Sheldon Whitehouse

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent, on behalf of Senator Hirono, that Sitara Kedilaya be granted floor privileges until November 30, 2023.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. In order to place the bills on the calendar under the provisions of rule XIV, I would object to further proceeding en bloc.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I understand there are two bills at the desk due for a second reading en bloc.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that when the Senate completes its business today, it stand adjourned until 10 a.m. on Wednesday, November 8; that following the prayer and pledge, the Journal of proceedings be approved to date, the morning hour be deemed expired, 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 Reyes nomination postcloture; further, that all time on the nomination be considered expired at 11:30 a.m. and that if cloture has been invoked on the Burrows nomination, all time be considered expired at 2:20 p.m. and that if cloture has been invoked on the McMillion nomination, the vote on confirmation be at a time to be determined by the majority leader in consultation with the Republican leader; further, that notwithstanding rule XXII, following the cloture vote on the McMillion nomination, the Senate resume legislative session and proceed to the consideration of Calendar No. 238, S.J. Res. 38; that at 5:30 p.m., the joint resolution be considered read a third time and the Senate vote on the passage of the joint resolution; further, that upon disposition of the joint resolution, the Senate resume executive session and vote on the motion to invoke cloture on the Almadani nomination and that if cloture is invoked, the vote on confirmation be at 11:30 a.m. on Thursday, November 9; 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.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I further ask unanimous consent that Senators Blumenthal, Hirono, Welch, and myself be allowed to engage in a colloquy on the Senate floor.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, first, let me thank my three colleagues for joining me on the floor today. A word that came up repeatedly was ``reverence,'' and I want to start with that word because I think we all do share a reverence for the institution of the Supreme Court. And that is what makes it so bitter, to see how badly the Supreme Court is failing us now and to see the paths that billionaire influence has led it down. It has to correct, and if it is not going to correct itself, then Congress is going to have to correct it. As Senator Blumenthal said, the problem here is that there is no ethics process for the Supreme Court. There is a perfectly good code of ethics for all of the Justices and for all of the Federal judges, but there is no way to enforce it for the Supreme Court. If you have a complaint about a Supreme Court Justice, there is nowhere to file it. There is not even an inbox, and if there were an inbox and complaints came through, there is nobody on the other side of the inbox to screen out the nutty ones from the legitimate ones. And once you have a pile of legitimate ones, there is no staff attorney to do the basic research into what are the facts here. At the end of the day, when you have the facts determined and the judge or Justices have their say, then you have the factual predicate to compare with the ethics standard and a neutral decider to decide whether or not it comports. That is the basic structure of U.S. due process, and the Supreme Court will not allow that for itself. That is the problem that we have. So none of the questions that deserve to be answered about all of these secret gifts and about all of this billionaire influence--none of them--have even been asked over at the Supreme Court, let alone answered. So we have an absolute obligation to go forward with answers. And we have tried. We have asked very nicely. We have sent lists of questions. We have gone forward with the people who would know about all of this. And we have received two answers. One was that this is unconstitutional, and so we are not going to participate with you at all. You get nothing. You don't get a single answer. That, as Senator Blumenthal said, we believe to be a complete sham and a complete charade because the disclosure rules--right? We are talking about disclosure of gifts to Justices. They went undisclosed. So the question is, Should they have been disclosed? And there is a rule about disclosure that just happens to be a law passed by Congress. And there is a related law passed by Congress that relates to recusal, and recusal relates to gifts because, if you take big enough gifts from someone, you then have to recuse yourself as a judge from their cases. And the recusal rule is also passed by Congress. So you have a disclosure law passed by Congress, and you have a recusal law passed by Congress, and you have what Senator Blumenthal described--the Judicial Conference, which is the administrative body that oversees the administrative side of the judicial branch, and that body was also created by Congress. So the argument that is being made to us is that Congress has no authority to oversee how an Agency that Congress created is implementing laws Congress passed. That argument is, on its face, preposterous, and that, in turn, suggests that there is a lot to look at when we get a chance to look under the hood of all this mischief. And they really don't want us to see it, and they are going to manufacture completely preposterous arguments just to try to throw us off the trail. Another recipient of our questions said: OK, it is unconstitutional, but I will offer you a few things. You know, in good faith, I will offer you a few things, but you can only go back 5 years. Well, we happen to know, with respect to this billionaire, that they were giving gifts to Justices way more than 5 years ago. So they are not even allowing us to ask into the known gift-giving conduct between the billionaire and the Justice, which, by the way, was undisclosed at the time. So the 5-year rule is just nonsensical, just picked out of the air-- picked, actually, out of a criminal statute, as if that had a bearing on a congressional investigation. Then they said: We will only give you documents that you already have. For everything else, we will just give our lawyers narratives about what took place. Well, anybody who has ever tried a case knows perfectly well that if you rely on the other side's lawyer's narrative, you are getting no place. Discovery means you see the documents. You do your real homework like lawyers do. So for one lawyer to suggest to another: No, we are not going to show you the documents; we have them, but we are not going to show them to you; we are just going to give you a narrative of them-- there isn't a lawyer in this country who would accept that as a condition in discovery in a case. The third one is that, once we have answered your first round of questions and given you our phony-baloney narrative for the 5 years that is all we will let you inquire about, no more questions. You waive your right to ask us any more questions forever. Again, there is not a lawyer in the country who would accept that as a condition of a discovery order. You get to ask the second question. ``One and done'' is not a thing when you are doing an investigation. So all of these theoretical accommodations that were offered were just completely fake. We cannot proceed that way--not with any kind of professionalism and not with any kind of ability to get to the truth, which is, at the end of the day, what we really need to do here. I will conclude by going back to where I started. The reason that we need to follow this process of getting subpoenas so we get answers to our questions is because of two failures: one, the failure of the Supreme Court to even ask these questions itself. If there were a viable process going forward, using the basic due process investigation standards that everybody in government has to face for ethics, except these nine Justices, we wouldn't need to do this. But the Supreme Court won't allow questions to be asked about itself. So we can't go to them for a proper investigation. They refuse to do it. When we asked the participants in this gift scheme what they were up to, they told us, as the ranking member of the Judiciary Committee, I think, rather artfully summarized, to go pound sand. Well, when Congress has a legitimate inquiry into how an Agency that it created is implementing statutes that it passed, ``go pound sand'' is not a legitimate answer. So the next step is to move to authorize these subpoenas, and we are going to do that. This business of the Court not answering obvious questions is really a problem. The question of whether Justice Thomas should have recused himself from the January 6 cases depends on a single fact: what he knew about his wife's involvement in insurrection activities. If he knew absolutely nothing at all, OK. Then it is probably OK for him to recuse himself--maybe a little bit of appearance of impropriety. But if he actually knew of her involvement in those matters, then he absolutely should have recused himself. The question ``Justice Thomas, what did you know, and when did you know it?'' has never been asked and never been answered. That is not a tenable way for a Court that purports to represent due process and enforce due process to conduct itself with respect to a conflict of interest. It is the same thing with these gifts. There is no Federal judge in the country who is receiving multihundred-thousand-dollar vacation gifts, who is getting huge half-million-dollar checks sent in to a spouse's small private company out of which she takes money. This behavior of free private jet travel--at beck and call, it seems--nobody else does that. It is not OK. But looking at it to find out what actually took place and why and when is a basic responsibility of the Judiciary. In any other court, these claims, these charges, these circumstances would be properly investigated. We would know the facts, and we are entitled to know the facts. The last is that, in the context of our investigation, one of these lawyers made up what I consider to be a sham argument that we can't ask any questions because it is unconstitutional. I have addressed that. It is a congressionally established entity applying congressionally established laws. Yes, we do get to inquire about that kind of job. Because, perhaps, that argument is so weak, so sham, that lawyer actually recruited a Supreme Court Justice to go into the editorial page of the Wall Street Journal and offer an extrajudicial opinion--not an opinion of the Court, just his own personal opinion--that we had no business investigating. That violates a ton of stuff. That violates the rule that they are not supposed to offer opinions on matters that might come before the Court. That violates the rule that you shouldn't be engaging as a Justice in an ongoing dispute, sort of like a de facto expert witness for a party in an ongoing dispute. In this case, the dispute is over access to information. The lawyer's client in that is one of the people involved in this scheme, Leonard Leo. Leonard Leo has a personal relationship also with Justice Alito. He is described as his friend. None of that is disclosed. He just offers his opinion on behalf of the lawyer for his friend. At the end of the day, the inquiry looks at free gifts, undisclosed, received by Justice Alito. At the end of the day, the lawyer for Leonard Leo was able to recruit a member of the Supreme Court, Justice Alito, to offer a private--I should say a public opinion but a nonofficial opinion, a personal opinion, in the Wall Street Journal editorial page to prop up the argument that says we can't look into gifts that Leonard Leo, the client, organized for Justice Alito, the recipient. That is a tangled mess of ethics violations, and nobody can look at that. Nobody will look at that. That can't be. So, with the Court looking at none of this scandalous behavior, it is entirely incumbent upon the Congress to do its job and get to the bottom of what went on. That is what, under the leadership and guidance of our Judiciary chairman, Dick Durbin, we will do. With that, I yield the floor.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, the subject of our colloquy is going to be the enormous, secret gifts that have recently been disclosed going into the pockets of certain Supreme Court Justices. The first thing that is remarkable about these gifts is how magnificent they are--luxury trips on private jets, luxury trips on superyachts, paying for a Justice's mother's home, paying for private school tuition of dependents, $500,000 donations to organizations that the spouse worked for, $25,000 fees into a spouse's consulting firm, jet and fishing trips across the country. So it is all pretty rich stuff. In Rhode Island, if you want to take a gift from somebody--let's say you are a municipal employee, and they want to take you to lunch across the street from city hall. It is 25 bucks. That is your limit, and you have to disclose it. You get to do that three times, and then you are all done. Then you can't even take the $25 lunch if you disclose it. So in Rhode Island, people are really upset about these multi-hundred- thousand-dollar gifts. It gets worse. It is not just the size of the gifts. It is the network. It is the web. The billionaires who are involved in giving these gifts overlap with an array of front groups that are involved with the billionaires and with the gifts, and there is a common ``fixer'' who ties many of these threads together. The trips very often involve the fixer and the Justices and the billionaires, and the whole mess is interwoven. The donations go through the front groups to the Justice from the fixer over and over. This thing is a web, and we are working hard in the Judiciary Committee to try to untangle it. On Thursday, we will be taking up the question of subpoenas to the billionaires and the front group corporations that have participated in these different gifts to find out what really went on. How bad, really, was it? What we know already is bad enough, but there is more to discover. With that, let me yield to my colleague Senator Blumenthal, and then I will wrap up after Senator Hirono and Senator Welch have had their chance to speak as well.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. 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.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

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

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. We yield back our time. Vote on Amendment No. 1249

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. For the information of the Senate, Senators should expect rollcall votes in relation to amendments to the minibus during Wednesday's session.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I now ask unanimous consent that when the Senate completes its business today, it stand adjourned until 10 a.m. on Wednesday, October 25; that following the prayer and pledge, the Journal of proceedings be approved to date, the morning hour be deemed expired, 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, notwithstanding rule XXII, the Senate resume consideration of Calendar No. 198, H.R. 4366, as provided under the order of October 24; further, that at 11:30 a.m., the Senate proceed to executive session to resume consideration of the Looman nomination and that all postcloture time be considered expired; that upon disposition of the Looman nomination, the Senate resume legislative session; finally, that if the nomination is confirmed during Wednesday's session, the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table and the President be immediately notified of the Senate's actions.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

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

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. I ask that the bill, as amended, be considered read a third time. The bill was ordered to be engrossed for a third reading and was read the third time.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of Calendar No. 68, S. 1170.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. I ask unanimous consent that the committee-reported amendment be considered and agreed to.

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

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

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the resolutions be agreed to, the preambles be agreed to, and the motions to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table with no intervening action or debate.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on the Judiciary be discharged from further consideration of S. Res. 397 and the Senate proceed to the en bloc consideration of the following Senate resolutions: S. Res. 397, World Food Day; S. Res. 425, Public Radio Music Day; and S. Res. 426, National Bison Day.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Madam President, I have four requests for committees to meet during today's session of the Senate. They have the approval of the Majority and Minority Leaders. Pursuant to rule XXVI, paragraph 5(a), of the Standing Rules of the Senate, the following committees are authorized to meet during today's session of the Senate: committee on commerce, science, and transportation The Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Tuesday, October 24, 2023, at 10 a.m., to conduct a subcommittee hearing. committee on foreign relations The Committee on Foreign Relations is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Tuesday, October 24, 2023, at 10 a.m., to conduct a hearing. committee on the judiciary The Committee on the Judiciary is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Tuesday, October 24, 2023, at 2:30 p.m., to conduct a hearing. select committee on intelligence The Select Committee on Intelligence is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Tuesday, October 24, 2023, at 2:30 p.m., to conduct a closed briefing.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to legislative session for a period of morning business, with Senators permitted to speak therein for up to 10 minutes each.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, H.R. 5860 was the continuing resolution signed into law on September 30. It narrowly averted an extremist-led government shutdown. That act included $16 billion in disaster relief for States like Florida, Vermont, New York, Pennsylvania, Hawaii, Louisiana, and others that suffered tremendous losses from extreme weather events exacerbated by fossil fuel emissions causing climate change. It also provided funding for the thousands of firefighters who protect our communities from the ravages of wildfires. Because that was designated as emergency funding, the Budget Committee chairman--i.e., me--is authorized to increase the Appropriations Committee's top line by the same amount. With this adjustment, the emergency funding will not supplant nondefense discretionary funding--which includes important investments for climate mitigation, environmental protection, infrastructure, education, job training, national parks and forests, and law enforcement--that is subject to the fiscal year 2024 discretionary spending limits. That funding was designated as emergency funding pursuant to section 251(b)(2)(A)(i) of the Balanced Budget and Emergency Deficit Control Act of 1985. Section 314(a) of the Congressional Budget Act allows the chairman of the committee to revise the allocations, aggregates, and levels consistent with the amount of emergency funding. Today, I am making that adjustment. In addition, section 121(c) of the Fiscal Responsibility Act of 2023 contained a reserve fund to allow the Budget chairman to revise budget aggregates and committee allocations and to adjust the pay-as-you-go ledger for legislation that would not increase the deficit over the period of fiscal years 2024 to 2033. The authorizing portion of H.R. 5860, division B, meets the conditions of that reserve fund. Over the 10-year period, division B reduces deficits by $2 million. As such, I am revising the budget aggregates, committee allocations, and pay-as- you-go ledger to accommodate H.R. 5860. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the accompanying tables which provide details about the adjustment be printed in the Record.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. I yield the floor.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I am rising today for the 25th time to address the multifaceted dark money scheme to capture and control our Supreme Court. We will look today at how the creepy billionaires who captured the Supreme Court get their message through to the Justices they helped plant there. That, of course, is the last leg of the capture operation. First, you have the so-called Federalist Society list, purportedly created by the Federalist Society for former President Donald Trump to pick Supreme Court Justices from. Bad enough if that were true--a secretive, anonymously funded, private group picking Supreme Court Justices while accepting big, secret contributions. What could possibly go wrong? But it is actually worse. The Federalist Society can show no official process to cook up the list--no agenda item, no vote, no nothing. It was done in some back room secretly by the Federalist Society's Leonard Leo, the operative of the creepy billionaires who fund this endeavor. The Federalist Society did let Trump use the ``Federalist Society'' name for cover on the list, as if it was their list, but it wasn't. After that step, the fake list, came the billionaire-funded campaign to get the Senate to confirm the Federalist Society Justices. This part of the operation ran through another dark money front group, the Judicial Crisis Network, conveniently located just down the hall--in the same building, on the same floor--from the Federalist Society. ``Judicial Crisis Network'' is the fictitious name for yet another dark money front group. And, of course, millions in dark money were poured into Senate Republican political coffers from the same billionaires, and--no surprise--Republican Senators voted to confirm even deeply troubled Justices, and now there they sit on the Court. So let's say you are a billionaire who funded all of this. You have your handpicked Justices on the Supreme Court. How are they supposed to remember what you want? Well, easy--you tell them. Queue the front groups that file briefs at the Supreme Court as amici curiae--Latin for ``friends of the court.'' They file them in coordinated flotillas, usually of about a dozen. But where it is a really big deal to the dark money billionaires, they have sent in more than 50 of these briefs. In the case where it was over 50, it was at the certiorari stage, early in the proceedings, to make sure the chosen Justices got the message. That case was Americans for Prosperity Foundation v. Bonta. It was about disclosing donors behind dark money front groups. After the deluge of over 50 front group amici, the Federalist Society Justices let nonprofits--known as 501(c)(3)s--hide their donors even from sovereign States where they operate and which have a responsibility to police them for fraudulent abuse of the tax system. This decision added more secrecy to the latest and greatest secret political influence technique, which is to pair a dark money 501(c)(3) with a dark money 501(c)(4) entity. This is--no surprise--precisely the secretive influence technique that the creepy billionaires deployed to get those chosen Justices on the Court. Well, we have all witnessed the sordid saga of theatrically grotesque gifts and free travel that rightwing billionaires have bestowed on certain Supreme Court Justices. That is connected here. The billionaires who fund the Justices' gifts and entertainment also fund front groups that come in to tell the Justices what to do. So the backdrop of the capture apparatus is that billionaires choose the Justices, fund the campaigns for their confirmations, and then send in flotillas of billionaire-funded front groups to give instructions. With that backdrop, let's look at recent and coming cases and how those front groups are doing. Last term, the Federalist Society Justices handed several major wins to the front groups and their backers. One of these wins came in a case called Sackett v. EPA. It was the latest assault on the EPA's power to clean up our environment and hold polluters accountable. Many of the big-spending, rightwing billionaires owe their fortunes to the polluting fossil fuel industry, so it is no surprise that their front groups are out to weaken the EPA. The EPA has responsibility under the Clean Water Act to make sure that our country's water remains safe and clean. Naturally, the polluters and their front groups hate this, so in Sackett, they asked the Court to narrow as much as possible which waters the EPA could protect under the Clean Water Act. The front groups had their fingerprints all over this case. To start, the attorneys who brought the case came from the Pacific Legal Foundation. Because it is a dark money group, it is impossible to know exactly who funds the Pacific Legal Foundation, but in the past, it has received money from the likes of ExxonMobil, the Koch Brothers' political apparatus, and other groups who fund climate denial. A great many of these cases that bring in the flotillas of billionaire-funded amici are not brought up through regular litigation; they are brought by these front groups, teed up by front groups who bring in plaintiffs of convenience to bring a particular question up before the captured Court. At the Supreme Court, at least 10 other far-right, front group amici all urged the Court to undermine the Clean Water Act. These amici included groups like the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, one of the biggest mouthpieces for the fossil fuel industry, and the Americans for Prosperity Foundation, which we just spoke about, part of the Koch Industries' fossil fuel political operation. I went over some of the briefs this morning in the Environment and Public Works Committee when we took a look at the Sackett case, and I will just do a brief summary right now. The Pacific Legal Foundation has received money from Exxon, various Koch political foundations, DonorsTrust, the Bradley Foundation, and the Sarah Scaife Foundation. Also in the case was the Americans for Prosperity Foundation, which has been funded by the Koch political operation, DonorsTrust, the Bradley Foundation, and the Sarah Scaife Foundation. The Cato Institute was in the case with funding by the Koch political operation, Donors Capital, DonorsTrust, and the Bradley Foundation. Something called the Claremont Center for Constitutional Jurisprudence chimed in with funding from Donors Capital, DonorsTrust, the Bradley Foundation, and the Sarah Scaife Foundation. Liberty Justice Center came in with funding from DonorsTrust and the Bradley Foundation. NFIB Small Business Legal Center came in with funding from Donors Capital, DonorsTrust, and the Bradley Foundation. Atlantic Legal Foundation came in with funding from the Bradley Foundation and the Sarah Scaife Foundation. Mountain States Legal Foundation came in with funding from the Koch political operation, DonorsTrust, Donors Capital, the Bradley Foundation, and the Sarah Scaife Foundation. Southeastern Legal Foundation came in with funding from DonorsTrust, Bradley Foundation, and Sarah Scaife Foundation. The Washington Legal Foundation came in with funding from the Koch political operation, Donors Capital, DonorsTrust, the Bradley Foundation, and the Sarah Scaife Foundation. So the litigant and nine amici were all funded by the Kochs, by DonorsTrust and Donors Capital, and by the Bradley Foundation and the Scaife Foundation. They could just as easily have filed briefs in the name of the Koch political operation, DonorsTrust and Donors Capital, and the Bradley Foundation and the Sarah Scaife Foundation or even filed one brief filed by all of those entities, but instead they created this fake machinery of front groups, creating the illusion of multiplicity and the illusion of independence, when, in fact, these things are played like piano keys on a piano. By the way, if they had actually tried to file a brief in the name of DonorsTrust and Donors Capital, it would have been a little bit weird because those are not entities that have any real role in the world other than to scrub the identities off of dark money donations to rightwing groups. So if you don't want your name on an expenditure, you give it to Donors Capital, and they then pass it on to the group. The group reports that they got it from Donors Capital, and you get to walk away hands-free, without any attribution or accountability. So not only are these multiple players; they tend to switch around in this scheme. So let me add that Americans for Prosperity Foundation was the petitioner in the case with the 50-plus dark money amici that came in. There, the scheme was to get the chosen Justices to protect dark money for 501(c)(3)s, and needless to say, it worked. But back to Sackett. Five of the six Republican-appointed Justices got the message sent by these front groups and adopted the narrowest interpretation of the Clean Water Act that they could get away with. Millions of acres of wetlands are no longer protected by the EPA-- another win for polluter interests; another loss for the American people; another successful direction by a rightwing, dark money, front group flotilla. Sackett wasn't the only case where the creepy billionaires scored big at the Court last term. Another win came in the student loans case, where the Federalist Society Justices threw out President Biden's plan to cancel student loan debt for millions of struggling borrowers. Showing up in that case was another double-digit flotilla of far- right and industry-funded front group amici, with customary repeat players like the Kochs' Americans for Prosperity Foundation, the Chamber of Commerce, and the Buckeye Institute. In this scheme, even the front groups have front groups. So Leonard Leo's Judicial Crisis Network is actually the fictitious name of another front group called the Concord Fund, and the Judicial Crisis Network, which is the same group that Leo used to help confirm the handpicked Justices, in turn propped up a new front group led by Mike Pence, funding it with more than $1 million. So the front group's front group's front group filed a brief in the student loans case. You cannot make this stuff up. Well, naturally, the Federalist Society Justices delivered what these groups were asking for on behalf of their billionaire benefactors, but the real victory for the front group amici in this case was how the Justices struck down the plan. The Federalist Society Justices relied on something called the major questions doctrine--a doctrine they first deployed 2 years ago at the behest of fossil fuel groups in a case called West Virginia v. EPA. The basic idea is that if a judge thinks an Agency regulation is too big or too important, the judge gets to strike it down. It is the perfect tool for billionaires to use billionaire-picked Justices rather than Agency subject-matter expertise to stop regulations they don't like. A whole separate scheme speech could be devoted to the hothouse ``doctrine factories'' in which notions like the so-called major questions doctrine are seeded, fertilized, watered, and grown. In West Virginia v. EPA and in the student loans case, the Federalist Society Justices took the doctrine from dark money-funded hothouses like the Federalist Society itself and replanted it into American law. It is now law. The front groups, of course, with that opening, then began challenging even more regulations left and right using this supposed doctrine. And, no surprise, the Agency they targeted the most is the EPA. That brings me to the pending wave of front group action at the Supreme Court. One case that has received a lot of attention is Moore v. United States. That case centers on a narrow legal issue related to the Republicans' 2017 tax cuts for the rich. But the billionaires' front groups want far more. They want the chosen Justices to shield the billionaire elite from paying taxes by preemptively declaring unconstitutional taxes that would more directly target the billionaires' massive fortunes. Well, given what a boon that would be for the creepy billionaires, as you can imagine, the amicus flotilla is out in full force. At least 14 far-right billionaire front groups have surfaced in Moore. And like in Sackett, a front group is litigating the case: the Competitive Enterprise Institute, it is called, which has a long history of rightwing, billionaire funding. One side note about this case, remember when I said there was overlap between the rightwing billionaires who fund these groups and the rightwing billionaires who lavished Justices Thomas and Alito with luxury gifts? This case is exhibit A, with multiple rightwing front groups funded by billionaires Paul Singer, Harlan Crow, and the Kochs, who are billionaires at the center of the ethics mess of secret freebies for certain Justices at the Court. It actually gets worse. In Moore, the lawyer litigating on behalf of the billionaires' cause is the same lawyer who conducted the so-called interview with Justice Alito in the Wall Street Journal editorial page about my Supreme Court ethics bill and our Senate investigations on Judiciary and Finance into the undisclosed gifts to certain Justices. That interview propped up for the lawyer's client Leonard Leo the argument that we could not investigate gifts Leo orchestrated to Justice Alito. You need a diagram. You cannot make this stuff up. Litigant in Moore, lawyer to Leo, interviewer of Alito--that is a whole lot of hats for that one lawyer's head. The more you look at this operation, the more you see it as a big shell game with multiple front groups that can be moved around and multiple operatives switching around to deliver results for this billionaire elite. It is a scheme. Another case the billionaires are targeting this term is Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo with, yep, another attack on the basic foundations of Agency regulation. It is not enough that their home- brewed major questions doctrine has just been made law by their chosen Justices. They want more. And, of course, a flotilla of front group amici has been marshaled to urge on the Federalist Society Justices. I filed a brief in that case with several colleagues documenting these amici's industry connections. Many have received hundreds of thousands--even millions--of dollars from far-right and polluter interests that would benefit from weaker regulations. As usual, they are repeat performers who show up in case after case to feed the Court arguments propagated in rightwing hothouses. That is the Court capture process: Billionaire-funded groups cook up legal theories to help the billionaires; billionaire-funded litigation propped up by billionaire-funded flotillas of front groups tees up the Justices to adopt the hothouse theory. And then, after the Justices adopt the hothouse theory, the front groups bring more cases to attack more regulations. Rinse and repeat, until you have tied up or knocked down every regulation in your polluting way. As with a lot of the mess at the Supreme Court right now, the Justices could do a lot to clean this up by themselves. They could require real disclosure of who is behind these flotillas of phony front groups. They could turn away cases that look like faux litigation brought by political front groups behind plaintiffs of convenience. They could adopt ethics procedures that allowed basic factfinding into the swampy mess of billionaires, front groups, free secret gifts, and the ubiquitous fixer Leonard Leo. And, of course, they could stop granting the front groups' wishes time after time after time. A new term of Court presents a new opportunity for the Court to recommit itself to deciding law and not just doing the bidding of creepy billionaires and their phony front groups. We too often fixate on the awful decisions that have come out of this Federalist Society majority. When we do, we overlook the nasty little web of front groups lurking behind those awful decisions. But the front group web is an important part of the story, an essential element of the Court capture apparatus, and a key element of the scheme. The web should not be allowed to hide in plain view simply because we don't bother to keep track and connect the dots. To be continued. I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.