheaper for everyone else, not just the government buyer.

The social cost of carbon should drive Department of Interior fossil fuel royalty rates for oil, gas, and coal produced on Federal lands and waters. Those rates right now are so low that we lose money on royalties compared to the costs that those fossil fuels impose on all of us. That is just dumb and also unfair. So let's fix that flagrant imbalance by putting the social cost of carbon into the fees and royalties.

I would add that the Department of Justice has a role to play here. Years ago, under the Clinton administration, the Department of Justice sued Big Tobacco for decades of misrepresentations about the harms of its product. Well, DOJ won that lawsuit, and they won big, and they got a court order requiring Big Tobacco to quit lying.

Well, like Big Tobacco, Big Oil has spent decades misrepresenting the dangers associated with its product. The Department of Justice is way overdue to take a serious look at fossil fuel lies.

As they look around the country, they see States and municipalities and counties bringing lawsuits against the fossil fuel industry. It is happening out there. It is incumbent on the Department of Justice to advise the President on what the Department of Justice should be doing. To turn a blind eye to all that litigation, to ignore its own victory in the tobacco case, to refuse to recommend to the President any course of action or to take any course of action is just not an acceptable way of going forward. If the DOJ took an honest look, I bet they would find the case against Big Oil every bit as solid as the case they won against Big Tobacco.

And while we are at it, there is the bully pulpit. The administration should use the bully pulpit to call out the dark money, the lies, the fake science, the phony front groups, the spin doctors, the co-opted lobby groups, the dirty political spending, the whole apparatus, the whole machinery that the fossil fuel industry has used to corrupt Congress and obstruct progress.

Calling out crooks is the right thing to do, and the public deserves to know that there is a villain here who has blocked progress on purpose and what that villain is up to.

There is a lot that the Biden administration can and should be doing. Yes, it is good to declare a climate emergency. It is better to act like it is a climate emergency and deploy your Executive authorities accordingly. That means the sort of regulatory surge I have just outlined--no waffling, no excuses.

A winning strategy ultimately includes regulation, litigation, legislation, acquisition, and communication. Across those five fronts, the Biden administration should have a plan to move forward in each and every one. It needs the kind of leadership that Eisenhower gave to the Normandy landing and the invasion that followed.

By the way, while you are organizing it that way, do it with gusto. This is a fight that is worth having. It is not just that the planet depends on it; it is not just that our international credibility depends on it; it is not just cleaning out this place from rotten fossil fuel industry depends on it; it is the right thing to do. The American public will stand behind a President who stands up against lies and dark money and the schemes to blockade climate safety.

So I will close by saying that whether there was ever a time for half-hearted, half-baked, and halfway measures, it is done. We need to build on the success of the Inflation Reduction Act. We need to take that as a launchpad, a first chapter, not a last chapter. And on this fight, it is all in or lose because our adversaries are determined. They are just wrong, but they are determined. So it is all in or lose.

By the way, if we lose this race, the laws of chemistry and physics are going to be unforgiving.

I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, I rise today to honor the 50th anniversary of Project ZAP, or ZAP the Blackstone.

The Blackstone River was once called ``the hardest-working river in America.'' In the mid-1800s, more than a hundred textile mills and manufacturers busily operated along the Blackstone's banks and tributaries, where a steady flow of water provided reliable hydroelectric power. Development and industrialization carried on for decades, with lasting consequences for the health of the river, long after the mills closed up or moved elsewhere. The Blackstone became one of the most polluted in the country. However, on September 1972, Rhode Island made history by hosting the largest single-day environmental clean-up in American history. David Rosser, a conservation leader and dedicated community organizer, recruited over 10,000 volunteers to clean up the pollution that littered the water and the banks. The cleanup effort came to be known as Project ZAP--Zero Away Pollution.

The Blackstone has come a long way over the past five decades. In 1985, the

Blackstone Valley Tourism Council was started, followed by the Friends of the Blackstone and the Blackstone River Watershed Council. In 1986, the Blackstone River Valley became a National Heritage Corridor, and the river was designated as an American Heritage River in 1998. I was proud to work with my colleagues in Rhode Island's congressional delegation to have the river's corridor designated as a National Historical Park in 2014. The river is now home to fish, aquatic mammals, turtles, and a variety of birds that have returned to what was once a highly polluted habitat. Unfortunately though, pollutants, litter, debris, erosion, and invasive species still plague the river, which is why, this year, a 50-year anniversary ZAP clean-up is planned.

On August 27, Rhode Islanders were at it again, cleaning and greening up the Blackstone River Watershed. With a goal of holding the largest Blackstone Valley clean-up since 1972, the ZAP 50 steering team organized a 27-town, watershed wide, clean up. One hundred and twenty teams showed up to, pick up trash and clear the river of aquatic invasive species.

I am happy to recognize the 50th anniversary of Project ZAP and the hard work of the many Rhode Islanders who serve as stewards of our environment. It is thanks to their efforts that the once hardest working river in America may be enjoyed peacefully.

Madam President, every once in a while, life gives you a wonderful coincidence. The wonderful coincidence this evening is that I have had the pleasure of listening to Senator Sanders describe what happens to a country when billionaires are able to secretly exert immense political power and drive democracy away from its foundations and into the service of the billionaires.

The remarks I am here to give are about how they do it--the technique for infiltration and influence of our democracy by the billionaires. This is part of my series of ``Scheme'' speeches, which is about how they have taken over the Supreme Court--captured it--in the same way that, in the 1800s, big railroads captured the railroad commissions that were supposed to set their rates. They just had their people set the rules for them, and it worked great. We are seeing this with the Supreme Court right now. This is not a conservative Supreme Court. This is a captive Supreme Court--captive to special interests--and the technique that they use for getting there is to hide who they are through an array of front groups.

There are dozens of front groups that were involved in the Court- capture scheme. The Washington Post did a very good review of them several years ago and calculated, based on information they could get at the time, that this was a quarter-billion-dollar project--$250 million. Well, the research continued, and folks kept digging. When I held a hearing about this in my Judiciary court subcommittee, the number had climbed to $400 million spent on the Court-capture enterprise. They have kept digging and kept digging, and now it turns out the number is over $580 million. Over a half a billion dollars was spent in this effort to capture and control the U.S. Supreme Court.

I don't think you spend over $580 million unless you have a purpose, and very often, the purpose is to make that much money back and more. There is a web of front groups that are used to deploy all of that money, and this is just a part of that web. This is just one sort of combined creature in that web. So let me take a few minutes and just go through the different organs and limbs of this creature.

The center of it is a pair of organizations, the 85 Fund and the Concord Fund. The way that extremely wealthy people play in politics these days is to put two organizations together that they establish under the Tax Code. One is called a 501(c)(3), which is named after the section of the Tax Code under which it is established. The 501(c)(3) gives you two wonderful things if you are fiddling in politics. One, it gives us anonymity, wherein you don't have to disclose your donors; and, two, it gives you a tax deduction. You get to write off the money that you give to manipulate the American public. But you can't do something very important with a 501(c)(3): You can't go out and manipulate public opinion. You can't participate in elections. So, when you do that, you need to have something else called a 501(c)(4), the very next provision in the IRS Code. So you take your 501(c)(3), and you take your 501(c)(4), and you set them both up.

In my view, there is usually no real distinction between the two. There is a doctrine in law called piercing the corporate veil that separates separate corporate entities, that allows people who are trying to pursue usually damages to show that this is a fake corporate division. You pierce the corporate veil. The 501(c)(3)s and 501(c)(4)s are a corporate veil that you could probably pierce with a banana. They have the same locations; they have the same mailing addresses; they have the same staff; they have the same board members; they have the same funders. It is essentially the same organization, but it just operates under two legal structures.

So that is what you have for starters. You have got your twinned front groups. The 85 Fund is your 501(c)(3), and the Concord Fund is your 501(c)(4). They are essentially the same creature, but in this case, this organism has other limbs. So what you can do under Virginia corporate law is, if you are the 85 Fund or the Concord Fund, you could file with the corporate registry in the State of Virginia permission to operate under what is called a fictitious name. You can operate under your own name, the 85 Fund, or you can file, with permission, a fictitious name. I am not making that up. That is actually the word in Virginia law--a ``fictitious name.''

Well, the 85 Fund filed for permission to operate under the fictitious name of the Judicial Education Project--the 501(c)(3) that takes in money, and ``tax deductibly,'' to work on the capture of the Court. On the other side, over here, the Concord Fund, your twinned 501(c)(4), has its own twinned fictitious name. So the Judicial Education Project has its own little twin in the Judicial Crisis Network.

Well, what do we know about the Judicial Crisis Network?

We know that it took checks for as much as $15, $17 million from secret donors. Imagine writing a $15 million check to an organization like this. It took that money, and it first ran campaigns to attack Merrick Garland, to round up Republican support for opposing him as a Supreme Court Justice. Then, when that was successful and they brought on Judge Gorsuch, in came other big checks. Then, when Gorsuch was on the Court and it was time for Kavanaugh--other big checks. Then, when it was time for Amy Coney Barrett--other big checks. We have counted four checks over $15 million. They could be from four separate individuals, but it was happening so regularly you would think you would probably go back to the same source. Somebody spent, probably, $60 million to control who got on the U.S. Supreme Court.

We don't know what business that $60 million donor had before the Court, but it is not unusual for cases before the Court to have outcomes that will shift way more than $60 million. Just the climate change cases move hundreds of billions of dollars around in protecting fossil fuels' enormous subsidy. So you have your 85 Fund and Concord Fund ``pierce the corporate veil with a banana'' pair, and then you have their fictitious twins, the Judicial Education Project and the Judicial Crisis Network, with big money flowing in.

But it is not enough just to pack the Court. You also want to make sure that you are suppressing voters. Voter suppression is a very big deal, so you set up your Honest Elections Project to do voter suppression because, in this weird, billionaire-funded parallel universe, everything has the opposite name of what it is. Over here, you have, on the 501(c)(4) side, your Honest Elections Project Action because there you can spend some of the money politically. So you have got a whole separate set of twins--this time, completely fictitious twins, fictitious names--no different from the 85 Fund and the Concord Fund--designed to go out in the world and suppress voting: bring lawsuits, write challenge letters, argue for new laws.

Then, as we saw in Virginia recently, you can really whip people up about what is going on in schools--critical race theory. So you set up your Free to Learn fictitious name with its little twin, Free to Learn Action, to do the 501(c)(4) political work. So now what you have is a total of eight organizations that are really the same.

Who does this? Who in real life does this, sets up eight organizations, six of which are mere fictitious names, to run the same money from the same donors out in the world to make it look as if

something real is happening, when, in fact, the whole thing is a phony front?

And then you have, up at the head of the critter--you have how the people behind it get themselves paid. So you have advisers who advise these various entities. You have got the CRC Advisors as the name of the group. It has its public relations antenna here, and it has its strategic advice antenna here, and the money flows usually this way so that the people who run this scheme for the big donors can take their cut. They get paid here. These are all for-profit. These are all the not-for-profits that are set up because they allow you to hide who your donors are.

So that is the rig that was set up, and this is not the entirety of the front group scheme that was funded by the $580 million. This is just one coordinated corporate critter that was set up in order to perform all of these different several functions.

Think back to the Founding Fathers and their desire to set up a democracy where people made choices about their governments, where popular democracy would be the way in which society went forward. Do you think they had in mind something as creepy and complex as this? And do you think all that effort to build all this scheming, all the lawyers to file all the papers, to cook up all the funny, fictitious names to create all of these bogus organizations--what is the point of all that? Could there be a legitimate point to that? Why all the shells? Why all the hiding if you are not up to no good?

Well, the bottom line is, they are up to no good. And the ``no good'' is to capture the U.S. Supreme Court and turn it from a proper Court into a captive political entity that will do what the people who are behind all this money tell it to do.

And there are many ways they do it, and I will go into those many ways on other occasions. But on this one occasion, I wanted just to focus on this multifaced corporate creature that hides its donors, that does all of this different work through fake, fictitious name organizations and through which money gets extracted by those who run it so they can pay themselves for this vast disservice to democracy.

To be continued.

I yield the floor.

Madam President, I understand that there is a bill at the desk, and I ask for its first reading.

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to executive session to consider the following nominations en bloc: Calendar Nos. 1098 and 1099; that the Senate vote on the nominations en bloc without intervening action or debate; that the motions to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table; that the President be immediately notified of the Senate's action and the Senate resume legislative session.

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of H.R. 5313, which was received from the House and is at the desk.

I further ask that the bill be considered read a third time and passed, and that the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table with no intervening action or debate.

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions be discharged and the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of S. 734.

I ask unanimous consent that the Hassan for Cornyn amendment be considered and agreed to and that the bill be considered read a third time.

I know of no further debate on the bill, as amended.

I ask unanimous consent that the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table.

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the consideration of S. Res. 738, submitted earlier today.

I know of no further debate on the resolution.

I ask unanimous consent that the preamble be agreed to and that the motions to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table with no intervening action or debate.

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of S. Res. 739, which was submitted earlier today.

I further ask that the resolution be agreed to and the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table with no intervening action or debate.

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that when the Senate completes its business today, it adjourn until 12 noon, Wednesday, August 3; that following the prayer and pledge, the morning hour be deemed expired, the Journal of proceedings be approved to date, the time for the two leaders be reserved for their use later in the day, and the Senate be in a period of morning business

for debate only until 1:30 p.m., with Senators permitted to speak therein for up to 10 minutes each; further, that the order with respect to Treaty Document 117-3 be modified to reflect the following, with all previous provisions remaining in effect: Sullivan amendment No. 5192 and Paul amendment No. 5191.

For the information of the Senate, there will be up to three rollcall votes at approximately 4:30 p.m. in relation to the NATO treaty.

Madam President, if there is no further business to come before the Senate, I ask unanimous consent that it stand adjourned under the previous order, following the remarks of Senator Portman.

Mr. President, I am very glad to stand with Senator Cortez Masto to support this legislation and also recognize the leadership of Senator Murray on this issue as we fight to protect fundamental rights belonging to the women of America.

For nearly half a century, women relied on Roe's recognition that the Constitution protects their right to decide if and when to have children. A radical and captured Supreme Court has revoked this constitutional right, disrupting the reliance and trust of generations of women to make fundamental decisions about their own health and their own futures.

Overturning Roe is wildly unpopular, which is why extremists went to the captured Court to get a change that they could not get through the democratic process. Deep-pocketed extremist interests invested hundreds of millions of dollars over decades to build a Court where that kind of stuff could get done.

It is an outrage. Women across this country are angry. Democrats in Congress are angry, and we are fighting back in every way we can.

In addition to State abortion bans, emboldened legislatures are readying even more extreme restrictions on women, like proposals to investigate, prosecute, and sue women who travel out of State to get the care they need. You think I am kidding? Legislation to this effect has already been introduced in Missouri. The Constitution already protects the right to interstate travel, but as we have now seen, we can't rely on an increasingly extremist Supreme Court to protect our rights.

Remember, in a large number of pregnancies, abortion actually becomes medically necessary--medically necessary--for the health of the woman to bear children in the future, for the life of the woman to survive, the risk the pregnancy presents, for the risk to have other children.

So it is extremely important to make sure women can get that medical care. It is extremely important to protect their right to make this choice themselves. And it is extremely important to protect medical professionals in States like Rhode Island, my home State, from punishment for providing care to women from States where State legislatures have made abortions illegal.

I was proud to work with Senator Cortez Masto from the outset to help draft the Freedom to Travel for Healthcare Act. It will protect women's rights to cross State lines and seek medical services and protect providers in States that they are traveling to. I join my colleagues to urge swift passage of this bill. This is just one step. There is much more work to be done to stand against this continuing assault on women's constitutional rights.

I yield the floor.