vote:

vote:

the presiding officer: the yeas are 52, the nays are 48. the nomination is confirmed. under the previous order, the moas to -- the motions to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table and the president will be immediately notified of the senate's action. the clerk: cloture motion, we, the undersigned senators, in accordance with the provisions of rule 22, do hereby bring to a close debate on of executive calendar 128, candace jackson-akiwumi, of illinois, to be united states circuit judge for the seventh circuit. signed by 17 senators.

the presiding officer: by unanimous consent, the mandatory quorum has been waived, the question is -- shall the debate on the nomination of candace jackson-akiwumi shall be brought to a close? the yeas and nays are mandatory under the rules. the clerk will call the roll. vote: vote: vote:

vote:

vote:

the presiding officer: the yeas are 56h.53, the nays are 47. the motion is agreed to. the clerk will report the nomination. the clerk: the judiciary, candace jackson-akiwumi of illinois to be united states circuit judge for the seventh circuit.

the presiding officer: the senator from connecticut. mr. murphy: thank you, mr. president. mr. president, my state proudly calls itself the land of steady habits. some people in connecticut think it's kind of a funny thing to be proud of, being resistant to change, but honestly, in the northeast, in the crucible of america, we know that there is real value to consistency and tradition. a nation as unique as ours, multicultural, democratic, everexpanding in scope and ambition, we probably can't hold together unless there is some agreement between all of our different peoples about the expectations that we have for each other in the conduct of our national business. without tradition, our nation's defining die nonnism, it might break us. -- dinism, it might break us.

it's wildly old-fashioned to hold town meetings where every citizen has to show up on one particular day to make decisions about how you spend money or what you raise in taxes. that way was created four centuries ago. it's still the method of decision-making in many towns. tradition matters. it helps hold us together as a country. so i know and appreciate the value of consistency. i don't deny it. and so earlier this week, i read with interest an opinion piece penned by one of my friends in the senate democratic caucus, making the argument that amongst the most important reasons to preserve the 60-vote threshold in the senate is to advance the value of consistency and tradition in american politics. now, i was glad to read it. i'm proud of my colleague because for too long, the punditry and the activists, they have had near-exclusive domain over debate about the wisdom of changing the rules of this body,

and so it's been strange given how much this place means to the 100 of us who serve here that we have mostly left the dialogue over its future to those that don't work inside this chamber every day. yes, right now, there is a disagreement amongst senate democrats and between the majority of senate democrats and the majority of senate republicans about how the senate should operate. but there is no merit in hiding this dispute. there's no valor in letting others define the terms or lay out the conflicting arguments which i readily submit are compelling on both sides. so let's have the debate. let's have it right here. no more shadowboxing. the stakes, i would argue, are too important. so let me start here. the argument to keep the 60-vote threshold, to guarantee policy consistency, or to uphold senate tradition is downright

dangerous, because this argument essentially prioritizes consistency over democracy. at the very moment when americans have less faith than ever before that this place has the capacity to implement the will of the people, the 60-vote threshold is a slap in the face of majoritarianism, which is the bedrock principle of american democracy. the idea that the majority of people get to decide the direction of this country. not elites. not oligarchs like in other nations. people, regular people. to say that americans can have an election, choose leaders of a particular view, and then watch while the rules of democracy deliberately stop the voters' will from being enacted is to thumb our nose at the american electric trot. at the very moment when they ar. at the very moment when they are act tiflg considering whether the american democracy has anything left to offer them.

my colleague says that the 60 votes in the senate guards against rapid policy change. giving several examples including education, environment policy and voting rules as areas where danger might lie if one majority imposed a policy in one congress that would be undone by the next. i want to walk us through this argument. my first approach might be to postpone the harder question of whether or not the value consistency over democracy and to simply accept for a moment the prioritization of consistency and tradition. i do so knowing that our founding fathers also prioritize consistency. in federalist 9 and 10, hamilton and madison discuss what they call the problem with factions. mad section says that a faction is, quote, a number of citizens, whether amounting to a minority or majority of the whole, who are united and actuated by some common impulse of passion

adverse to the rights of other citizens. notice here that madison doesn't really care whether the faction represents a minority or majority of citizens. he simply defines it by its causes malevolence. of course this was and still is tricky business. rich white men defining for everybody else what cause is reichious and which cause is wicked. but our founding fathers built the system of government to make rapid policy change, even change supported by the majority of voters very, very hard to implement. how did they do this? i want to lay this out because if you do care about preventing rapid policy shifts, it's important to understand why the 60-vote threshold isn't necessary, is overkill, given all the other barriers our system has to be prevent rapid policy shifts. first, our founding fathers established a bicameral legislature as opposed to a unicameral parliament system. that meant that no change would be implemented until two different legislative bodies agreed to the exact same text.

second, they layered on top of that bicameral legislative structure a unitary president with a power to veto that legislation. third, they put in place an unelected body, the supreme court, that could invalidate any statutory change that conflicted with the constitution. fourth, they put the house and the senate and the presidency all on overlapping, conflicting election schedules, guaranteeing that it would be 100% impossible for the voters to sweep out all elected officials and replace them with a new slate all at one moment. and fifth, the founders built a few supermajority requirements, but only for selective occasions, treaties, impeachment, constitutional amendments, the stuff that could last forever. the founding fathers did want extra consensus around that. now, all of that design has lasted. it's still with us today, but there are other parts of the original design. intended to protect the value of consistency, to protect against the danger of faction, they have not lasted.

the founders also believed that only white men should vote and that citizens shouldn't be trusted to directly select the members of this body. that's all history because for all of the antifaction design that we've kempt, we've change -- kept, we've changed just as much. and all of that change has moved in only one direction, towards more majoritarian democracy. why? because as our -- because as our grand experiment matured, we saw proof of concept. the people could be trusted to govern themselves. they could choose leaders that were more able, more honest, more effective than any king or queen, any sultan or emperor. so we extended the franchise universally. we directly elected the senate. as america expanded, the new states out west gobbled up more democracy. they decided not just to elect legislators but more.

majoritarian rule became addictive. our country grew and it demanded more and more of it. that gets us to the 60-vote threshold. the 60-vote threshold in a country built on the strength of direct democracy stands out like a sore, rotting thumb. this antimajoritarian drain clog designed intentionally to stop the majority of americans from getting what they want from government. proponents of existing senate rules say that in the name of bipartisanship or tradition or consistency of policy, we should purposefully frustrate the changing will of the electorate. but why? why not trust voters. for instance, voters elect a president and congress in 2008, promised to enact a system of universal health care. it just so happened at that moment in the first time in 40

years there were 60 votes for the party of that view in the senate. and so a universal health care law was passed. why should it not be up to the voters and politicians to review the efficacy of a major policy change like that and if they so choose, elect leaders to rescind or revise it. i don't want the a.c.a. repealed but i'm deeply uncomfortable that a 60-vote threshold robs from voters that decision. this preference for policy consistency intentionally blinded to the merits of policy over direct democracy is particularly insidious at this moment in american history. first, because the 60-vote threshold is being used in a very, very different way today than it has in any time prior in our nation's history, up until the 1970's, cloture votes were almost nonexistent in the senate.

legislative filibusters were used mostly by racist white senators to stop civil rights bills but in the 1970's, that tactic became more widely employed. but it was still used sparingly. consider this. in 1994 our colleague senator feinstein forced a vote on one of the most controversial of all proposals that could come before this body, a ban on assault weapons. it received fewer votes than the manchin-toomey background check bill did 30 years later. senator feinstein's proposal got 52 votes. manchin-tomb yip got 54 -- toomey got 54 votes but the assault weapons ban became law. the background checks bill did not. why? because in 1994 many important votes, even the assault weapons ban, were allowed to proceed on a majority vote basis. not so by 2013. now, i could make the argument that it was republicans that started this rapid escalation of the use of the of 0-vote --

60-vote threshold but who really cares. does it matter? because today both parties use it almost without exception in a way that looks radically different than the way the tactic was used a half century ago. so i would argue that if you want to do an overview of the history of the 60-vote threshold, it doesn't tell a story of the value that the senate places on consistency. no, it's the opposite. watching the way that the tactic has been used so differently over time, it demonstrates the value the senate places on change in practice and tradition. reforming this rule would, frankly, just pay heed to this reality. the second danger of valuing consistency over democracy at this moment lies in the signal that it sends to an american public that is frankly in no mood for the choices of the elites to be continually

substituted for their own collective judgment. right now americans are in kind of a revolutionary mood and for good reason. more americans today than at any time in recent history see themselves on the precipice of financial and sometimes sprairtual ruin -- spiritual ruin. they were done with economic elites, jealously protecting the stat taws quo. in the election of donald trump, it was revealed by time to be a false prophet was an unmistakable foot stomp that is sick and tired of being taken for granted. why would our message amidst of this growing populist tempest tell voters that rulers in the senate are designed to protect them from their own bad judgment, to take from them purposefully the ability to change policies whenever and however they wish. i submit to you that today, right now, the replacement of popular will by antimajoritarian rule rigging could destroy us. today more than ever voters want

to know that their vote counts, every election. and continuing to give minorities here in the senate power to stop change is dangerously disconsonant with the current political mood of this country, take power away from the american people at your peril. finally on this question of the value we should place on consistency, i want to raise the problem of the city firehouse. firehouses are places that value consistency and tradition. firefighters spend a lot of time in close quarters together. when that alarm rings, they're required to work together in precise disciplined unison, to get out the door in seconds to save lives and property. practice has changed in a firehouse but carefully and through consensus decision making keeping everybody together matters when the stakes are so high. but what were to happen if inside that firehouse a sizable group of firefighters decided

one day that the mission of the department should no longer be to put out fires. but maybe instead to just let them burn a little. wouldn't then the value of consensus decision making become a little less important? if you were a homeowner, wouldn't you want to make sure that the firefighters who still wanted to fight fires were setting the rules and not the guys who were okay with the houses in the neighborhood burning down? now, i know this is a crude analogy, but to value consistency or tradition above everything else, i think you have to be pretty certain that everybody in your club, everybody on your team is guided by the same foundational goal. in the case of the united states senate, our goal, our end game has always been simple. the preservation of american democracy, the belief that every american should have a say in who governs, and the persons

that they choose and no one else should be seated in power. now, we've had fight, often vicious in nature, over the course of our nation's history over how fast we should expand the vote, how quickly we should reform our constitution to allow for more direct democracy. but never before has one party actively advocated for the lessening of democracy. never before has one party openly advocated for candidates who received the smaller share of the vote to be made president of the united states. in the last year a democratic rube conhas been -- rubicon has been crossed by one party and we can't ignore this devastate be blow to our nation. you cannot value consistency in practice when a large faction of your group's members don't believe in the underlying mission of your organization any longer. the firehouse can't just keep

doing the same things it always does year after year for the sake of consistency or tradition or consensus when two or three of your members that hop on the fire truck when that alarm sounds aren't intending to actually put out the fire when they arrive at the building. giving republicans a veto power over legislation when they no longer believe in the same way the democrats do or republicans used to in the sacredness of the vote is to risk the voluntary destruction of our democracy. consistency as a value has merit. it does. but in this business consistency is often put on an unhealthy pedestal. what's the value of being consistent when all the circumstances around you are changing? where's the strength in sticking to your position when everything around you is in metaphor take sis. when democracy itself is being attacked in a brutal, coordinated in an unprecedented volley of blows, what is the value of holding to a position

for the sake of being consistent. if the primary consequence is to simply green light the assault to continue? consistency and tradition and bipartisanship, they matter but not at the expense of democracy. not at a moment when millions of voters are questioning the wisdom of american democracy because no matter who they elect, nothing seems to change. and not when one party has increasingly abandoned the joint project to which all members of this body swore an oath as a condition of our membership. i yield the floor.

a senator: mr. president? the presiding officer: the senator from connecticut. mr. murphy: i note -- mr. president, i note senator marshall is readying to speak and i apologize for delaying him with my remarks 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 for up to ten

minutes each. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. murphy: i would also ask unanimous consent that when the senate completes its business today, it adjourn until 10:00 a.m. thursday, june 24. that following the prayer and pledge, the morning hour be deemed expired, the journal of proceedings be approved to date, the time for the two leaders be reserved for their use later in the day and morning business be closed. that upon the conclusion of morning business, the senate proceed to the consideration of s. 1251, the growing climate solutions act under the previous order. further, that all time on the bill expire at 11:00 a.m., that there be two minutes for debate equally divided prior to each vote with all provisions of the order remaining in effect, that upon disposition of s. 1251, the senate proceed to executive session to resume consideration of the jackson jackson-akiwumi -- jackson-akiwumi nomination with all time expiring at 1:45

p.m. finally, if the nomination is confirmed, the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table with no intervening action or debate. the presiding officer: is there objection? without objection. mr. murphy: thank you, mr. president. for the information of senators, there will be two roll call votes starting at 11:00 a.m. and one vote at 1:45 p.m. and if there's no further business to come before the senate, i ask that it stand adjourned under the previous order following the remarks of senator marshall and senator brown. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. marshall: mr. president? the presiding officer: the senator from kansas. mr. marshall: i ask unanimous consent to use two scientific models as props during my speech. the presiding officer: without objection. mark mash mr. president, -- mr. marshall: mr. president, it seems like every week we get a new update on the time liern for the or -- timeline for the origin of the covid-19 virus.

this week we learned that in october of 2019, october 2019, that over a thousand soldiers from over a hundred countries had gathered in wuhan china for a military olympics, if you will. and then what we learned several weeks after that event, that many of our own athletes, our own military personnel became ill as well as folks from other countries. we went back further and talked to some of those soldiers and they said that wuhan, china, looked like a ghosttown during that event. a town over 11 million people looked like a ghost town. what i'm frustrated about, mr. president, is that the c.d.c. has not investigated this, the military has not investigated it. during the proper times when we could have tested their antibodies, when we learned of this perhaps in march or april, they probably still had antibodies. but even today we could investigate it. but we need the f.d.a. to do their job as well.

we need the f.d.a. to pass a t-cell test so we can go back and see if these soldiers who became ill after this event, to see if indeed this was the covid-19 virus. certainly the time line by all accounts is going backwards every month. but i think it's time to update the american public, too, on what i feel are the lab origins of this virus, and certainly this is just a theory. but i think we need to look into and discover and talk more about the biological origin of this virus. mr. president, this is a model of covid-19, the virus that's killed millions of people across the world. it looks very much like the original sars virus with a few exceptions. and that exception is a protein spike. the protein spike that i'm talking about is composed of two units, and we'll call those two

units s-1 and s-2, and this is a model of that covid-19 protein spike. it is very special. it is very unique. the s-1 spike, let's talk about that just for a second. the s-1 spike looks very similar. it looks exactly like viral gain-of-function research that was conducted between a lab in north carolina and with dr. xi, the bat lady from the wuhan institute of virology. that s-1 spike sticks to lung cells like glue. so what we did -- again, this is n.i.h.-funded research, north carolina lab, the wuhan institute of virology. what we did was take the basic -- the original sars virus and we slapped a protein spike on it that made it stick to human cells like glue. think of it like a key in a being although. think that if you have a human cell is the lock that there

needed to be a special key. so they invented a special key that would impact and go into only human cells. and then -- so that was done about 2015. but then after that, things go dark. we don't know what happened. but somehow this covid-19 virus has another part of this protein spike. we'll call it the s-2 unit. the theory is that in the way hoon institute of virology -- and probably in the wuhan c.d.c. lab, further research was done, and they developed a special part of this spike -- again, the s-2 unit. and this is what is so special about it. it has a furin cleavage site. don't take it from me, take it from nobel laureate dr. david baltimore. dr. baltimore said the furin cleavage site, with its double-hargining protons, this

is smoking lab. that that double coating just doesn't occur in nature. and that only human cells have the ability to use that purin cleavage spike and break this into two separate units and that's what allows this virus to dump its genetic material into human lung cells and replicate. pass a physician, a person that studied virology a bit, this protein spike just doesn't look like it comes from nature. everything about it would suggest that it was made in a laboratory. it's just too mean. it's too angry. it's just too perfect. it's too infectious. and the unique thing about it is though some would make us believe that this virus comes from bats, this virus doesn't like bats. it only took american scientists and the chinese site to discover four months to discover the

origin of the sars virus, that it came from bat, that it went to another animal, an intermediate host. it only took us four months to discover that virus. here we are 18 month later and we don't have any type of intermediate host. all the mapping that we're seeing points that this virus was made in a laboratory. now, the wuhan lab could disprove me. they have the data to prove me wrong, but i'm afraid that data is now gone. it's gone forever, most likely destroyed -- unless, of course, we can find it in the cloud somewhere. it's outrage house that is a comprehensive investigation on the origins of covid-19 has still not been carried out. i'm proud that this body passed a resolution that senator gillibrand and i put together calling for a transparent investigation into the covid-19 outbreak, mandated by the world health assembly, unanimously passed this body. and that resolution demanded a full and transparent

investigation to include the united states and our allies and our partners around the world. but now it's time for the senate to do our job. it's time for the senate to fully investigate the origins of this virus as well. it would be utterly irresponsible to suffer through the worst pandemic in a century and not have the origins fully investigated. thank you, mr. president. i yield the floor. mr. marshall: mr. president, i have eight 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. marshall: i yield the floor.

mr. brown: mr. president? the presiding officer: the senator from ohio. mr. brown: are we in a quorum? the presiding officer: we are not. mr. brown: thank you, mr. president. last week america lost a baseball legend, a pioneer in

civil rights, jim grant. he joined the cleveland indians in 1958 and spent 14 years in the major leagues. i think remember watching him play when i was a kid in the 1960's. cleveland has been more than any other franchise perhaps a pioneer for change in baseball. cleveland had the first black player in the american league, larry doby, hall of famer. came in the league only about two months after jackie robeson integrated in the national league. cleveland had the first black manager hall of famer. and mudcat grant refused to be silent in the face of racist slurs and discrimination from management. grant was an accomplished singer with a beautiful voice. he organized a singing group "mudcat and the kittens" to make up the income he was denied that other players had, white players had, in advertising an

endorsements. companies wouldn't hire a black player. they toured the country during the off-season performing on johnny carson and places a little less known. i remember grant in later years serving as an announcer forecleveland indian games. with a southern drawl that was unmistakable. he didn't just use that voice, though, for entertainment or commentating on plays. he used it to speak out for civil rights. during the national anthem at one game predating colin kaepernick, mudcat grant, in the 1960's, before civil rights and voting rights had passed this congress, he said during the -- during the national anthem, he said this land is not free. i can't even go to mississippi and sit down at a lunch counter. a major league baseball player. in 1958, he and his white teammate gary bell roomed together for away games, becoming the first time players

in those days when they were paid less and management charged less, whatever, players roomed together. two players would room together. gary bell and mudcat grant were the first black and white roommates in the major leagues in 1958. while running for president, senator john f. kennedy invited mudcat grant to breakfast. grant didn't hold back. he talked openly with senator kennedy, with the future president, about the poverty he grew up in, the racism he endured every day. this was 1960, as a major league baseball player. of course it wasn't only his activism we remember mudcat grant for. we know his talent on the field. he was minor league's rookie of the year in 1954, only seven years after baseball was integrated. 1965, he was the first black player to win 20 games in the american league. he shouldn't have been -- he should have been the first. but listen to this, for years, major league managers conspired to prevent black pitchers from

becoming 20-game winners. that almost doesn't make sense. grant said some catchers would tell the hitters, the opposing hitters while they were catching what was coming because they didn't want you to do well as a pitcher. other managers when a player was reaching -- a pitcher was getting close to 20 games, other managers sat the player down so he couldn't be -- win 20 games as a black man. after black players passed away, we often hear about how they were among the underappreciated talents of the game. that's not a coincidence. in addition to being a singer, grant was also a writer. he published a book in 2007 called "the black aces." it's about the great african american pitchers. part of his project to tell more stories about black players and to teach more people about the history of baseball integration. it's the kind of stories we need to tell more often. our country is richer, as the presiding officer representing arizona, knows, the country is

richer when we tell people's stories. let's honor james timothy grant jr. by telling his story, heeding his words. in his great poem, life," james timothy grant jr. wrote life is like a game of baseball, you play it every day. it isn't just the breaks you get, but the kind of game you play. james mudcat grant, rest in peace. i yield the floor. the presiding officer: the senate stands adjourned until 10:00 a.m. tomorrow. ♪♪

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