Mr. President, it is probably too late to do anything about the upcoming vote. I know a little bit about how this place works, and at this point, the proverbial die is likely cast. But what we are about to do is so wrong, so unusual, that even if these remarks will have no effect whatsoever, I feel obliged to come to the floor. We are about to vote into high judicial office an individual who managed to engage in three separate significant episodes of prosecutorial misconduct in 6 months. That is undoubtedly a Department of Justice world record. These were not minor episodes of prosecutorial misconduct. These were not a file missing from a Brady disclosure. These were not an inopportune word dropped in an oral argument. This was planned, deliberate, serious prosecutorial misconduct. I will briefly describe the three episodes. The first had to do with the political desire to freeze funds that Congress had already appropriated and obligated and that even had been disbursed out to a bank as the fiscal agent for the appropriated program. But because it involved clean energy, the Trump administration wanted to claw that money back. The time for Presidential veto had long, long, long gone. There was no Federal hold on the money. It was in a private bank. So, really, that cow had left the barn. But they were so insistent because they hate clean energy so much, they had to get this money back. The White House was demanding it, presumably. So here is the plan that they cooked up. Emil Bove and the acting U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, they would create a fake criminal investigation. And on the basis of that fake criminal investigation, they would go to a judge and try to get an order to freeze the funds that they were so irritated about. Remember what I just said: a fake criminal investigation. It is kind of prosecutor 101 that you don't pursue fake criminal investigations. There is prosecutor language for how you go about starting a criminal investigation. You have to have something called predication, some reason to believe that there is a crime. But they needed a criminal investigation in order to find a way to seize the money, so they started a fake one--or at least they tried to. How did that work out? Not that well, actually, because the Chief of the Criminal Division, a career, experienced attorney said: Boss, there is no crime here. We can't do a criminal investigation if there is no evidence whatsoever of any crime. For her pains, she was driven out of the office, forced to resign. So then they shopped it around the office: Is there anybody else willing to sign this plead in; any career attorney in the very big U.S. Attorney's Office for the District of Columbia? None. No one would sign it because it was a fake criminal investigation. So the U.S. attorney went in on his own--that almost never happens-- to try to get the order from the fake criminal investigation. And the magistrate shot him down, said: No, no chance. And that almost never happens, because U.S. attorneys don't go into court unprepared and they want to enjoy the credibility of the local bench. So they go through all sorts of hoops, every conceivable effort to make sure that a request for a judicial order or warrant is well- supported. Not this time. It was too important. The fake criminal investigation is completely outside of what is appropriate for a prosecutor's responsibilities. It gets--actually, if you can believe it--worse because they had a client in this, the rather corrupt individual who now runs the Environmental Protection Agency. And they let their client run all around in the media, on the news, publicly disparaging the recipients of those funds, which included groups as ominous and dangerous as Habitat for Humanity. But to whip up an atmosphere of criminality, accusations were made about crimes--false accusations were made about crimes. Well, it is also prosecutor 101 that you don't disparage the subject of your investigation or the subject of your prosecution. Prosecutors have all the tools in the world to make cases, to take away people's property, to take away people's liberty. Where there is a death penalty, you can take away people's lives. You play within bounds. You let your pleadings do the talking. You don't go out on talk shows and talk about the supposed subjects of a criminal investigation--even a real one--in disparaging terms. You just don't do it. It is beneath most prosecutors. Not these characters. That was episode 1. Episode 2 was to stop an ongoing criminal case involving an elected official so that they could dangle that case over the head of the elected official as part of a deal to get that elected official to follow administration policy on immigration enforcement. You don't do that. Again, if you are not a prosecutor, it might not seem like this is obvious, but it is obvious. It is prosecutor 101. If you have the case, you make it. If you don't, you don't. A criminal case against an elected official is not an opportunity for ``let's make a deal.'' That is way out of bounds, but that is what they did. A judge ended up shooting it down and saying: Look, if you are going to dismiss this thing temporarily so you can hang this thing over this guy's head, no. You have to dismiss it with prejudice--done, over, finished. But it took a judge to step in to break that scheme of prosecutorial misconduct. Episode 3, Trump is trying to illegally deport lots of people. He is trying to do it in the dead of night. He is trying to do it around American constitutional due process, and somebody has gone to a judge to say: Whoa. This isn't right. So lawyers have gotten involved, and now lawyers are in court, where you are supposed to tell the truth. The lawyers for the Department of Justice--in court, supposed to tell the truth--were being lied to by Trump administration officials, denied information they needed for court by Trump administration officials. The crowning--the crowning--blow being told by this Trump administration official--the one whom we are about to put on the bench--is that they should be ready to tell courts ``f you'' if they try to interfere with illegal deportations--and it wasn't just an ``f'' in the transcript. These are three separate, significant episodes of prosecutorial misconduct in just 6 months. Nothing like this has ever been seen at the Department of Justice. And it is so well corroborated, it is so well documented, there is no denying it. There is no question of, is this real or not? In the first case, that criminal chief who got run out wrote it down. She sent a letter laying out everything that had happened. She was a live witness to that episode whom the Judiciary Committee could have called to hear from to help get to the bottom of this. If there was any doubt on the question of the false allegations of fraud and crime, the Department of Justice's own lawyers, in a later civil proceeding, conceded to the court: Yep, we are not alleging fraud here. There is nothing we are saying here about any actual fraud. Never mind all those allegations of criminality that have been made on behalf of the government by the client in this case. So that episode was very, very well corroborated. In the next episode, the one involving the elected mayor, you had a similar letter from the acting U.S. attorney, who resigned rather than go along with this corrupt bargain; you had Trump's own border czar, who went on television to confirm that this was, in fact, an agreement, that they had, in fact, done ``let's make a deal'' with an elected official over a pending criminal case. Your own client at that point is confirming it on live TV. A whistleblower came forward, so you had a whistleblower as well. You had triple-decker confirmation of that second episode of prosecutorial misconduct. As to the deportations and telling prosecutors to get ready to tell courts ``f you,'' there were multiple whistleblowers and lots of corroboration from actual emails and texts at the time. You had prosecutors texting each other about that ``f you'' comment. If it had not occurred, those text exchanges would have made no sense. The first response would have been: What are you talking about? But, instead, everybody knew what was being said in the text chain because they had been in the room, they had heard him say it, and now two whistleblowers have come forward on that. So you have multiple whistleblowers, lots of written evidence from career prosecutors, and statements by Trump officials corroborating these schemes. And what have we got? Monkey see no evil. Monkey hear no evil. Shove this guy onto the court because Trump wants it. Oh, did I mention he was Trump's criminal lawyer in the cases in which Trump was convicted of crimes? The hearing was a shocking disgrace. I guess it turns out that nowadays, in order to get through a judicial confirmation hearing in the Senate Judiciary Committee, all you need to do is to remember to say ``I don't recall,'' ``That would not be appropriate for me to answer,'' or ``That information isn't public.'' You learn three answers, and you get through the hearing because the majority will never force the witness to answer an actual question. It actually gets a little bit worse with respect to the deportation matter because there was another line of corroboration that could have been developed to prove this character's involvement in this scheme to fool the judge and ultimately to simply refuse to obey a court order. That was that, after all this nonsense went down in front of the judge--judges aren't stupid; he knew he was being had--he found probable cause of contempt of court, opening the prospect of a hearing, with evidence, into contempt of court, where witnesses would have testified, where the full email and text chains would have come into the record, where there would have been an indisputable judicial record of what took place. Well, what became of that? It got stopped by two Trump appointees who stopped the contempt proceedings through a device called an administrative stay over the dissent and objection of the third judge, the one who was not a Trump appointee. So two Trump appointees stop a hearing into contempt of court by the Trump DOJ. An administrative stay is supposed to last hours or days. Not too long ago, Justice Barrett chided the circuit court of appeals for an administrative stay that had lasted 2 weeks. This administrative stay that stopped the development of the evidence of this individual's misconduct has been in place for 3 months without explanation, but it was just enough time for the Trump operatives in the DOJ to shove this individual through the confirmation process, where real questions and real answers never appeared, while the place that would have gotten this with cross-examination, under oath, with consequences of perjury, was stalled by two other Trump judges. This smells like a play, like a maneuver, and we are going to continue to look into it. I will say to my colleagues: This is not going to go away. It took me 6 years to ultimately prove that the FBI had been instructed in the Kavanaugh supplemental background investigation to do only what the White House told them, no more; that they had no rules, no practical guidelines--only what the White House Counsel told them. And what the White House Counsel told them is, you may not seek or find corroborating evidence. Then, of course, all of our colleagues on the Republican side stood up and said: Oh, look, there is no corroborating evidence. They didn't bother to share that it had been the White House's instruction to the FBI to avoid any corroborating evidence. It took us 6 years to dig that out. So I can be persistent, and I will tell you, this is an episode that requires persistence. First of all, there is a bar complaint against this guy for his misconduct that the New York bar referred to the Office of Professional Responsibility at the Department of Justice. Well, as soon as we confirm him, he is out of the Department of Justice, and the OPR has no jurisdiction any longer. So I see no reason not to go back to that bar complaint and get somebody to take a look into this since a MAGA OPR is not about to look into a MAGA Department of Justice employee. Second, there is contempt here. At some point, that administrative stay is going to be lifted, and then there will be testimony. Then there will be evidence. Then people will be subjected to cross- examination. Then the truth will come out, and I strongly suspect it is going to be highly, highly embarrassing. Perhaps to prevent that, the Department of Justice just filed a new complaint against the judge who will hold that contempt hearing. Presumably, their argument is going to be, ah, we have now filed a complaint against that judge; therefore, he is conflicted out, and that hearing can't go forward. This is the Department of Justice--the MAGA Department of Justice filing a complaint, perhaps even in bad faith, against a U.S. district judge to try to conflict him out from a hearing that would show contempt of court by that very Department of Justice. What a tangled web we weave. Last, there are going to be questions asked about those two Trump judges and why the administrative stay and why for 3 months and why the amazing coincidence that those 3 months of administrative stay was the period that it took to pick up this character, shove him through the nominations process, shove him through the Republican-controlled Judiciary Committee, and stuff him onto the bench without that hearing taking place. That is too much coincidence for this lawyer. So this is not over. I strongly suspect that my colleagues will come to regret and lament their vote for this character. Bad nature is hard to make disappear. I will end where I began the first time I came to the floor to discuss the nomination of Emil Bove to the Third Circuit, and that is the story about the snake by the side of a path, injured and broken, who was picked up by the lady who was walking along and taken to her home, where the snake was fed and cared for until he healed. Then she took him back to where she had found him, back to his home. She set him down beside the path, and he bit her. As she was dying from the snake's venom, she said to the snake: Why did you bite me--the one who picked you up, the one who cared for you, the one who fed you, the one who brought you back here to your home area? The snake said: You knew when you picked me up that I was a snake. This is my nature. This man's nature will out. I yield the floor. The PRESIDING OFFICER (Ms. Lummis). The Senator from Utah. Congressional Record, Volume 171 Issue 130 (Tuesday, July 29, 2025) Vote on Brown Nomination

Madam President, I will say that I am here today because we are about to go to the motion to invoke cloture on the nomination of David Fotouhi to serve as the Deputy Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, and I very much hope that colleagues will oppose his nomination because he is, essentially, 100 percent on the side of the polluters and not interested in protecting the public health or the public safety or the public's well-being. If you think about the EPA at its most basic, its mission is to protect clean air and clean water and a safe climate. But in this guy's two jobs since law school, as a corporate lawyer and as acting general counsel of the EPA during the first Trump administration, Mr. Fotouhi has served the interests of polluting industries that do everything in their power to avoid, weaken, or kill the rules that protect our clean air, our clean water, and our safe climate. He has consistently been on the wrong side. As a partner at a prominent law firm Mr. Fotouhi defended a raft of big polluting interests, including megapolluters Chevron and Sunoco. Now, that is just the tip of the iceberg. Other polluter clients included Aethon Energy, Cibolo Energy Partners, Energy Transfer Partners, Matador Resources Company, and ProFrac Holding. What did he help them do? Well, he defended one company for dumping tens of thousands of tons of PFAS into drinking water. He defended tire manufacturers for poisoning salmon with their rubber additives. He defended an automobile company against claims of greenwashing concerning their so-called clean diesel cars. He defended another for failing to obtain proper permits, resulting in illegal emissions of sulfur dioxide. And he represented a major defense contractor seeking to shift responsibility onto the United States for environmental remediation necessitated by the company's release of hazardous waste. The list goes on. As counsel and then acting general counsel at EPA during the first Trump administration, Mr. Fotouhi worked hard to repeal environmental regulations meant to protect human health and the environment by doing two primary things: First, he developed the legal justifications for these attacks; and, second, when they were challenged in court, he orchestrated the strategy to defend against those legal challenges. Well, which regulations were involved? Actually, a lot of them: rules covering CO2 emission standards for light-duty vehicles, greenhouse gas emissions from aircraft, methane emissions from the oil and gas industry, lead and copper in drinking water, State water quality certification processes, and the management of coal combustion residuals. In other words, lots and lots of rules meant to make our air, water, and climate cleaner and safer became the targets of this individual. Now, Mr. Fotouhi is nominated to be second in command as the Agency implements the poisonous agenda of President Trump's fossil fuel donors. Chief on those polluting donors wish list is the rescission of EPA's ``endangerment finding,'' a 2009 science-based determination that greenhouse gases are harmful to human health and the environment. Yes, that was 2009, and when that rule was adopted, it had been settled scientific fact for decades that greenhouse gases harm public health and the environment. Now, here we are, 16 years later, where the evidence has only gotten stronger, and the looming economic dangers have only gotten more evident, and, yet, he wants to undo that rule. The only people who benefit from repealing the endangerment finding--the only people--are the planet's biggest polluters, who just happen to be among Trump and the Republican Party's biggest donors. Mr. Fotouhi has served those polluters' interests for years. He is their boy. Clearly, like everyone, polluters have a right to counsel. But it remains difficult for me to understand how someone who has made a career representing the very industries that destroy our environment, defending their practices that did that damage, now has any business being entrusted to protect us. He will obviously serve their interests and not the public interests. Always has, always will. Even before Mr. Fotouhi's nomination, the corruption of EPA by Trump's polluting fossil fuel donors is already underway. Where even to begin? Administrator Zeldin continues his assault on clean air and clean water at what he now contemptuously calls the climate religion, contrary to his repeated and obviously false and empty promises when he came before us in committee. The list of congressionally authorized and appropriated funding that EPA continues illegally to hold hostage is too long to list here today. Obviously, the biggest target is the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund, which drives Administrator Zeldin and his enablers at DOJ crazy, and it drives them to conduct that merits both legal and professional liability. I have talked about this frequently as it relates to the repeated misconduct of the unconfirmably corrupt Ed Martin over at DOJ, who is part of this scheme. Beyond illegally blocking grants, this EPA has put the Office of Research and Development--responsible for conducting EPA's scientific research--on the chopping block with RIFs, reductions in force, and reorganizations imminent because, after all, who wants science where big polluting donors' interests are involved? Then we have the coming onslaught of deregulatory actions, which will make cars dirtier and less fuel-efficient and more expensive for their owners to run so that Trump's big donors in the oil industry can sell more gasoline; deregulatory actions, which will let power plants and oil and gas facilities spew more carbon dioxide and methane so Trump's fossil fuel political donors can sell more oil and gas. EPA is even attempting to shut down the program that keeps track of how much carbon pollution industrial facilities emit. They don't even want to keep score any longer. ``Hear no evil, see no evil'' is Administrator Zeldin's motto over at the EPA. The corruption in this administration is endless, and the corruption related to the fossil fuel industry is particularly evil and damaging. And the service of David Fotouhi in the cause of the polluters who fund Trump and the Republican Party is, in my view, completely disqualifying. On the other hand, for the polluters, it is the reason they like him. I will vote no on his nomination, and I urge my colleagues to do the same. I yield the floor. The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from West Virginia. Mrs. CAPITO. Madam President, I rise as chair of the Environment and Public Works Committee. I rise today in support of the nomination of David Fotouhi to be the Deputy Administrator of Environmental Protection Agency. Behind Administrator Lee Zeldin--who I believe is doing an excellent job--Mr. Fotouhi's position is of the utmost importance to the Agency, and his perspective is essential in returning the Agency to its core mission in support of President Trump's administration's agenda. Mr. Fotouhi has spent the previous years of his career representing clients on matters relating to all types of environmental law. And before that, he previously served as the acting general counsel and principal deputy general counsel at EPA, so he has tons of experience. Mr. Fotouhi has been recognized by multiple national law publications for his work in environmental and energy law and as a leader on those issues. Mr. Fotouhi's previous experience at the EPA provides him with a wealth of perspective on the Agency's critical role of protecting our environment, our land, and our water and our air. While doing so within the bounds of the legal authority that Congress has established, EPA Deputy Administrator is generally tasked with overseeing the day-to-day operations of the Agency. In this role, Mr. Fotouhi will coordinate the work of EPA's important air, water, and chemical offices, in addition to the EPA's regional offices--which touches all of us--the research enforcement and general counsel office teams. Effectively integrating the Agency's work will be at the top of Mr. Fotouhi's list of responsibility. Facilitating economic growth while protecting public health and the environment requires the Agency to establish consistent and legally defensible regulations, fairly and clearly enforces those rules, and communicate with the States, communities, and entities that are impacted by those regulations. Throughout the confirmation process, both in meetings with me and in front of our committee in his testimony before the EPW Committee, Mr. Fotouhi displayed incredible knowledge and understanding of the tasks before him and pledged to uphold the principles of cooperative federalism. His vast experience has positioned him well for service at the EPA, and his presence will move forward the initiatives that are important to the success of our country. The fact of the matter is that Mr. Fotouhi is well-qualified and equipped to fulfill this role. I have confidence he will refocus the Agency back to fulfilling its core mission and away from pushing extreme regulations that threaten the reliability of our electric grid and our American competitiveness. Too often, we have nominees that have a lot of experience regulating but no experience advising entities on complying with regulations. This is an important perspective for the Agency to have and one that Mr. Fotouhi brings to the table. I encourage my colleagues to join me and my fellow EPW Committee members in supporting this nomination so we can get to work together on efforts that improve the lives of Americans across the country and to protect--I will say that again--to protect our environment. I yield the floor. Congressional Record, Volume 171 Issue 98 (Monday, June 9, 2025) Waiving Quorum Call

Mr. President, I am here now for the 299th time in my effort to alert our somnolent body to the looming dangers of climate change. Since President Trump's inauguration in January, he has embarked upon a series of actions that quite simply defy reality. They obey the fossil fuel industry, but they defy reality--or maybe it is the other way around: They defy reality to obey the fossil fuel industry. On his very first day in office, he issued an Executive order declaring that wind energy and solar energy are not energy. This defies even the dictionary, and it ignores the fact that humans have been harnessing wind and solar power since well before we started combusting fossil fuels. In March, Trump's EPA Administrator announced his intention to undo the Agency's finding that carbon pollution endangers human health and welfare, despite the fact that the harms and causes associated with climate change become more evident every day. In May, Jeff Clark, who runs the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs at OMB--part of the OMB fossil fuel stooge platoon--best known for his involvement in crooked Keystone Cops efforts to overturn the 2020 election, issued a memo directing Agencies to stop using the social cost of carbon in Agency decision making--again despite the fact that we know that carbon pollution costs the government and the public lots of money. Now we hear that Trump's EPA is ready to rescind a rule limiting carbon pollution from certain fossil fuel-fired powerplants on the pretense that emissions from these plants do not significantly contribute to climate change, despite the fact that the carbon pollution from fossil fuel-fired U.S. powerplants is greater than all the carbon pollution from all but six countries in the world. It is a major contributor. Put simply, in Trump's world, facts don't matter, and the truth is whatever his fossil fuel donors say it is. And now this fossil fuel influence operation has actually infiltrated its way into government, and it is affecting the fossil fuel industry's desires from inside. This would be a sorry enough state of affairs by itself: a President of the United States who ignores facts and lives in a phony alternate reality of a polluting industry's making. But it gets worse when others modulate their own world views and actions to rely less on facts, on the immutable laws of nature and economics and, instead, on nonsensical utterances about climate change and wacko energy policy. Take our Fed Chair Jerome Powell. After admitting to Senator Tina Smith on the Senate Banking Committee in February that climate change would make it impossible to get insurance and, therefore, impossible to get mortgages in certain coastal and wildfire exposed regions of the country, he fell into line behind Trumpian denialism. Three days before Trump's inauguration, he pulled the Fed out of an international network of central banks that researches climate-related financial and economic risks. The European Central Bank and the central banks of China, Canada, Mexico, Japan, the UK, and more than 80 other countries are members, but not us. Not anymore. Then in May, the Fed pressured an international banking supervision organization to disband its task force overseeing climate risk. Thankfully, the other central banks refused. Last, the Fed dissolved its own climate risk working groups. We can't have those anymore, not when our polluter-funded dear leader says it is all a hoax. Or take Daniel Yergin, Peter Orszag, and Atul Arya--three people who should know better. They waited barely a month after Trump's inauguration before publishing a 5,000-word manifesto in Foreign Affairs in defense of what they call energy pragmatism. What is energy pragmatism you might ask? Basically, it is a Trump-friendly and factually challenged theory that transitioning to green energy is too complicated and expensive, so we may as well resolve ourselves to using fossil fuels for a long, long time to come. Despite its 5,000-word length and despite its inclusion of a section entitled ``It's The Economy,'' this piece never mentions the massive costs and systemic economic risks already looming from climate change. Quite an omission--literally only one side of the case--which brings me back to the social cost of carbon. There was a time when Republicans were the great champions of cost- benefit analysis. Ronald Reagan was the first to mandate its use in the regulatory process. Obviously far from perfect, it does make sense to have a monetary estimate of the costs and benefits associated with a particular regulatory action. That is the social cost of carbon. It calculates the climate-related costs from adding an additional ton of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere or, alternatively, the benefits from removing or eliminating a ton of carbon pollution. The social cost of carbon is not a new concept. Economists have been using it for decades. Yet Clark's memo argues that the social cost of carbon shouldn't be used because a monetized estimate of the costs of 1 ton of carbon pollution is too uncertain. So they recommend zero. Well, first of all, we do know one thing about this, and that is that the cost isn't zero. Our own lived experiences teach us that. And there is actually case law to the effect that the number is not zero. We also know it is not even close to zero. Every serious academic estimate of the social cost of carbon is well north of $50, with most well over $100 per ton. EPA's last estimate, informed by copious academic research, was $190 per ton in harm from carbon dioxide. The International Monetary Fund calculates that there is a subsidy to the fossil fuel industry in the United States every single year of $700 billion, which is their valuation of the ``pollute for free'' fossil fuel business model. You can back-calculate from that to an effective cost of carbon pollution of around $150 per ton. Whether $150 per ton or $190 per ton, these weren't even the highest estimates out there. There are incredible estimates in the hundreds of dollars per ton. Much of the variation among the costs comes from the choice of what damage you attempt to quantify. For example, that EPA estimate at $190 per ton only looked at four harms. It only looked at increased mortality, damage to agriculture, increased energy costs, and damage from sea level rise. Those four things--four things. It did not consider the systemic financial and economic risks from climate change of the sort that I have discussed so frequently in this body--the ones to which Fed Chair Powell alluded when he admitted that climate change would render parts of our country uninsurable and hence unmortgageable. That is a huge, looming, economic blow not in the EPA calculation. In other words, almost all estimates of the social cost of carbon are underestimates because they do not attempt to quantify all climate- related costs and damages. Trump's polluter-run OMB wants us to ignore all of this. The logic is really stunning here--or I should probably say the illogic--because they say it is not clear what number is right, we will use zero, a number we know is wrong. That simply doesn't make sense, but it does solve the problem of the fossil fuel industry having to account for the harm that it causes. It is a massive favor to the fossil fuel industry. So be clear, this is yet another oily fossil fuel thumb pressed down on the scale to help big polluters. Climate pollution is a global problem. Our emissions harm Americans and the rest of the world. Chinese emissions harm the Chinese and the rest of the world. And harms that occur to people in other countries end up having real costs here at home as well. Some of them fall in the national security space. Take the Syrian civil war which destabilized the Middle East and led to periodic American military intervention. A long-term severe drought, exacerbated by climate change, is widely understood to have played a role in that conflict. Look at nuclear-armed India and Pakistan, which have been at odds for decades. As glaciers shrink in the Himalayans due to climate change, water becomes, eventually, more scarce, raising tensions as these adversaries compete for a dwindling supply of that essential need. Then there are the Northern Triangle countries like Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras hit hard by a drought made worse by climate change. The drought made it harder for subsistence farmers to eke out a living, contributing to the surge in migration to the United States. Faraway events have economic effects here at home as well. A drought in Panama lowers water in the Panama Canal and slows shipping, making it more expensive. A drought or flood hits a major agricultural exporter and makes food here at home more expensive. A flood in Thailand swamps factories and provokes a shortage here in car parts. The global economy is interconnected; climate-related droughts, floods, fires, and storms in foreign lands impose real costs on Americans here at home. The legions of bootlickers who orbit around Trump remind me of the legend of King Canute. King Canute, like President Trump today, was surrounded by hordes of flattering courtiers. Unlike President Trump, King Canute was displeased by his courtiers' relentless flattery that he was all-powerful. So to give his courtiers a lesson, King Canute set his throne by the sea edge and commanded the incoming tide to halt so as not to wet his feet. Well, of course, the tide took no mind of King Canute's words, continued its advance, and washed over his feet. King Canute exclaimed: Let all men know how empty and worthless is the power of kings, for there is none worthy of the name but he whom heaven, earth, and sea obey by eternal laws. Well, those words should particularly resonate today because climate change is real, and it is driven by eternal laws, by the natural laws of chemistry, for instance, and physics. And a latter-day ersatz King saying otherwise makes no difference at all to the natural systems of this planet driven by nature's laws. Climate change is going to be very expensive, very disruptive, and very damaging. The warnings are already everywhere. And Florida's insurance crisis is a preview of coming attractions for all of America's coastal communities. I won't dwell in this speech on that list of warnings. I spoke over and over about the many different Agencies and experts, from insurance industry CEOs to insurance industry board members to the Chairman of the Federal Reserve to the chief economist of Freddie Mac to the Economist magazine to the International Stability Board, and on and on and on. It is over and over the same warning: the warning that climate change is disrupting the planet so much that risks are becoming so unpredictable that insurance is becoming either flatout unavailable, or unaffordable on its way to unavailable, and that that insurance crisis quickly spills over into a mortgage crisis because you cannot get a mortgage on a property on which you cannot get insurance. And that mortgage crisis cascades into a crash in property values because if you bought your home with a mortgage, you probably need to sell it to somebody who needs a mortgage; and if you can't sell to that entire population of human beings who need a mortgage to buy your house because your house won't sustain a mortgage because it can't get insurance, then your market just crashed and the value of your home did as well. I have shown here at this podium the map from First Street that predicted what, in the time period of a 30-year mortgage, is going to happen to home values around the country from this ``insurance to mortgage to values'' cascade. And in some places, the loss of value was at 100 percent, a zeroing out. But even where the loss of value is going to be 20 percent or 40 percent, think what that does to that community where all of the property in that community has lost that much value. Think of what that does to the community bank in that community and its solvency, its loan-to-value ratio, when the value of the collateral for its loans has crashed 20 to 40 percent. This is coming. And there is an answer: renewable energy and low carbon technologies. Already cheap; getting cheaper. Plus, whoever dominates those industries will dominate the 21st century. So let's protect ourselves from that looming threat. Let's make sure that who dominates the 21st century in energy is the United States. Let's not give away America's position in that competition to our foreign rivals just to humor a corrupt political influence effort here at home. That would be a disgraceful outcome, but it is the one we are headed for. I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum. The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll. The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll. Mr. BOOZMAN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded. The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered. Congressional Record, Volume 171 Issue 95 (Wednesday, June 4, 2025) Vote on Bowman Nomination Under the previous order, the question is, Will the Senate advise and consent to the Bowman nomination? Mr. BOOZMAN. I ask for the yeas and nays. The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there a sufficient second? There appears to be a sufficient second. The clerk will call the roll. The bill clerk called the roll. Mr. BARRASSO. The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from West Virginia (Mrs. Capito), the Senator from Arkansas (Mr. Cotton), the Senator from Montana (Mr. Daines), the Senator from Oklahoma (Mr. Lankford), and the Senator from Montana (Mr. Sheehy). Mr. DURBIN. I announce that the Senator from Georgia (Mr. Ossoff) is necessarily absent. The result was announced--yeas 48, nays 46, as follows: [Rollcall Vote No. 291 Ex.] YEAS--48 Banks Barrasso Blackburn Boozman Britt Budd Cassidy Collins Cornyn Cramer Crapo Cruz Curtis Ernst Fischer Graham Grassley Hagerty Hawley Hoeven Husted Hyde-Smith Johnson Justice Kennedy Lee Lummis Marshall McConnell McCormick Moody Moran Moreno Mullin Murkowski Paul Ricketts Risch Rounds Schmitt Scott (FL) Scott (SC) Sullivan Thune Tillis Tuberville Wicker Young NAYS--46 Alsobrooks Baldwin Bennet Blumenthal Blunt Rochester Booker Cantwell Coons Cortez Masto Duckworth Durbin Fetterman Gallego Gillibrand Hassan Heinrich Hickenlooper Hirono Kaine Kelly Kim King Klobuchar Lujan Markey Merkley Murphy Murray Padilla Peters Reed Rosen Sanders Schatz Schiff Schumer Shaheen Slotkin Smith Van Hollen Warner Warnock Warren Welch Whitehouse Wyden NOT VOTING--6 Capito Cotton Daines Lankford Ossoff Sheehy The nomination was confirmed. The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Justice). Under the previous order, the motion to reconsider is considered made and laid upon the table, and the President will be immediately notified of the Senate's action. Congressional Record, Volume 171 Issue 95 (Wednesday, June 4, 2025) LEGISLATIVE SESSION ______ MORNING BUSINESS

Mr. President, I join the ranking member of the Rules Committee with a parliamentary inquiry of my own. The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator will state his inquiry. Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, is it true that unless a piece of legislation is privileged under a rule or a statutory provision or is the subject of a unanimous consent agreement, motions to proceed to that legislation are generally fully debatable? The PRESIDING OFFICER. Yes, that is correct. Mr. WHITEHOUSE. That is correct. And for those of you following this at home, ``fully debatable'' means 60 votes are required to end debate, which Republicans do not have. Parliamentary Inquiry Mr. President, I have a further parliamentary inquiry. The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator will state his inquiry. Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Is it commonplace for Senate offices and for whichever Senator is presiding over the Senate to consult with the Parliamentarian to determine whether and in what manner expedited procedures apply under a host of statutes, including the War Powers Act, the National Emergencies Act, the Congressional Budget Act, and the Congressional Review Act? The PRESIDING OFFICER. Yes, that is correct. Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Again, for those of you following this at home, that means that this is the commonplace way in which the Senate operates and when it becomes the Parliamentarian's call on a matter and not anyone else's call. So in the Congressional Review Act matter before us, here is what happened: Both sides drafted written memoranda to the Parliamentarian. Both sides presented oral arguments to the Parliamentarian. The Parliamentarian asked questions of both sides, and the Parliamentarian, our neutral referee, reached a decision. That all took place here in the Senate--actually, over there in the L.B.J. Room. The GAO was not even in the room when the arguments were made. And that decision, the decision of the Parliamentarian, is what is now at hand in what is about to happen here in the Senate. And with that, let me note the presence on the floor of the Democratic leader and yield the floor. The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Democratic leader. Parliamentary Inquiry