herself. and many believe that even in cases of incest and rape where the woman is the victim of a chime and should be compelled to bear the child against her will and bring the pregnancy to term, talk about being intrusive. mr. president, this is basically the rights of women that are being trampled today. i thought we got beyond that, and now we see that we are moving in the wrong direction. empowering women is one of the most important things we can do for the future of our country. core to women's constitutional liberties is the autonomy over their own health and well-being. if we truly want to support women, we need to safeguard, improve, not limit access to c comprehensive health care. i would hope that we could all agree that on this 100th anniversary of women's suffrage that we should be looking at ways to remove discriminations based upon sex, not move in the wrong direction and take away from women the right to make their own health care decisions.

i suggest the absence of a quorum and yield the floor. the presiding officer: the clerk will call the roll. quorum call:

the presiding officer: the senator from maryland. mr. van hollen: thank you, mr. president. you know, we're now five months -- the presiding officer: we're still in a quorum call. mr. van hollen: mr. president, i ask unanimous consent that the quorum call be suspended. the presiding officer: without

objection. mr. van hollen: thank you, mr. president. we are now five months into the new 116th congress. during that five-month period, the new democratic majority in the house of representatives has passed a series of bills on issues important to the overwhelming majority of the american public. they include legislation to reduce the death toll from gun violence by requiring universal criminal background checks. they include legislation to end the millions and millions of dollars of secret money flowing into elections and polluting our politics. the house legislation includes a bill to ensure that women receive equal pay for equal work, and the house has passed legislation to strengthen the protections under the violence

against women act. mr. president, those are just some of the initiatives that the house has passed in the last five months, and here in the senate, what has the senate done on those important issues? what has the senate done with the legislation that the house has passed and which is now sitting in this body? we've done nothing, zip. we haven't taken up any of those bills. in fact, the senate republican leader has refused to allow this body to consider those important measures. what are we doing instead? instead, the senate is consuming all its time, all its time not on the matters most important to the public but on debating and confirming judicial and executive branch nominees. and here's the thing, mr. president. if you look at these judicial

nominees, take the ones we're looking at this week, you will find a very dangerous pattern, and this week, looking at the five nominees, the pattern is selecting judges who will strip away women's reproductive choices. who will strip away and potentially eliminate the rights under roe v. wade. that is the clear pattern. if you look at the records of these nominees, they indicate hostility toward a woman's right to choose and hostility to roe v. wade. take stephen clark. he is the nominee for the eastern district of missouri. he drew the outrageous comparison between dred scott and roe v. wade, concluding roe is bad law. he also opposed provisions in

the affordable care act that would expand access to contraception to help people avoid unintended pregnancies. then, mr. president, there is the nomination of kenneth bell to be the justice in the western district of north carolina. he's argued that the abortion rights of the pro-choice position is, quote, indefensible , and went on to say there is no middle ground on this issue. in other words, another judge who would deny women the right of reproductive choice and the list goes on as you look at the judges that are before the senate this week. now, mr. president, this would be alarming at any point in time, but the timing of these nominations is no coincidence. just in the last couple of

months, we have seen states around the country passing laws to take away a woman's right to choose. take a look at alabama. in the case of alabama, they passed a law that denies women's rights to choose to have an abortion even in the case of rape or incest, and under the alabama law, doctors who performed abortions could be locked up in prison for up to 99 years. a prison term longer than the rapist. and, mr. president, we also have candidate trump arguing that not only should doctors be punished, but that women who exercise their rights to reproductive choice, that they should be punished, too. meanwhile, in addition to

alabama, five other states have passed laws that would outlaw abortion at a very early stage. in fact, at a stage in pregnancy when many women do not realize they are yet pregnant, especially if the pregnancy is unplanned and unexpected. mr. president, i think people recognize how outrageous it is to see legislators, state legislators and other elected officials who normally take the position that the government has no place in regulating or being involved in any aspect of our lives who then take the position that they want the government right between a woman and her most sensitive decisions with respect to -- with respect to reproductive choice. you've got legislators who say

they don't want the government protecting people from air pollution, right? they don't want to pass any regulations to protect people from air pollution or water pollution. you have got some legislators who say they don't want any legislation to protect consumers from predatory lending or from other scams in the economy. they don't want -- they don't think government has a role there, but by god, when it comes to interfering with a woman's right to choose, they want the government smack in the middle of that decision. that's what alabama's done. that's what the other five states have done. and now, now we have judges, judicial nominees coming before the senate who are going to sign

off potentially on those state laws. and it gets even more alarming, mr. president, because we also see a pattern from the judicial decisions that have been made and from the record of a lot of the nominees that are before us now of judges or people being appointed not only who want to strip away a woman's right to reproductive choice but actually want to go after programs that provide family planning, programs that help prevent unwanted and unplanned pregnancies. and so on the one hand, you have states passing these laws to restrict a woman's right to choose. at the same time, you have

people saying we want to get rid of or severely limit programs that prevent unintended pregnancies. mr. president, if you look at the figures from the centers for disease control -- and they keep statistics on all sorts of health indicators -- you will find that from the years 2006 to the year 2015, we saw a 24% drop in the number of abortions in the united states. 25% drop between the years 2006 and 2015. researchers who have looked into this have determined that the biggest driver behind this decline in abortions has been increased access to contraception and family planning. and yet you have the trump administration that is going

after and targeting for elimination the very programs that help reduce inintended pregnant -- unintended pregnancy, and therefore also help reduce abortions. so this administration is trying to take a hatchet to title 10. they want to essentially take planned parenthood out of the equation. even though planned parenthood provides family planning services to four in ten women. as we all know, planned parenthood is barred by law from spending any federal dollars on abortion. they spend most of their time counseling their patients on family planning and helping people make decisions about contraception to avoid unplanned pregnancies. this administration tried to target the teenaged pregnancy

prevention program. i know that because they went after a program in baltimore city that's been very successful at reducing teenaged pregnancy. in fact, if you look at baltimore from a period of the year 2000 to 2016, we saw a 61% decline in teen pregnancy. that was a result of a number of programs, easier being access to contraception, the teenage program targeted for elimination by the trump administration and after the affordable care act, the ability to access contraception as a result of the affordable care act. so all of these measures to help prevent unplanned pregnancies have also helped reduce significantly the number of abortions. and yet we have an

administration that wants to go after those family planning programs. and we have a number of judges who would side with the administration. so i mentioned a couple of important family planning programs. one is title 10. so this administration wanted to severely undermine title 10. they haven't been successful yet. why? because it was taken to court. and so far the courts have stayed that administration decision. let's look at the teenage pregnancy prevention program that i mentioned was so important in baltimore. the administration wanted to eliminate it. we had to go to court and a judge said that was an illegal, unauthorized action by the trump administration. let's look at the contraception in the affordable care act. this administration wants to wipe them out.

the only reason they are still there is because of the courts. so the courts have been very important not only in protecting a woman's right to choose but in protecting these important family planning programs that prevent unintended pregnancies and therefore reduce the number of aabortions. yet we have -- abortions. yet we have a number of judges coming before the senate that would rule differently in all of these cases. and so that is why i believe the american people need to be really larmd about what is happening -- alarmed about what is happening here because we're not acting on important measures that are coming out of the house that i mentioned earlier, but we are doing is spending full time passing through judges in a factory-like procedure here, judges who would undermine a

woman's right to choose and go after important family planning programs. so we've got a -- we've got a lot, mr. president, for us to think about and i hope all of our colleagues will recognize what's happening here. and i want to go back to where i started. instead of churning out judges who are going to strip away the rights of women and other nominees who side with big corporations against consumers, let's take up the legislation that in front of us right now that's come over from the house. we have before us h.r. 8, it's the bipartisan background check legislation. bipartisan because it came out of the house on a bipartisan vote. bipartisan because if you ask the public, 85% of the public is in favor of the simple idea that we should have criminal

background checks that people who have committed crimes shouldn't be able to go to a gun show and be able to purchase a gun. and if you have a record of posing a danger to the community, my goodness, why would we want to put a gun in your hand and endanger the community? it's a pretty straightforward piece of legislation. it's been in this senate for 83 days now. 83 days it's been sitting right here in the united states senate. the senate republican leader won't let us take it it up to debate it or to vote on it. i mentioned another bill that came over from the house that would get rid of secret money in politics. what do i mean by that? what i mean by that is after the supreme court decision in citizens united, we had two things happen. one was just a flood of corporate money flying into elections.

because before that decision corporations could not spend money directly to try to elect public officials. congress previously passed a law to prevent that and previous courts upheld that because of the obvious danger of corruption. in citizens united, corporations are people too for the purpose of spending money in elections, and so they got rid of that law. but if you read that opinion, even those who voted to overturn those laws, they said that what's going to protect the system is the public's going to know who's spending all of that money. so they said, we will let corporations spend hall that money, we'll let 504-c's spend the money, but we'll let the public now and the transparency will provide accountability. well, guess what. it didn't happen. in fact, the senate republican

leader has been one of the arch opponents of any kind of transparency and disclosure. i've had a long-running back and forthwith him on this issue because even if you look at the proponents of the terrible citizens united decision, as i said, those justices said, well, transparency will take care testify. well, the reality is people spend millions and millions of dollars in secret money in elections. and let me just tell people that it may be secret to the public, but it's not a big secret to the candidates who are running. it's not a big secret to them who's spending millions of dollars to try to get them elected or try to defeat them. so that's just a farce. and so years ago, when i was in the house, i authorized -- authored something called the disclose act.

it died here on an almost identical bill. it didn't get 60. so today we have secret money in politics. my view is voters have a right to know who's spending millions of dollars to try to influence their decision, and that is a big part of the bill that came over from the house, a bill that came over from the house 74 days ago. it's called the for the people act. it has a lot of other important provisions to protect our elections, important provisions to make sure that we uphold the right to vote, but among the important provisions is the disclose act to get rid of secret money in politics. that's been sitting over here. it has been for 74 days. what else has the house sent over? well, they sent over the equal pay for equal work act. as it pretty straightforward

idea. i think most americans agree with it. public surveys show the public agrees, if you put in an equal day's work, you put in the sweat equity, if you -- if you -- if you do the job and if a woman does a job just like a man does the job, my god, obviously she should get paid the same amount. it's a pretty simple concept. that came over from the house -- as a matter of fact, mr. president, that came over from the house just 55 days ago. 55 days it's been sitting here. another bill that came over from the house also relates to making sure that we address issues important to all of us, but it specifically deals with the violence against women act. and what we say within the violence against women act in the house bill is that, you know what, if you have someone who's

abusing you in a relationship, it doesn't have to be your spouse, it could be someone else who is abusing you in a relationship, well, you shouldn't be able to go out an buy a gun because what we've seen from the sad statistics is that those kind of situations often escalate into somebody getting killed when they are in a relationship where one of the people in that relationship is abusing the other. and so just as we prevent the sale of guns to spouses who have a record of domestic violence and domestic abuse, we should extend the that prohibition on running out and getting a gun to other abusive relationships. that was the reauthorization of the violence against women act. that passed out of the house 47

days ago. so 47 days ago, mr. president, the house passed the reauthorization of the violence against women act. 55 days ago they passed the paycheck fairness act, equal pay for equal work. 74 days ago they passed the for the people act, which includes the provision to get rid of secret money in politics, and 83 -- days ago they passed the bipartisan background check act to reduce the death toll from gun violence in our country. all of those bills are sitting right here in the united states senate. we could be debating them today if the republican leader would allow them to come up. but instead of taking up that important work, we're here acting like a factory churning

out more judges who have records of stripping women of their right to reproduct your choice -- reproductive choice. it is a very, very dark time in the united states senate, and i hope that we will get about the business of the american people and stop stripping women of their constitutional rights. mr. president, i suggest the absence -- i yield my time back. mr. blunt: mr. president. the presiding officer: the senator from missouri. mr. blunt: i have nine requests for committees to meet during today's session of the senate. they have the approval of the majority and minority leaders. the presiding officer: duly noted. mr. blunt: thank you, mr. president. mr. president, i think by any standards it's a stretch to

suggest that we're turning out judges. we're doing our constitutional job of confirming judges that the president is constitutionally required to nominate. today we're going to vote on a missouri judge, judge stephen clark, to be a judge on the u.s. district court of the eastern district of missouri, and in the process of churning out judges, judge clark was told by the white house, or soon to be judge clark, i hope, in july of 2017 that he was going to be their nominee for this place on the court. if it was -- if it was july 2017 and it is now may of 2019, the churning is obviously not going very well. and, in fact, to get people to even serve in these jobs is going to be increasingly

difficult. in the case of steve clark and his family had a pretty unique practice that was focused on him and a couple of associates. i'm not even sure the kind of law that -- that they practiced. i'm sure it was not the kind of law that was referred to a minute ago. but for he and his family -- his wife was the assistant in the office. i think they had an associate or two. but if all of your clients have been told for 20 months or so that you're going to be a district judge, they eventually, the first question they ask is, can you handle this case, and the answer you give is, well, i don't know, but probably not. eventually the congress will get to this and eventually i'll be confirmed and so by the time you go from july of 2017 to november of 2018, there's nobody still

coming in the door. and the law practice closes, as it should have, not forced to close but clearly the best thing to do was to go ahead and admit that the overhead of that practice has gone away. the supporting -- the supporting effort of that practice has gone away. the overhead was still there. so since november, stephen clark has been waiting for this day to happen. that's not churning out judges, and i may get back to that topic in just a minute. certainly for the nominees like this to be willing to have their names submitted, to be willing to say yes when asked if they would be the -- willing to be the nominee, we have to do a better job, not a job of suggesting that somehow this happens easily to people who aren't qualified. steve clark's been a respected

practicing attorney in the eastern district of missouri for 28 years. he knows the law. he knows the community. the american bar association rated him well qualified to hold this job. he's been approved by the senate judiciary committee twice now, once in 2016 -- let's see if i've got that right. there's so much history here, it's hard to even know what the book would look like. once before the 2018 election and then all these nominees had to be sent back to the white house. so after the 2018 election, after the congress started work again in january of 2019, his name had to be resubmitted. the committee had to vote on him again. they had to look once again to see that he was well qualified to hold this job. they had to once again verify

that he'd had 28 years in private practice. we even had a past president of the missouri bar association who's a democrat say that, quote, steve clark will make an excellent addition to the federal court bench. you know, the very idea, in fact, that we characterize judges we're putting on the courts as enemies of any group of people is pretty offensive when you think about it. and the law of the land is the law of the land. judges are bound by precedent. certainly lawyers are bound by precedent. there's nothing to suggest anything other than the well qualified status of the bar association. we need to fill this vacancy. we've got even a temporary judgeship in the eastern district. the workload is so great that temporary judgeship should

become permanent but that's not the judgeship we're talking about here. we're talking about somebody who is ready for this job, willing to give up his law practice with what should have been an absolute certainty he would be confirmed but no absolute certainty he'd be confirmed. i certainly wish the process hadn't taken so long, but i'm glad we were able to adjust the rules of the senate last month to start getting more people through that process. without that, people in this case in my state, the people in the eastern district of missouri, would have to wait even longer. we may have never gotten this judgeship filled if we hadn't changed the rules. unfortunately there are still a whole lot of people waiting to be confirmed to important jobs in the government. there's still too much obstruction for no real reason. in fact, in past congresses, judgeships like this would have been filled by unanimous conse

consent. we'd have filled five or six a day if we had vacancies and well qualified candidates at the end of the day with no debate. but our friends on the other side have decided, no, we're going to take -- what they decided is we're going to take the maximum amount available of debatable time for, say, a supreme court judge or the attorney general of the united states, and we're going to apply that to every job, district judges, the assistant secretary of whatever that is the lowest person appointed in whatever cabinet office there is, we're going to apply the 30 hours to them. and of course what you did to do that is you use up all this time. because nothing else can happen on the floor during that 30 hours. now, was debate happening on the floor during that 30 hours? of course not. the average debate time used during that 30 hours was 24

minutes. so for the other 29 hours and -- what would that be? -- 36 minutes, nothing happened that related to that judgeship. i heard actually this morning on one of the news programs when i was driving to the capitol somebody said now -- they're forcing judges to be confirmed with only two hours of debate instead of the 30 hours that should have been used. that would have been a valid criticism if the 30 hours was ever used. but when the 30 hours is only 24 minutes, it's no criticism at all. it is a ridiculous position to take. you don't have to be a genius to see that it's designed to not allow the president to have the jobs confirmed in the government that the congress has determined that the senate would have to confirm. there are i think about 970 of

them which, by the way, if you take 30 hours for every 970 of them, i think it would have been impossible. and we were proving it was impossible for the president to ever get a government in place. and then the judicial vacancies that occur, this is a vacancy we're filling today that was vacant months before president trump was elected. maybe three months, maybe four months, but in the entire, we haven't had anybody in this judgeship now for well over two years. in fact, as i said earlier, we've had s mean the united stas

congress. we have completed almost 25% of the time allotted to this current congress, and what have we done? other than nominations, which are important -- and i will come back to that -- we have done nothing. zero. zilch. nada. talk my friends in

the house of representatives first. i have great respect for them. i wish i had served in the house. i would have loved to have had that experience. so far our friends in the house house, at least the leadership leadership, have done two things. number one, they have passed bills that they know have not a hope in hades of passing the united states senate. we call those bills messaging bills, as you know, mr. president. they're not designed for the next generation. they're designed for the next election. they don't do anything to make the american people any more secure or improve the quality of their life, and we all know that. the second thing that my friends

in the house leadership have done -- and i say this with all the respect i can muster -- is to harass the president. again i say this gently and i say this hopefully constructively to my friends in the house leadership. the house leadership needs to urinate or get off the pot. the house leadership needs to indict the president of the united states, pim peach him -- impeach him and let us hold a trial. he won't be convicted. or they need go ahehead and hold in contempt every single member of the trump administration so we can move those issue into our court system and get back to doing the people's business.

now if they decide to go the court route, mr. president, i would callings my friends to be very, very careful. because once it enters the court system, it becomes a zero sum gain. one or two things -- one of two things will happen. either the administration will win, in which case the oversight authority of the unite states congress will be undermined or the house leadership will win in which case no american with a brain above a single cell organism is going to want to run for the president of the united states because they can find out congress will be able to find out everything about your life, even the most intimate details whether it's relevant or not and whether it happened when you

were president or not. what i hope happens, mr. president, is that my friends in the house leadership and the administration sit down and talk, not talk about 8-year-olds in the back of a minivan fighting, but talk constructively about how their behavior could impact important institutions in this country and work it out. and i want to thank the attorney general for making overtures to the house leadership to try to find some common ground. now let me talk about the senate. we need to do more, mr. president. i'm not saying we haven't done anything. we have confirmed some very important nominees to the trump administration, long overdue, fine men and women. we have confirmed some very fine men and women to the federal

judiciary, and they, i believe, will make this country safer and they will make this country better, and i'm very proud of that effort. so let me say it again. i'm not saying we've done nothing. i'm saying we need to do more. there are issues where our democratic friends and my republican friends have more in common than we don't. we need to bring the bills to the floor of the united states senate. everyone has their own list and everyone in the senate knows what i'm talking about whether they'll say it or not. what's one o the things that moms and dads, when they lie down at night and can't sleep worry about? the cost of prescription drugs.

there's bipartisan support for prescription drug reform. i just read a study in the journal of the american medical association. they -- they studied the united states health care delivery system and the health care delivery systems of all over wealthy countries, so it's apples to apples. we pay about $1,500 for every man, woman, and child for pharmaceutical drugs. the average in other countries is $560. i'm not criticizing pharmaceutical companies. we live longer and keep us out of the hospital. but why is everybody else paying $700 and we're paying $1,500? there are things that pharma suit cal companies can do to make us better. but what are we doing?

nothing. i could give you another example. we all know there needs to be reform, mr. president of our national emergency act. we know that. it's not about president trump. it's not about president trump.

quorum call:

mr. whitehouse: is the senate presently in a quorum call? the presiding officer: yes. mr. whitehouse: in that case, mr. president, may i ask unanimous consent that the pending quorum be vitiated. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. whitehouse: thank you. mr. president, on tuesday "the washington post" published an important piece of investigative

journalism. the journalists looked into a very narrow, very wealthy group of special interests seeking to control our federal judiciary. it was a revealing story, one that matters a great deal to the senate and to the people we serve. i come to the floor today to discuss that tightening special interest grip on our courts. the central operative in this court-fixing scheme is leonard leo of the federalist society, the organization at the center of this effort. as i described here on the senate floor several weeks ago, there are three incarnations of the federalist society. the first is a debating society

for conservatives. at law schools they convene panels and forum or like-minded aspiring lawyers to talk about conservative ideas and judicial doctrine. that's all fine. the second is a flashy washington, d.c., think tank. they attract big-name lawyers and scholars and politicians, even supreme court justices to their events. they publish and podcast, they hold black tie galas i don't agree with the work they do, but i don't question their right to do it. the third federalist society is what was exposed in the post article. it is something much, much darker, both in its funding and in its function. it is a vehicle for powerful

interests seeking to, quote, reorder the judiciary under their control so as to benefit their corporate right-wing purposes. it seeks to accomplish by judicial power grab what the republican party has been unable to accomplish through the open democratic process. this third dark federalist society understands the fundamenental power through the federal judiciary to rig the system in favor of special interests. so what did the post -- find out about how our judges on the most

important courts in the country are selected? it found a network of front groups. it found shell entities with no employees. it found shared post office mail drops, common contractors and officers across nominally separated entities. in these characteristics it has some resemblance to money laundering and crime syndicates. what else did they found? they found dark money funde, anonymous advertising, enormous pay packages for the operatives and judicial lists prepared secretly. oh, and it found $250 million in

dark money flowing through this apparatus. the story turns up familiar political dark money funders like the mercers and the national rifle association, but it also exposed groups that are heard to spot -- harder to spot which may not have tbarner -- garnered much attention before but served in leonard leo's court-fixing apparatus. a few weeks ago i delivereded remarks on the senate floor about the sweeping influence of leonard lieuo and the federalist society court-fixing scheme. i touched on one federalist society product of this scheme in particular, the newly confirmed d.c. court of appeals judge naomi roule.

i described straight-forward facts. her connection with the federalist society is no secret. sitting on the d.c. circuit right now her biostill appears on -- bio still appears on the federalist society website along with the 26 times she's been featured -- 26 times she's been featured at federalist society events. before being nominated for one of the most influential courts in the country, what some call the second-highest court in the land, she had never been a judge. she had never tried a case. instead, she had served as the trump administration's point person for helping big republican donors tear down federal safety regulations.

she did this as the head of the white house's office of information and regulatory affairs, oira. that's not disputed. before that, she founded something provocatively called the center for the study of the administrative state at george mason university's antonin scalia law school. her center is a cog in leonard leo's machine. let's revisit rao's testimony before the senate judiciary committee about the funding of her center for the study of the administrative state. she testified -- testified that neither the koch foundation nor

any anonymous donors had funded her center. well, a trove of documents obtained by me, "the new york times," and others showed that was not true. a virginia open records request had revealed that an anonymous donor funneling its dark money donation through leonard leo and the charles koch foundation, in fact, donated $30 million intended to flow to her organization -- her center for the study for the administrative state. well, my remarks drew quite a reaction. the center's current director

took to median to post a 2,500-word rebuttal. he claimed i was all wrong about the center's funding. that none of its money came from those anonymous and koch brothers donations. the national review jumped into the fray and noted the median post on its website. the nub of its criticism was that, although i was right, the scalia law school had, indeed, received millions in anonymous and koch brothers' money. that money had gone to fund scholarships, not to the anti-regulatory center for the administrative state. let's start by assuming that's true. i'll tell you if iave $30 million to my alma mater for

scholarships, i would expect a thank you. i expect they would see a gift of $30 million in scholarships as a benefit to the school. if they were asked, as has -- has senator whitehouse ever gave you a gift? i would expect them to say, yes, he gave us a 30 million-dollar scholarship fund. i fight even expect a nice press release. so i don't buy the this was just scholarship money dodge around telling the truth to the judiciary committee. but look a little more. in 2016, george m mason university, indeed, received a $10 million donation from the charles koch foundation, and, indeed, did receive a

$20 million donation from an anonymous donor. both gifts came with grant agreements, and these grant agreements were among the virginia open records documents. so we can learn a little bit more. the grant agreements stipulate that the money was intended to fund scholarships but also specified that gifts were conditioned -- conditioned on the schools providing funding and support -- funding and support for, you guessed it, naomi rao's center for the study of the administrative state. and that's not all we found. private communications revealed with the grant agreements show that the koch foundation and

their hand-picked law school administrators viewed all this money as fundingable -- i said if i gave $30 million, i would expect a press release. the antonin scalia school did a press release. the statement was the scholarship money would also benefit the institution because it frees up resources that can be allocated for other priorities including additional faculty hires and support for academic programs. end quote. d it didn't end there. the documents keep telling us more things. they include a progress report -- a progress report to

the koch foundation under the heading, quote, most pressing needs. dean henry butler wrote to the koch foundation that, and i'm quoting him here, cash is king, paren, scholarships are cash, close paren. in that same memo to the koch foundation, which, by the way, is kind of a bizarre document to exist in the first place unless this is kind of a front for koch brothers' political activities. anyway, in that same memo dean butler also made clear that rao's center had indeed received hundreds of thousands in funding from an anonymous donor just as i charged, and further, made

clear that rao's center was being funded with 4$00,000 from, quote, name -- $400,000 from, quote, naming gift scholarships. the koch brothers scholarship money earmarked for naomi rao's center. it was being funneled for nay oh,y -- nay oh, my rao. the dark plot thickened. here's the most interesting part of all. the open records documents also show that the law school dean, henry butler, regularly reported to leonard leo on developments at naomi rao's center,