Floor Statements

Mr. President, I am not very happy to be back with my trusty and somewhat battered ``Time to Wake Up'' poster. Almost exactly a year ago, I delivered what I hoped would be my last ``Time to Wake Up'' speech and took the poster off the floor.

Things looked good then. The conditions for climate progress were in place. Voters had elected a Democratic President and Democratic majorities in both Houses of Congress. So the malicious grip of the fossil fuel industry on the Republican Party was no longer a stopper.

President Biden ran on a fact-based, uncorrupted climate agenda, and many in our congressional majorities campaigned on climate action. We had reconciliation to work with, and work began on a serious climate bill.

Actually, after I stopped these speeches, the Smithsonian asked me if they could have this old poster. It is the most used poster in Senate history, it turns out. And I came pretty close to turning it over to them, but something made me hesitate. And, well, here it is back again.

We just aren't making progress, not by the only measurement that matters: greenhouse gas emissions. We are 1 year in--with no bill, no carbon regulation, and no litigation--and look at the climate havoc.

Scientists reported that global temperatures registered between 1.1 and 1.2 Celsius above average in 2021. That is among the hottest years ever observed by human beings, and it is dangerously close to our safety ceiling of 1.5 degrees Celsius. And we are here despite 2021 being a La Nina year, when cold Pacific water usually cools global temperatures. The last 7 years are the 7 hottest years in recorded history.

Republicans may mock and disparage this, but they are paid agents of the polluters causing this. And they are wrong.

In past speeches, I have described how our oceans absorb a massive amount of the heat that is trapped by greenhouse gas pollution. It is the heat equivalent of multiple Hiroshima-sized nuclear bombs being set off in the ocean every second--multiple Hiroshima-sized nuclear devices' worth of heat per second that we are adding to the ocean.

In the last three decades, our oceans warmed eight times faster than preceding decades. And it is so massive that it has its own measurement term: the zettajoule. The top 2,000 feet of ocean absorbed a record 227 excess zettajoules of energy in 2021.

So what is a zettajoule? Well, a half zettajoule--a half zettajoule-- is the total annual energy consumption of the planet. That little line right down there represents a half zettajoule--the total energy consumption of planet Earth, all humans. And here is the heat that that loaded into the oceans because of the amplification of greenhouse gases--227, one-half--so about 500 times as much heat going into the oceans as our entire energy heat spend as a species.

And ocean temperatures are, of course, now the hottest ever recorded. The excess heat means dying coral reefs and lost fisheries with acidified seas. It means higher sea levels, as heated water expands; and more severe storms, as heated waters supercharge storm systems, including the sort of thunderstorm complexes that spawned Midwestern tornadoes in December.

Republicans may mock and disparage this, but remember: They are paid agents of the polluters causing this. And they are wrong.

This costs lives and dollars. The United States suffered 20 separate billion-dollar weather disasters in 2021--almost 700 deaths and $100 billion of damage. The year before, we had hit $22 billion disasters: tropical cyclones, coastal floods, western wildfires. The most spectacular fire didn't actually even make it on to this list because it ripped through more than a thousand homes and businesses in suburban Denver in December. That fire didn't even make it onto this top disasters list.

The Pacific Northwest heat wave of June 2021 smashed all records. A town in normally temperate British Columbia saw 116-degree temperatures, beating the previous Canadian national record by 3 degrees. The next day, the thermometer hit 118 degrees; the day after that, 121 degrees. And the day after that, a wildfire burned the town to the ground.

In Washington and Oregon, temperatures shot off the charts. These graphs show maximum daily temperatures in Seattle and Portland. The dots on these charts that form this gray band represent every daily maximum temperature reading over the last 42 years--over 15,000 data points. The red dots here and here reflect for Seattle and for Portland those days--way beyond the norms.

These temperatures aren't just uncomfortable. They are lethal. Research shows more than 600 excess deaths during the June heat wave in Washington and Oregon. Those 600 people aren't even counted in that storm death toll I mentioned before.

So why aren't we doing anything about it? Two primary reasons: fossil fuel obstruction and corporate indifference. To be blunt, the fossil fuel industry controls the Republican Party the way a ventriloquist controls a painted wooden dummy, and the rest of corporate America lets them get away with it.

The fossil fuel obstruction isn't new. They have been at it for decades. Dozens of colleagues have joined me here on the Senate floor, exposing the web of climate denial the industry wove to perpetrate their obstruction.

The fossil fuel industry is still at it. They have just changed it up a bit. They can't debate the science anymore, and they can't argue against the urgency, but they can still write checks. They can fund phony front groups and fill Republican campaign coffers.

And though they can't sell climate denial, they can buy climate delay. They can hire the biggest PR and advertising firms around--like Edelman, IPG, WPP--to pollute our minds with slippery greenwashing, like they pollute our skies and oceans with their carbon emissions.

Here is an example of this stuff in action. Type ``fossil fuels'' into Google, and this is the slick, phony paid-for result you get--a fossil fuel giant saying it is ``already a willing and able player in the energy transition, read more.''

The Guardian and watchdog group InfluenceMap exposed how fossil fuel PR companies cook up these ads designed to look like Google search results. ``Don't do anything, we've got this'' is their Big Lie message of these ads. The watchdogs call this ``endemic greenwashing.''

The industry doesn't just lie and pay politicians; fossil fuel companies also use trade associations and dark money front groups to whip up opposition to climate legislation.

Coal-heavy electric utilities and their dark money cohort mobilized against the Clean Electricity Performance Plan that would have helped decarbonize the power grid. Republicans did their bidding.

The American Petroleum Institute and other fossil fuel industry groups fight paying a price on methane emissions from their oil and gas facilities. They want to pollute for free, knowing full well the harm. Republicans do their bidding.

The CEO of that 800-pound, climate-obstructing gorilla, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, said the group would ``do everything [it] can to prevent'' Build Back Better and its climate provisions from becoming law. Republicans do their bidding.

These groups spent millions on political ads. They unleashed a deluge of lobbying and campaign contributions. They are almost certainly behind big super PAC spending. They pull out all the stops. And against them in corporate America to push back against the polluters stands who? No one. Corporate CEOs talk a big game about decarbonizing their supply chains and transitioning to renewables, and they wield enormous influence in Washington when they want to, but here in this building, where the legislative rubber hits the road, corporate America has been totally, utterly, completely MIA on climate.

One set of lobbyists even told my staff that once the corporate tax stuff they cared about got squared away in Build Back Better and was taken off the table, they didn't want to ``rock the boat'' by supporting climate provisions, even though they are provisions the company publicly claims to support.

Not one corporate trade group is lifting a finger here in this building on climate--not the banks, despite their own warnings of an economic crash; not the insurance companies, despite the huge checks they write for climate disasters; not Big Tech; not Big Pharma; not anyone.

The fossil fuel industry has its choke chain around the Republican Party so tight that industry folks have told me they are scared to press for climate measures, that they might be punished by Republicans working for the fossil fuel industry--punished on the tax and deregulatory and business stuff they really care about. So they are not here. They just aren't.

The frustrating thing is that there actually is a way to get to a safe place, to get to where we can hold warming below 1.5 degrees Celsius. The key policy is a border-adjustable price on carbon. To get to safety, we need to do more than just that, but there is no pathway to safety without that. It is the necessary but not sufficient safety measure.

Take a look at this chart. This was prepared in conjunction with the White House and the leader's office. A lot of eyeballs have looked at this.

The green line here is business as usual. We do nothing, and carbon emissions do mostly nothing.

This next line down, the orange line, represents our emissions trajectory if we pass the Finance Committee's clean energy tax credit package. That gets us to here.

The gray line right below it, the third one down here, is if we could pass a clean electricity standard.

The yellow one here is the emissions trajectory if we do both of those things, both the tax credit package and a clean electricity standard.

This one--light blue--is a carbon price alone. By the way, it is a modest carbon price that starts at only $15 per ton in 2023 and increases to $70 per ton in 2032 and doesn't cover unleaded gasoline at all.

The dark blue line here, the safest line, is all those policies together. To get to safety, we must deploy all of these policies.

The more policies you have, the deeper the emissions reductions, the better the chance of safety. But the center pole in the climate policy tent is a carbon price. Pricing carbon reaches every corner of the economy, which will be all-important when the power sector has switched to zero-carbon generation and we need to remedy other polluting sectors.

A carbon price fuels innovation. Suddenly, every carbon-reduction strategy has a revenue proposition--no more government-chosen winners and losers.

A carbon price raises investment. Growing a low-carbon economy will take trillions in job-producing investment, maybe about $575 billion a year from now until 2050. Carbon pricing sends an investment market signal and produces revenues to support those billions of dollars in private job-creating investment.

A carbon price is exportable through a border adjust that will keep China and others from cheating.

Last, a carbon price helps to unravel what the International Monetary Fund says is a $660 billion annual subsidy propping up fossil fuels in the United States. Do you want to know why the fossil fuel industry can so easily corrupt American politics? That is your answer. That is 660 billion answers. A $660 billion subsidy every year is one hell of a motive.

Once your policies are assembled surrounding the carbon price, you then need a battle plan and the leadership to carry it out. We cannot win legislative victory without setting the conditions for victory. We are up against a fossil fuel armada of dishonest PR campaigns, phony front groups, co-opted trade associations, fake science, and political dark money. We cannot overcome the corrupting forces of the fossil fuel industry without sound countermeasures.

Step one is what I am doing here--call out the dark money mischief of the fossil fuel industry. It is a compelling story, actually, and people--voters--don't like being lied to, especially not by big, corrupt, polluting interests. They have been lied to for decades, and they need to know that. If we all exposed the fossil fuel industry pattern of deception the way we years ago exposed as fraud the tobacco industry's pattern of deception, that would open up real political space for the kind of legislative progress the times demand.

Over in the House, Representatives Maloney and Khanna are on the case. They are investigating. Hearings are underway. Let's support and amplify them.

Next, stop the flow of polluter dark money into our politics. In politics, money corrupts, and dark money corrupts absolutely.

Next, rally the rest of corporate America to the banner. If they are too chicken to go first and face the risk of Republican punishment on the stuff they really care about, join together. They can't punish everyone. Corporate America is actually rich enough, if it wanted to, to buy the damned fossil fuel industry, fire the crooks and the PR firms, shut off the money to the front groups and the trade associations, and clean up the industry from the inside. But corporate America not only doesn't do that, it does nothing here in Congress.

However we go, we have to get going. Either we act now or we pollute our way to oblivion. Either we summon a serious response or we ``meh'' our way to catastrophe. Either we enact a serious effective climate bill or we lose our chance at a safe climate pathway. I will promise you, that will earn the merited disgust of future generations.

We have a moment here to measure up to. We are failing catastrophically,

and we are failing for the worst and smallest and most dishonorable of reasons. So when we reignite work on a real climate bill, when we are starting to see real administration climate progress, I will see about sending this battered poster over to the Smithsonian, but if we don't, I will be back here again and again and again to call this Chamber to wake up.

I yield the floor.

Thank you for using us as a unit of measure.

Madam President, this past weekend is our annual reminder as a country of the courage, suffering, sacrifice, passion, love, and energy that so many of our fellow Americans put into protecting our democracy.

When in a democracy, one group of citizens can deliberately, purposefully make it more difficult for another group of citizens to vote, they have put a dagger into that democracy. We cannot let that happen.

I am here today to focus, in particular, on one voting right that we have in this country, and that voting right is, when you are voting, to know what the hell is going on around you in that election, to know who is saying what, to know who the players are around you. If we are supposed to sit here, as Americans, and just act like indolent consumers, passive in this democracy, that is not the way it is supposed to work. Citizenship is an office, and that office has duties, and the duties include being informed of what is going on around you.

And what is stopping American citizens from knowing what is going on around them is the cascade, the torrent, the Nile River of dark money that has begun to flow into our democracy since Citizens United.

It wasn't enough that the Republican Members of the Court let unlimited money flow. They then had to refuse to react when that unlimited dark money went underground, when it went dark, when it became anonymous.

They have had chance after chance to fix it and they refuse and we are left with this mess. It matters that citizens know who is talking in a democracy.

In my circuit, the First Circuit Court of Appeals--where Jack Reed and I have the honor, occasionally, to recommend nominees to the President--there is a judge who I believe is the dean of the First Circuit Court of Appeals named Bruce Selya. He is a Rhode Islander. He was a Reagan appointee. He is a Republican. He is a very distinguished judge. And he has said: It is crucial that the electorate can understand who is speaking and, thus, to give proper weight to different speakers and messages when deciding how to vote.

That crucial right is denied to Americans wholesale because of an unprecedented dark money campaign of interference in our democracy.

You see it whenever it is election season. You are watching a television show and suddenly your TV screen is occupied by an advertisement that tells you that somebody is a bum, that somebody is no good, that somebody is terrible, that smears them. And at the end it says, ``This advertisement was brought to you by Americans for peace and puppies and prosperity,'' some completely imaginary group that was cooked up just to launch those advertisements, and whatever filth those advertisements contain is then disappeared with the end of that front group.

It is the political equivalent of toilet paper. You flush it when you are done with the filth, and whoever is behind it keeps their hands clean.

So we now have a tsunami of slime--as one writer put it--flowing through our country, and it is denying our citizens the most fundamental right they have when they vote, which is to know who the actors are and who is doing what to whom.

Well, in this bill is the DISCLOSE Act that would fix that. If you spend more than 10 grand in an election, you

have to report it. And I don't care how many shell corporations and donors trusts and phony 501(c)(4)s you line up to blockade your identity, our bill will get through it.

It superdrills through however many screens you put up, and the American public will, at last, once again, know who is really talking to them in their elections. Dark money takes away voters' rights to know who is talking to them and what is going on in their democracy. It is a fundamental right.

And, unfortunately, it doesn't end there because the other rights that my colleagues have so eloquently talked about--to get to the ballot, to be treated fairly at the ballot, to not be harassed on the way to the ballot, to be able to get a ballot mailed to you--the Republican efforts around the country to attack those rights, to suppress votes those ways, do you know how that is being done? It is being done with dark money.

We know it because they have been caught. It is not a matter of debate or dispute. When these enterprises are set up to deprive--what Reverend Warnock calls ``some people''--some people of their right to vote, and when the laws are done so that that is accomplished against, particularly, African-American voters with what one court called ``surgical precision,'' that is not happening at random. It is happening because enormous amounts of anonymous money are flowing into groups to make it happen.

And I will close with two examples. One is called Heritage Action, which is--the current state of the art on this is you set up a phony 501(c)(3) and a phony 501(c)(4), and they are a pair. And the money to the 501(c)(3) is deductible, and the political dirty work is done by the 501(c)(4).

And Heritage Foundation, which we have all heard about, is the 501(c)(3), and Heritage Action is its 501(c)(4). And Heritage Action was recorded talking to its secret donors.

And the person who was making the presentation to the secret donors in April of 2021 said:

We worked quietly with the . . . legislature. We got the

best practices to them. We helped draft the bills. We made

sure activists were calling the state legislators, getting

support, showing up at their public hearings, giving

testimony.

In some cases, we actually [drafted the bills] for them or

we have a sentinel--

Think about that word for a minute, a ``sentinel''--

on our behalf give them the model legislation so it has that

grassroots, from-the-bottom-up type of vibe.

She said: And we did this with ``little fanfare. Honestly, nobody even noticed. My team looked at each other and we're like, `It can't be that easy.'''

Well, the DISCLOSE Act will stop it from being that easy to have an out-of-state, dark money campaign take a State legislature and get them to pass voter suppression laws without the State legislatures even knowing who is behind them. And that is on tape. I am not making this up.

The other one that is always worth looking at are our friends at the Honest Elections Project, which actually doesn't exist. What exists is something called the 85 Fund. And the 85 Fund is allowed, under Virginia law, Senator Kaine, to have a fictitious name and to operate as if it were operating under its fictitious name.

And it has several, one is the Judicial Crisis Network, which we all know helped stock the Court with rightwing judges, but another one is the Honest Elections Project. The Honest Elections Project and the Honest Election Project Action are the pair that work on this.

Money has poured into this effort, and the Honest Elections Project has been smack in the middle of it. In 2012, 77 percent of its money came through donors' trusts, which is a great identity-laundering device for rightwing dark money; in 2013, 96 percent; in 2014, 88 percent; in 2015, 84 percent; in 2016, 82.6 percent; in 2017, 93 percent; in 2018, 88.8 percent; and in 2020, the year that the Honest Elections Project waged dark money voter suppression, the 85 Fund received over $45 million, identity laundered through donors' trusts. And much of that money came from one single $19 million contribution. Somebody wrote a $19 million check to suppress votes.

Folks, if we don't get to the bottom of this, we are going to have a real problem on our hands. And when we get to the bottom of this, the American public will be with us because they hate this stuff. You can be a Bernie Bro or you can be a Tea Partier and you can disagree on everything, and you agree that big dark money corruption has no place in American democracy.

This is the issue where Senator McConnell's political minions met with the Koch brothers' political minions, and they did whatever ``minioning'' they do together. And their conversation got out to Jane Mayer, who wrote about it, and this was the issue that they said to each other: We can't dirty this up. No matter how hard we try to put a good spin on this, voters hate dark money corruption. Our voters hate it just as much as their voters.

So this is our chance to fix this to take out the dark money behind the voter suppression effort in all these States.

This isn't happening, folks. It is being done. And we have got to pay attention to who is doing it. And when we do, we will restore that fundamental voting right of all Americans to know who is talking to them in their elections--to have ours be a democracy without masks, without subterfuge, and without dark money.

I yield the floor.

Gladly.

Thank you, Leader. Much appreciated.

Mr. President, with my distinguished colleague from Utah here, I would just--before I get to my remarks--suggest that there may be an exception to his rule that when a piece of legislation is only sponsored by Members of one party it can't be serious legislation; and, in my view, that would include climate legislation, where it has been extremely hard to get Republicans to cosponsor any serious climate bill. And I think that has nothing to do with the seriousness of the legislation and everything to do with the influence of the fossil fuel industry.

But that said, Mr. President, I am here to speak for the 11th time in my series discussing the scheme through which a bunch of big, anonymous donors captured our Supreme Court.

Today, I am going to talk about the Biden Supreme Court commission, which could have done a useful, even authoritative investigation of the scheme and all its terrible effects at the Court but which, regrettably, ended up as an exercise in ineffectual time-killing.

I have laid out the scheme in detail in earlier speeches in this series. In a nutshell, there is a very well-studied phenomenon of regulatory capture, sometimes called agency capture, through which big industries try to capture and control the regulatory agencies that are supposed to be policing them.

Well, in the same way, big, rightwing donor interests set out to capture the Supreme Court. And they did it. It worked. Now, the Court's 6-to-3, big-donor-chosen supermajority is delivering massive wins for those donor interests, and the American people can smell what Justice Sotomayor aptly characterized as the ``stench'' of a captured Court.

The problems of the Court are real, and they demand action. Enter the Court commission. Charged with thinking through solutions to the Court's many problems, the commission was perfectly positioned to report on the scheme and offer a blueprint for restoring the Court. But its final findings, released last month, offered instead what I have called faculty-lounge pabulum.

Sure, yes, they gestured toward the need for a code of ethics for the Justices, which makes sense because Supreme Court Justices have the lowest ethics standard of any top Federal official. But pointing that out is a little bit like pointing out a flat tire on a totaled car.

Consider the facts the commission ignored: A private, partisan, anonymously funded organization--the Federalist Society--handpicked the last three Supreme Court Justices. President Trump and his White House counsel admitted they had ``in-sourced''--their word--the Federalist Society to the White House to choose their nominees.

Senator Hatch, our former colleague, former chairman of the Judiciary, was asked if this role was outsourced to the Federalist Society, and he said, ``Damn right.''

No other democracy in the world has had such a ridiculous system for selecting Judges. That is bad. It gets worse. Anonymous donations helped rightwing front groups mount a $400 million push to capture and control the Court with zero transparency into who gave the money or-- more importantly--what matters they had before the Court whose Justices they were installing. That is disgraceful. And trust me, nobody spends $400 million without a motive.

There is more. Orchestrated flotillas of amici curiae, so-called friends of the court, funded by dark money, instruct the Court which way to rule, and they score virtually perfect success with the Republican appointees whom dark money ushered onto the Court.

The Court has even allowed peculiar fast lanes for dark money groups to speed cases to the Court for Justices to decide favored, politically helpful cases. In some cases, the Justices even invited the case to be rushed to the Court.

And this mess culminates in a notable, troubling statistical record. The Roberts Court delivered more than 80--80--partisan 5-to-4 decisions benefiting big Republican donor interests. The record in that category of decisions was 80 to 0, and that is before the Court's new 6-3, donor-chosen supermajority.

That is a lot for the Commission to leave out. The Commissioners can't claim they did not have fair notice.

Several of us wrote to the Commission to point out the scheme's telltale footprints. The Commission even received testimony about another pernicious issue: the Court's reliance on fake facts supplied by dark money amici curiae, especially in politically important cases for the rightwing donors like Shelby County and Citizens United. Somehow, none of this made it into the Commission's discussion.

Ducking all these facts was no small feat. As the Presiding Officer knows, one of the first exercises that law professors give their first- year law students is called issue spotting. You get a case, and you are asked to go through it and list all the potential issues it raises, spot the issues. Well, these issues all sat in plain view before the Commission. Yet the Commission flunked the rudimentary law school test of issue spotting.

Now, part of the problem was conflict of interest. Many members of this Commission argue before the Court and need its good will for their bread and butter. Others are law professors eager to plant their students in prestigious Supreme Court clerkships. For many members, rocking the boat could have unhappy consequences.

Clearly, though, some Commission members tried and failed to get these issues considered. Two members--retired Federal Judge Nancy Gertner from the Presiding Officer's home State and Harvard Law School's Laurence Tribe--had an op-ed ready for print the day the report was released. They called for a serious overhaul of the Court due to what they called ``the dubious legitimacy of the way some Justices were appointed,'' due to that stench of bipartisanship Justice Sotomayor has observed, and due to what they called the ``anti- egalitarian direction'' of the Court's political decisions on voting rights and dark money.''

Judge Gertner and Professor Tribe wrote:

Though fellow commissioners and others have voiced concern

about the impact that a report implicitly criticizing the

Supreme Court might have on judicial independence and thus

judicial legitimacy, we do not share that concern. Far worse

are the dangers that flow from ignoring the court's real

problems--of pretending conditions have not changed; of

insisting improper efforts to manipulate the court's

membership have not taken place; of looking the other way

when the court seeks to undo decades of precedent relied on

by half the population to shape their lives just because,

given the new majority, it has the votes.

Judge Gertner and Professor Tribe rightly warned that we can't afford more decisions like Shelby County and Citizens United, which would put the Court on what they called a ``one-way trip from a defective but still hopeful democracy toward a system in which the few corruptly govern the many, something between autocracy and oligarchy.''

Think about that. People distinguished enough to be appointed to this Commission by the President feel that this Court is on a one-way trip from America being a defective but still hopeful democracy toward a system in which the few corruptly govern the many.

They concluded by saying this:

Instead of serving as a guardrail against going over that

cliff, our Supreme Court has become an all-too-willing

accomplice--

Accomplice--

in that disaster.

All of that was kept out of the report.

The fact is evident that dark money political forces had a controlling and anonymous role in the makeup of the present Court. You can't dispute that. It is not surprising that the donor interests who accomplished that should want their due. As I said, you don't spend $400 million on this scheme for nothing.

Just a few days before the Commission unveiled the final draft of its report and right after oral arguments in the big abortion cases that are pending before the Court, there was a telling incident. FOX News host Laura Ingraham lost her cool, and she said on plain television the quiet part out loud. Here is what she said:

We have six Republican appointees on this court, after all

the money that has been raised, the Federalist Society, all

these big fat cat dinners--I'm sorry, I'm pissed about this--

Excuse me for that language, but it is a direct quote--

if this court with six justices cannot do the right thing

here . . . then I think it's time to do what Robert Bork said

we should do, which is to circumscribe the jurisdiction of

this court and if they want to blow it up, then that's the

way to change things finally.

Let's deconstruct that little outburst for a second.

First, it basically admits to the scheme: ``all the money that has been raised''--that is the $400 million I talked about; ``the Federalist Society''--that is the big donor-controlled turnstile for rightwing advancement to the Supreme Court; and ``all these big fat cat dinners''--wow. I would love to know more about that. We do know that Justices have taken undisclosed vacations in the company of people with interests before the Court, so what is a little ``big fat cat dinner'' among friends, huh?

Second, that little outburst is a flat-out threat to the Court: Decide the big abortion cases the way we want, the six of you, or we ``circumscribe the jurisdiction of this court''; ``blow it up''; ``change things finally.''

There is a particularly thin-skinned Federalist Society Justice who has been giving speeches condemning an imaginary threat I supposedly made to ``bully'' the Court in a brief maybe read by a couple of hundred people. It didn't actually happen that way, but never mind. Like I said, he is particularly thin-skinned.

But now here comes this plain threat: ``circumscribe the jurisdiction of this court''; ``blow it up''; ``change things finally'' if we don't get the outcome we deserve after all of our money spent through the Federalist Society.

So I am waiting to see what reaction from this Justice there is when this real threat comes, but from the rightwing FOX News channel. The FOX News outburst was particularly rash and indiscreet, but the Republican Justices get marching orders like this all the time at the fat-cat dinners, on junkets with the rightwing donor class, and from the orchestrated flotillas of dark money amici curiae that encircle the Court for big cases launched by the big donors.

The Justices are constantly reminded of who propelled them to the Court and what they are supposed to deliver. And the truth is, the record reveals, the statistics make plain the Republican Justices do deliver over and over and over again--more than 80 partisan wins for scheme donors in those 5-to-4--and now we can expect 6-to-3--partisan decisions.

So the Biden Court Commission missed its moment. It ducked all of this. So on we must go through the stench of partisan capture of the Court, and on I will go exposing the scheme that did it.

To be continued.

I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, I am here on the floor to ask for some courtesy for a pair of nominees. These are nominees to the Court of Federal Claims, which is the court to which citizens can come with claims against the Federal Government.

In the Court of Federal Claims, the Federal Government is the defendant, and these two individuals are in an enormous traffic jam that our colleagues have created for nominees. At the moment, I am told we have 159 nominees, out of committee, on the Executive Calendar, backed up on the Senate floor--159.

I am on the Judiciary Committee. These two are judges. They are for the Court of Federal Claims. This is not a partisan thing; this is about letting the Court of Federal Claims do its work.

Both of them are extremely well qualified; neither is partisan. Both were voice voted out of the Judiciary Committee, and I would hope, just as a matter of courtesy and common decency, we could agree tonight to move them forward.

Now, one of them is named Armando Bonilla. He served as the counsel to the Marshals Service. He served as counsel to the Deputy Attorney General.

He served, actually, as Associate Deputy Attorney General. In the Department of Justice it is not an easy thing to move up from being counsel to the Marshals Service to being counsel to the DAG, to being Associate DAG. So that is a pretty impressive record.

Before that, as a trial attorney, he had served in the Public Integrity Section of the Department, in the asset forfeiture and money laundering section, bringing those cases, and in the civil side in the Commercial Litigation Division.

So he has the trial qualifications you would want. He has the experience from the government side that you would want. He got a voice vote out of committee. And if that is not enough, he is a graduate from West Virginia University.

So he is, I think, a very well-rounded individual who would serve well in the Court of Federal Claims.

Also, I will be asking to confirm Carolyn Lerner, who brings her own superb qualifications to this position as well. She is, right now, the chief circuit mediator for the Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit. So she deals with litigation conflicts all the time. She obviously is viewed with considerable regard by the court who made her their chief circuit mediator.

She served for many years in private practice. So she would be very familiar with the private practice of individuals who come before the Court of Federal Claims. Again, private person versus Federal Government is what that court's business is. And she even taught law.

So Carolyn Lerner and Armando Bonilla are both very well qualified, and both came out of the Judiciary Committee with voice votes, which means they both had bipartisan support, and this is an important court to proceed with.

Now, what has happened here and the reason we are now up to 159 backed-up nominees for executive and judicial positions is that our colleagues on the other side are insisting on cloture for essentially almost every individual who comes through, and that eats up time on the Senate floor and slows things down and creates a traffic jam. It is like you are driving on Highway 95 and you pull into the middle lane and drive 25 miles an hour. You are going to jam up traffic behind you. And that is what our friends are doing. They are jamming up traffic.

I think there are certain Members of the other party who would like to see the Biden administration not be able to get his team in place just for partisan reasons.

So when Donald Trump came in, in his first year, he was obviously not popular with us on our side, and he had some pretty appalling appointments. But even in that very hostile environment, the Republican leader only had to file cloture for 65 appointees--65 in that first year. In President Biden's year, we are already at 127. So the cloture rate has doubled from even that very difficult, challenging year when Trump first came in.

And I see my friend from Alaska here. So I will just review the bidding. We have 159 nominees backed up on the Senate floor who are all out of committee, all ready for votes, many of whom are coming out of committee by voice votes with big bipartisan majorities. Two of them are the individuals whom I am going to be asking unanimous consent to confirm tonight, Armando Bonilla and Carolyn Lerner.

My friend from Alaska served in the Department of Justice. So he knows that it ain't nothing to be counsel to the Marshals Service and then counsel for the DAG and then Associate DAG. That is a really impressive climb through the top ranks of the Department--and to have served as a trial attorney in the Public Integrity Section and in the asset forfeiture and money laundering section and in the civil side in complex commercial litigation. That is a very impressive resume.

That is ditto for Ms. Lerner, who has been chosen to be the chief circuit mediator for the DC Circuit Court of Appeals. That is a pretty impressive credential all on its own.

So what I would like to do in order to get these two through the traffic jam and on to the Court of Federal Claims, where their presence is needed, is to ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to executive session to consider their nominations, which are Executive Calendar Nos. 489 and 490; and, further, that the nominations be confirmed, that the motions to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table with no intervening action or debate; that no further motions be in order to the nominations; that any related statements be printed in the Record; that the President be immediately notified of the Senate's action; and that the Senate then resume legislative session.

In the spirit of ``what goes around comes around,'' let me just say that the First Circuit is a good deal smaller than the Ninth Circuit. My State of Rhode Island is in the First Circuit. We didn't have many vacancies during the Trump administration on the First Circuit, and the only one we had was not filled.

But I am not aware of any Member on our side being offered to meet with any Trump judicial nominee at the Circuit Court level. And indeed--indeed--those of us who are on the Judiciary Committee didn't even get our 5 or 7 minutes of time in the hearing with Trump Circuit Court nominees because the Trump administration worked out some kind of a deal that their nominees could be put on the same panel--something that had only been done before with the agreement of both parties.

So they would bring in their Circuit Court nominees, and you still got your 5 minutes or your 7 minutes. But now there are two or three on the panel. You get like 1 minute each.

So I just have to say that I like my friend from Alaska and we do work well together. But when I couldn't get 5 or 7 minutes in the committee in the hearing with a Circuit Court nominee, it is hard for me to feel a great sense of outrage that somebody not on the committee doesn't get a special private meeting with judges. We never got special private meetings with judges. We didn't even get our time with the judges in the hearing because they sandwiched a bunch of them on the same panel in our same 5 to 7 minutes.

So what I would like to do is to propose, since the objection has been made to confirming them tonight, that at least we might consider moving through the cloture step so that a vote can be scheduled and everybody can have their vote one way or the other.

So my first unanimous consent request would have confirmed them, and a call could have gone out to them and to their families tonight saying: The holds are off. Your life is back in order. You can go to the job you have been nominated for.

And all would have been well.

There has been an objection to that. So what I would like to do is simply ask that they be allowed to tee up for a vote when scheduled, without having to pursue the cloture path.

So I ask unanimous consent that, notwithstanding rule XXII, if applicable, at a time to be determined by the majority leader in consultation with the Republican leader--in consultation with the Republican leader--the Senate proceed to executive session to consider the following nominations: Again, Executive Calendar Nos. 489 and 490; and that there be 10 minutes of debate, equally divided in the usual form, on the nominations, en bloc; that upon the use or yielding back of time, the Senate proceed to vote without intervening action or debate on the nominations in the order listed; that if the nominations are confirmed, the motions to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table with no intervening action or debate; that no further motions be in order regarding the nominations; and that the President be immediately notified of the Senate's action.

Again, this would not confirm them tonight. Their families will not get this call. But they are freed from our little Executive Calendar traffic jam. But it would at least put them on a pathway toward confirmation.

Mr. President, I think we have concluded this matter for the evening, and I am sorry that it has ended this way because Mr. Bonilla and Ms. Lerner are essentially collateral damage in a fight that does not involve the Court of Federal Claims at all. This involves a dispute between the Senator from Alaska and the White House, whom I do not direct and whom I do not speak for.

Instead of keeping it within the confines of the Ninth Circuit, it has now spilled over to the Court of Federal Claims, and these two completely unrelated individuals are continuing to have their lives interfered with by being kept in the traffic jam for a principle that, in my view, was never followed in the previous administration. I mean, for Pete's sake, if they were not going to even let us have our official time with a circuit court judge, the idea that we were going to get private meetings is, I think, imaginative in the extreme.

I just regret that it has come to this pass. I regret that we are at 159 obstructed nominees backed up. I regret that we have been forced to file cloture twice as much as that first group of Trump's nominees, in his first year--and there were some real beauties there, I have got to tell you.

With that, I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Madam President, it is a pleasure, and I appreciate my friend, Senator Blunt.

I am here today to rise for the 10th time to talk about the rightwing scheme to capture our Supreme Court.

As the Presiding Officer knows, I have delivered a lot of speeches on the Senate floor, and a majority of them--279 of them, to be precise-- addressed climate change. These were my ``Time to Wake Up'' speeches, many of which focused on the network of phony front groups and trade associations used by the fossil fuel industry to block any meaningful climate legislation.

That vast web of climate denial and climate obstruction is one of the main reasons that we are in the climate crisis we face today. I am here today to report that there is common technique behind that smelly climate denial operation and the rightwing donor operation to capture the Court.

They both rely on massive amounts of dark money. They both rely on a small number of ultrawealthy donors who supply that dark money. And they both rely on an armada of front groups and phony corporate entities, funded by those big donors, to hide their hands. At this point, it is, actually, depressingly, familiar.

But it is worse than just common technique. It is the same entities: the Koch operation, Americans for Prosperity, DonorsTrust, the Bradley Foundation, the Scaife Foundation, the Competitive Enterprise Institute, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. The list goes on and on and on. These are the exact same players on both sides of the operation--on the climate-denying web and on the Court-capturing scheme.

My colleagues and I showed in a number of Web of Denial climate speeches how a few ultrawealthy, rightwing foundations, corporate trade groups, and so-called donor-advised funds supply the bulk of the dark money for modern-day climate denial.

Big oil companies used to do that directly, but they got burned and learned that it is bad for their public image, and I suspect they are hiding now behind those anonymizing entities and trade groups.

The big funding guns included the Koch network; the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation; the Searle Freedom Trust; the Sarah Scaife Foundation; Donors Capital; and DonorsTrust, which has been called the rightwing's ``dark money ATM.''

This is the Web of Denial graphic that we used in many of those Web of Denial speeches, and you will see these groups turning up over and over again. They are central in the web of climate denial.

Now, if you look at the big funders behind the scheme to capture the Court, you will see this--in my last scheme speech, I talked about the flotillas of amici curiae--or ``friends of the court''--who come in and orchestrate phalanxes to file briefs for the rightwing in cases of significance to the scheme's big donors. Well, it turns out that those funders also inhabit the web of denial.

This is an appendix that I filed in the case of Seila Law v. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau--a case that was the rightwing's shot at weakening a consumer watchdog agency they hate. This appendix--a first of its kind in the Supreme Court, which was attached to my amicus brief--looked at some of the other amici who had filed briefs and cross-referenced where their funding had come from.

My point then was that the Court was not told that there was this huge overlap of funding. Each brief came in as if it were independent rather than part of an orchestrated cascade. So nearly every one of these groups is part of the web of denial: DonorsTrust, Donors Capital, the Charles Koch Foundation, the Sarah Scaife Foundation, the Bradley Foundation, the Searle Foundation.

But the overlay isn't just with the phony amicus flotillas that are orchestrated up at the Supreme Court; it is right in the cases themselves. Take the notorious anti-labor cases of Friedrichs and Janus. According to a trove of documents uncovered in 2016, legal groups funded by the Bradley Foundation brought those cases. They weren't just amici filing briefs; they were the litigating law group in those cases. The law group went out and found the plaintiffs-- plaintiffs of convenience, and they paid the plaintiffs' legal expenses. Those same donors, Bradley has shown in this, funded that whole boatload of amici who came in to support their also-funded group that was bringing the case on behalf of a nominal plaintiff. By the way, they funded a flotilla of amici in Janus. Seventeen Supreme Court amicus briefs came from groups funded by DonorsTrust, Donors Capital, and Bradley.

The front groups in those labor cases actually played a little bit of switcheroo amongst themselves. Think of the pea-and-shell game. The group that brought the case in Friedrichs became an amicus supporting the plaintiff in Janus. The group that brought the case in Janus had been an amicus supporting the plaintiff in Friedrichs. All of those groups--the ones that brought the two cases and the groups that chimed in as amici--were funded by the same organizations. It is a little bit like that pea-and-shell game except, if you know the parties, it is being played with transparent shells; but for some reason, the Court is incapable of noticing this scheme that is being pulled in plain view, in their presence.

Now, some front groups are invented shells--purpose built--just to hide whoever is behind them. Others are preexisting, captured, and co- opted. The key common characteristic, whether invented or captured and co-opted, is that they got to hide the donors. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce is the easy example of a captured and co-opted group.

According to the watchdog group InfluenceMap, the Chamber is one of the biggest climate obstructors in Washington.

Why?

The Chamber has lots of members who don't support climate obstruction, but someone--someone--gave the Chamber enough money to become a worst climate obstructor. And guess what. The Chamber is also a major player in the scheme. It is the biggest filer of scheme amicus briefs; it campaigned hard for all three of Trump's dark money-chosen Supreme Court Justices; and way back, it commissioned the Lewis Powell memo that launched the entire scheme.

Other major front groups serving both the web and the scheme include the Heritage Foundation, the Cato Institute, and the Competitive Enterprise.

Again, the common thread?

They all hide the donors so they can provide that vital screening, anonymizing function, which is key to the donors because they have to hide their identities and their motives in order to do their dark work.

On the scheme side, each one of these groups gets gobs of scheme dark money, helps hatch hot-house legal theories to present to scheme Justices, helps locate plaintiffs of convenience to bring cases for and/or joins the orchestrated flotillas of scheme amicus briefs. You see the same players over and over and over again, and how the Court manages not to notice or be curious is a mystery.

On the web side, each is also a central node in the web of denial. Here, for instance, is the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation. Here is the Donors Trust, Donors Capital. Here is Koch-affiliated foundations. Here is Searle Freedom Trust. Here is the Americans for Prosperity Foundation. These groups pretty notoriously represent the interests of Big Business and rightwing donors, so you at least know that much, if not the specific identity of who is funding the brief. But some of the web-scheme overlay gets a little bit harder to unravel, so let's drill into one: the Independent Women's Forum.

This group was founded by rightwing donors in the very early days of the scheme to prop up the troubled nomination of Justice Thomas. It has accepted millions of dollars from a who's who of scheme and web-of- denial donors--Bradley, Scaife, Koch, Donors Trust. Its stated mission is to ``improve the lives of Americans by increasing the number of women who value free markets and personal liberty,'' but its real mission is to pop up anytime its dark money donors want to trot out a front group purporting to represent women. In practice, that means they pop up everywhere. They popped up in a pending Second Amendment case before the Court. They popped up in the Americans for Prosperity Foundation case that granted a constitutional right to dark money, signed off on by the dark money Justices. They popped up in the Little Sisters of the Poor contraception case. They popped up in a challenge to the EPA's authority to regulate greenhouse gases.

The Independent Women's Forum's work in that EPA case brings the overlay between the web and the scheme into focus.

In 2016, the forum joined the dark money amicus flotilla asking the Supreme Court to strike down the EPA's Clean Power Plan, along with other web-scheme front groups like the Competitive Enterprise Institute, the Texas Public Policy Institute, and other groups opposing the EPA. These parties asked the Robert Court to stop the Clean Power Plan before it went into effect. Just days before Antonin Scalia died and their 5-to-4 majority evaporated, the Republican Justices obliged.

This was ``shadow docket'' work, for those of you following the Texas abortion case ``shadow docket'' fiasco.

In the EPA case, for the first time, the Court stepped in to stay a regulation before it went into effect and before the lower court had a chance to weigh in.

By the way, it was a purely partisan decision, with all the Republicans behind it and none of the other Justices.

Fast-forward to today. The Trump administration replaced the Clean Power Plan in 2018 with a Trump do-nothing, polluter-friendly rule. When the Biden administration came in, it completely abandoned the Trump do-nothing, polluter-friendly rule, so right now, there is actually no regulation to challenge. But the scheme has replenished its dark money Court and supercharged it with a sixth Justice.

They are out to disable what they call the administrative state for the sake of their big donors, so they sued again, backed by familiar organizations--the Competitive Enterprise Institute, the Texas Public Policy Institute, and other web-scheme groups--to ask, as they put it in their brief, that the Court ``finish what it started when it stayed the [Clean Power Plan].''

There is no regulation to challenge. Yet the Republicans on the Court took the case--so much for the ``case or controversy'' principle of the Constitution. Now the Court, I guess, is going to make decisions based on what might happen. Where I come from, that is called an advisory opinion, which our Court is not supposed to do under the separation of powers. But the Federalist Society six on the Court are out for big game. The prize is to bring down the ``regulatory state'' altogether, and where better than where it most helps the fossil fuel industry--the

industry lurking behind this web of denial and likely also working behind the dark money that put the last Justices on the Court and likely also lurking behind the dark money millions that fund the Republican election groups.

This Clean Power Plan challenge opens an avenue for scheme-appointed Justices to delight the donors behind both the scheme and the web. In the short term, it would hobble the EPA's ability to combat climate change--something very much sought by vested interests in the fossil fuel industry. Over the long term, it would accomplish rightwing donors' goal of kneecapping Federal Agency power across the board.

For Donors Trust, the Chamber of Commerce, the Independent Women's Forum, and dozens of other groups that link the web and the scheme, winning cases like this one means big wins for their big secret donors.

To go back to my early speeches about the scheme, they are following Lewis Powell's advice years ago to seize what he called the ``most important instrument for social, economic, and political change''--the Federal judiciary--and to control it with what he called ``an activist- minded Supreme Court.'' The scheme has captured the Court. The scheme's captured Court will deliver for the web. It is the same donors and organizations behind both, and it has got to be cleaned up because this is not how courts are supposed to work.

To be continued.

I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, I just want to thank my colleague Senator Cotton and my chairman Senator Durbin for the way in which that resolved itself. For a minute, we actually feel like a Senate here.

Madam President, I rise today to honor Janet Coit, one of Rhode Island's most respected environmental advocates. Ms. Coit is the newly appointed Assistant Administrator for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's National Marine Fisheries Service. She joined NOAA after a decade of committed service leading the Rhode Island Department of Environmental Management under three Governors.

After graduating from Dartmouth College and Stanford Law School, where Ms. Coit was a member of the Environmental Law Journal, she served as counsel to the U.S. Senate Committee on the Environment and Public Works. She went on to serve as counsel and environmental coordinator for the late Senator John Chafee and, subsequently, his son Senator Lincoln Chafee.

Ms. Coit then returned to Rhode Island and began a decade of work as the State director for the Nature Conservancy, where she oversaw some of the State's largest land conservation projects.

Ms. Coit went on to be appointed by Governor Lincoln Chafee to serve as director of the Rhode Island Department of Environmental Management. Governors Raimondo and McKee wisely kept her in that position. Her legacy at DEM includes streamlined permitting processes, new opportunities for families to connect with nature, and improved customer service. As the longest serving chief executive in DEM's history, she focused on public parks, promoting local food systems, Rhode Island's fishing and shellfish industries, and climate solutions. She seized opportunities to coordinate regional efforts, including addressing equity and justice issues, improving water quality, managing PFAS contamination, and fighting the climate crisis. In this capacity, she also served as chair of the Rhode Island Executive Climate Change Coordinating Council and on the board of directors for the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative. She has received numerous awards for her outstanding contributions at DEM.

In June, the Biden-Harris administration appointed Ms. Coit to lead NOAA Fisheries, where she oversees fisheries management, protected species, and fisheries habitat conservation. She also serves as the Acting Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Oceans and Atmosphere and Deputy Administrator, supporting and managing NOAA's coastal and marine programs.

We are fortunate that exceptional people like Ms. Coit choose to dedicate their careers to public service. I am proud to recognize her today and thank her for her many contributions to the State of Rhode Island and the Nation.

Madam President, I rise today to honor an accomplished policymaker, a protector of environmental and public health, and my State representative: Lauren Carson. Representative Carson represents Rhode Island's 75th district and has a long history of working on issues related to sea level rise, reducing waste, and protecting the health and safety of Rhode Islanders.

Representative Carson holds a bachelor's degree from Ramapo College and two master's degrees from the University of Rhode Island. She is a businessowner and an environmental advocate who worked for several years with Clean Water Action.

Representative Carson also served her community through several organizations, including the advisory board of the Alliance for a Livable Newport, the Newport Energy and Environment Commission, the Rhode Island Green Infrastructure Coalition, and the Environmental Council of Rhode Island.

In 2014, Representative Carson successfully ran for a seat in the State legislature. At the statehouse, she has moved policy forward to protect Rhode Island's environment. Among many other accomplishments, Ms. Carson created and led a commission on the effects of rising seas. She introduced a bill that created a uniform statewide process for permitting solar panel installations. She cosponsored legislation to phase out polluting cesspools. Earlier this year, she was appointed as, deputy majority leader, a role which she used to steward the 2021 Act on Climate into law, setting statewide net-zero goals for 2050 across all sectors. She coleads the Aquidneck Island Climate Caucus to give voice to the importance of preventing and preparing for a warmer world and focus the island's efforts on sea level rise.

I am glad to recognize Representative Carson's dedicated service and to share my appreciation for all of her contributions to our State and our environment.

Madam President, I rise today to honor one of Rhode Island's most respected oceans and environmental policymakers, who happens to also be my State Senator, Dawn Euer. All of us whom have worked with Senator Euer recognize her deep commitment to Rhode Island and to safeguarding the future of the planet by fighting the climate crisis.

Senator Euer earned a law degree from Roger Williams University. While in law school, she served as a legal intern in my office, where I saw firsthand her dedication to public service and to using the law to better the lives of others.

Senator Euer began her political career as an activist and organizer. She was instrumental in the fight to make gay marriage the law of the land in Rhode Island.

Senator Euer has served on the boards of the Environmental Justice League of Rhode Island and Bike Newport. She has also advised the Newport City Council on energy efficiency, renewables, sustainable planning, and other environmental matters.

In 2017, Senator Euer successfully ran to represent parts of Newport and Jamestown in the Rhode Island State Senate. Running in a district on the front lines of climate change and sea level rise, Senator Euer advocated for substantial investments in renewable energy and resiliency. In the last legislative session, Senator Euer delivered on that promise in a big way. She succeeded in passing the Act on Climate bill, the most comprehensive climate legislation in State history. As the lead sponsor, Senator Euer developed an actionable plan to create mandatory and enforceable emissions reduction goals that chart a course to a safer future. With that legislative victory in hand, Senator Euer recently traveled to COP26 in Glasgow to help show the world that American climate leadership is back.

For my friend Senator Euer's tireless efforts in championing the 2021 Act on Climate and for all of her hard work on behalf of the people of Newport and Jamestown, I stand today to recognize her.

Madam President, I rise today to honor Meg Kerr, a staunch advocate for the environmental movement. Ms. Kerr retired earlier this year after a successful career of climate leadership and service to the State of Rhode Island.

After graduating from Brown University and the University of North Carolina, Ms. Kerr began the early part of her career as a scientist. She worked for the Environmental Protection Agency across North Carolina, Virginia, and Washington, D.C., where she partnered with States to standardize water quality reporting aligned with the Clean Water Act.

Ms. Kerr then moved back to Rhode Island and quickly established herself as a prominent advocate for the environment, taking on roles at the Rhode Island Rivers Council, the Narragansett Bay Estuary Program, and Clean Water Action. Ms. Kerr closed out her impressive career as the Audubon Society of Rhode Island's Senior Director of Policy.

To add to the list of her accomplishments, Ms. Kerr was a founder of the Rhode Island Green Infrastructure Coalition and helped launch the Providence Stormwater Innovation Center. She also helped found the annual Land and Water Conservation Summit that brought together hundreds of environmentalists from the State and region for over a decade. Ms. Kerr is passionate about pollinators, as demonstrated by her work organizing the Bee Rally to bring attention to the threats faced by our beloved bugs.

Ms. Kerr is a fierce and respected leader for the environment and a familiar face at the Rhode Island statehouse. Her expertise, mentorship of others, and ability to get things done for Rhode Island's environmental community has made a real mark on our State. I am proud to recognize her service and thank her for all she has done to protect our environment.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to legislative session and be in a period of morning business, with Senators permitted to speak therein for up to 10 minutes each, with the exception of this speaker, who will speak for, probably, more like 20 minutes.

Mr. President, I rise today for now the ninth time to unmask the rightwing, dark money scheme to capture our Supreme Court. I say ``capture'' in the sense of regulatory capture, an Agency capture-- a well-known phenomenon.

Today, I turn to an important tool of the scheme's apparatus: the orchestrated amicus curiae brief.

So, first things first, amicus--or friend of the court--briefs are an important instrument in our judicial system. They help those who aren't parties to a case to share their expertise, insight, or advocacy with the Court. I file them myself. ``Friend of the court'' briefs are necessary and useful, usually.

However, in recent years, the Court has had a lot more friends than it used to. Amici filed 781 briefs in the 2014 Supreme Court term--a more than 800-percent increase from the 1950s and a 95-percent increase just from 1995. In the 2010 term, 715 amicus briefs were filed in 78 cases. By 2019, that number had swelled to 911 briefs in just 57 cases. The average number of briefs per argued case almost doubled--from 9 in 2010 to 16 in 2019.

There is another odd feature to this uptick of amicus briefs. Most of the time, you file an amicus brief when the Justices have taken a case and are poised to actually decide the outcome of that case, at the so- called merits stage of the case, which makes sense because this is when the rulings actually become law. But these days, more and more amici arrive when the Court considers whether to take up the case, when the Justices are deciding whether to grant certiorari, or cert. Between 1982 and 2014, the percentage of petitions with at least one cert-stage amicus more than doubled.

Justices pay attention to amicus briefs. The Court cited amicus briefs 606 times in 417 opinions from 2008 to 2013--far more than in the past. These briefs don't always add value, and top appellate judges are beginning to sound that alarm.

Seventh Circuit Judge Michael Scudder said in 2020: ``Too many amicus briefs do not even pretend to offer value and instead merely repeat . . . a party's position'' and ``serve only as a show of hands on what interest groups are rooting for what outcome.''

OK. So what does this have to do with the scheme?

Well, what happens if the Justices whom dark money forces ushered onto the Court are looking for that show of hands?

I doubt it is just a coincidence that the rightwing donor machine that set out to capture the Court has also kicked into gear flotillas of amici that

inundate the Court with briefs, signaling their desire for a certain outcome--a showing of hands that is orchestrated.

Now, the scheme is, by design, hard to make out. It runs on anonymous dark money for a reason. It works through front groups, some with multiple fictitious names. It works hard and spends plenty to hide its hand. Still, look carefully, and the scheme's hand is there to see. Like eddies swirling the water's surface as a creature moves beneath, signs of rightwing donor influence swirl around the Court.

One of the strongest signs is that there is a pattern--a pattern of success when orchestrated flotillas of dark money amici, funded by a small number of wealthy rightwing donors, show up: they win. This Court, the Court that dark money built, delivers in their favor. Exhibit A is probably the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, where the idea for this scheme first bubble up years ago with the Powell memo.

Over the past 15 years or so, the chamber has filed more amicus briefs at the Supreme Court than almost anyone else and has gotten its preferred result 70 percent of the time. And no one knows what company or what interest the chamber may be fronting for. That is hidden from the Court and from the other parties.

The chamber can even hide if one of its members wrote or funded the chamber's amicus brief in that member's own case. So the members of the party and the chamber on behalf of the member file an amicus brief, and no one is the wiser.

So it is no surprise that the chamber is trying very hard to block the Judicial Conference from bringing more transparency and daylight into the funding of these amicus briefs.

It is not just the chamber in this deep racket here. If you take the recent anti-union cases--Janus v. AFSCME, Cedar Point Nursery v. Hassid, and Freidrichs v. California Teachers Association, each case drew 10 or more amicus filers connected to these scheme donors.

In both Freidrichs and Janus, scheme megadonor the Bradley Foundation funded the law groups representing the anti-union plaintiffs and also funded a dozen supporting amici. The front groups even swapped seats with a group representing plaintiffs in one case, turning up as an amicus in the other case and vice versa. It is a front-group, pea-and- shell game that the Court, for some reason, indulges. It is no surprise that all of these cases delivered big wins for corporate interests out to weaken organized labor.

Or you could look at the scheme's attack on the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. The CFPB has long been a target of rightwing interests. The Center for Media and Democracy reported that 16--16-- rightwing foundations, including the Bradley Foundation and Donors Trust, had donated almost $70 million to 11 amici who opposed the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

I did a brief in that case, an amicus brief of my own, and I put this graphic in my amicus brief as an appendix to show the Court the common funding of all of these groups that purported to come in as independent, unassociated amicus filers.

So here are the donors across the top--Donors Trust, Bradley Foundation, Scaife Foundation, Searle Trust, Charles Koch Foundation, Kirby Foundation, and the DONNA Foundation--and here are the groups that filed briefs. Every single one got money from Donors Trust, which is called the Koch brothers' ATM. It is the entity that hides who the real donor is, and it just shows up as Donors Trust.

Here is the Bradley Foundation--all but one, two, three. Here is the Scaife Foundation--all but one, two, three, four, five, and so on. So there is an enormous amount of overlap that I was able to figure out, as pointed out in my brief, and then the Center for Media and Democracy came through with a more complete report and did an even better job of researching that.

So remember from my previous speeches how it was the Federalist Society that was home to the dark money turnstile that selected all three of Trump's Supreme Court appointees. Eleven amici supporting the challenge to the CFPB received funding from entities that also funded the Federalist Society. So it is a pea-and-shell game of funded amici with a lot of shells.

And then there is the biggest scheme case of them all. You might call it the scheme-a-palooza. The case was called Americans for Prosperity Foundation v. Bonta. In this case, more than 50 dark money organizations filed amicus briefs at the cert stage, when the question is, Do we take the case, before it is even being argued on the merits? Fifty dark money groups appeared at the cert stage, and another 45 turned up at the merit stage, all to support the Americans for Prosperity Foundation, which you will recognize as the Koch-backed twin to Americans for Prosperity, which is the front group at the heart of the Koch brothers' political operation. It is the center of the rightwing political dark money web.

Essentially, the Americans for Prosperity Foundation and Americans for Prosperity are the same organization. In current, state-of-the-art, dark money politics, you twin a 501(c)(3) and a 501(c)(4) and work them as a pair.

Sure enough, if you look at Americans for Prosperity and Americans for Prosperity Foundation, they share quite a lot. They share the exact same address, for instance: 1310 North Courthouse Road, Suite 700, Arlington, VA. They share the same CEO. They share the same senior vice president of grassroots in Americans for Prosperity and senior vice president for State operations in Americans for Prosperity Foundation. They share the same senior vice president of policy. They share the same chairman of the board. They share the same president. If you were to do a piercing of the corporate veil analysis, you would be hard- pressed to show that these are not essentially the same organization.

And that armada of amici that came into the Americans for Prosperity Foundation case, all of them received funding from the Koch political network or the Koch identity laundering group, Donors Trust.

At least eleven prominent rightwing groups gave close to $222 million, spread across 69 of those amici who came in to support their fellow Americans for Prosperity Foundation.

If the little flotillas of a dozen or so in the CFPB case and in the anti-labor cases were sending a signal to the Court, this turnout was a screaming alarm--a megaphone--in the Court's face.

So what made the AFPF case such a big deal for the scheme? Well, this case gave ``the Court that dark money built'' an opportunity to do something that dark money donors desperately wanted. It gave the Court the opportunity to create for the dark money donors a new constitutional right--a new constitutional right to dark money, the essential political weapon for the scheme. And the Court did it. The Republican Justices, six to three, did it.

``The Court that dark money built'' struck down a State rule requiring limited disclosure of nonprofit donor information from a very political nonprofit and went on to cast a shadow of doubt on the constitutionality of disclosure requirements of any kind.

The amicus mischief at the Court continues. Look at the gun case before the Court right now, New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen. This case is priority No. 1 for the NRA and its gun industry backers. It has been a centerpiece of the scheme for a very long time to have the Court create gun rights that even a Republican Congress won't give to the firearms industry. So in this case, the amicus signal flags are flying.

Sixty-five organizations filed briefs supporting the NRA affiliate that brought the challenge. At least 13 of those groups have ties to the scheme's dark money funding network.

Several amici are arms of other amici; that is, the fundraising or lobbying arm of an organization that itself also filed a brief in the case. At least five amici are NRA affiliates, and they were joined by the NRA's ``Civil Rights Defense Fund.'' And, believe it or not, thanks to leaks by Russian hackers, we have seen that the NRA paid a lawyer at one of the amicus groups hundreds of thousands of dollars to file pro- NRA briefs in this case, none of which was disclosed to the Court, none of which was disclosed to the parties, none of which was disclosed to the public. It took Russian hackers to find out that the NRA was funneling money to an amicus for a brief.

Well, it seems like the Justices got the signal from all of those dark-

money-funded amici. Based on questioning from the Court Republicans at oral argument, this case looks almost certain to go in the scheme's favor.

Pause to consider what this means. The NRA basically cloned itself to amplify its voice before the Court, just as other scheme front groups have done in other cases, in wave upon orchestrated wave of amicus briefs, washing into the cases that matter to the scheme's big donors.

And when those little orchestrated flotillas or the big orchestrated armadas show up at the Court to signal what they want, they always get what they want from the dark money majority at the Court--always. Maybe not all they want always--some groups ask for more than others. Some signal where they want the Court to go in future cases, not just what they want in this case. But the response from the Republicans on ``the Court that dark money built'' is clear. They heed the dark money signals every single time.

Our Supreme Court is awash in dark money influence, with flotillas of dark-money-funded front groups--front groups that don't bother to ``offer value,'' that aren't even real, in the sense that they have no real business or function, that exist merely to signal their donors' desired outcomes, while hiding their donors' identities.

It is an armada of fakery that the court indulges. This fakery lets a small, wealthy, donor elite manufacture sham allies to get themselves a bigger say at the Supreme Court than everyone else. They are out to get the Court to do stuff for them that Americans don't want and that Congress won't vote for. But with a captured Court, they can get what they want, and they do.

The American people may not be able to see all of the rot, but they can see enough to know that something is rotten over there across First Street at that Court. We must set it right.

To be continued.

Mr. President, as if in executive session, I ask unanimous consent that the injunction of secrecy be removed from the following treaty transmitted to the Senate on November 16, 2021, by the President of the United States: Amendment to Montreal Protocol ``Kigali Amendment,'' Treaty Document No. 117-1. I further ask that the treaty be considered as having been read the first time; that it be referred, with accompanying papers, to the Committee on Foreign Relations and ordered to be printed; and that the President's message be printed in the Record.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to executive session to consider the following nominations en bloc: Calendar Nos. 466, 509, and 358; that the Senate vote on the nominations en bloc without intervening action or debate; the motions to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table with no intervening action or debate; that any statements related to the nominations be printed in the Record; that the President be immediately notified of the Senate's action, and the Senate resume legislative session.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate now proceed to the consideration of S. Res. 449, submitted earlier today.

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