mr. whitehouse: madam president. the presiding officer: the senator from rhode island. mr. whitehouse: madam president, i'm happy to bring the voice of the ocean state to the floor today as an original cosponsor of senator rubio's bill to make daylight savings time permanent. i hope very much that we can actually agree to this on the floor today and hope for similar action in the house. pretty much everybody in rhode island experiences the same thing on that unhappy day in early november, it's usually the sixth or seventh, when suddenly an power of your day, an hour of your daylight disappears and dusk comes an hour earlier. and it is a sad time. people are unhappy. it does darken our lives in a very literal sense. and by the time you get from november, when we fall back, to the shortest day of the year in december, december 21, i think it is, we have sunset in rhode island at 4:15 p.m. 4:15 p.m. that means everybody is driving home if they work regular 9:00 to 5:00 hours and they are driving home in the pitch dark. there's no need for it. let's make it 5:15 instead. now, gr

mr. whitehouse: mr.resident, i ask unanimous consent that the senate be in a period of morning business with senators permitted to speak therein for up to ten minutes each, and that i be recognized for up to 20 minutes. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. whitehouse: thank you, mr. president. i rise again to discuss the scheme that has captured and now controls america's supreme court if you've been following this series of speeches, you know that we've gone over the powell memo and the plan it laid out for the corporate right wing. we've gone over the technique of agency capture, regulatory capture that has been applied to the supreme court. we've gone over the turn style, that big, anonymous right wing donors set up within the federalist society to approve republican nominees. and the dark money front groups that sped those nominees through senate confirmation. and we've discussed how the big right wing donor interests influence justices while they're on the bench, through fast lanes for dark

mr. whitehouse: i'll say one thing and i'll hand it over to senator graham. on march 8, i sent out over social media this sentiment. keep alive in your heart the possibility that ukraine could actually win. columns stalled, defense fierce, casualties high, morale low, desserters surrendering, food and fuel snafu, population uncowed. since then we're hearing more and more. i'll read four quotes. the first is from the man we heard from this morning, the president of ukraine volodymyr zelenskyy who in his speech to the people of ukraine on march 14 didn't just talk about peace for ukraine although he did talk about peace for ukraine but he also talked about our victory, victory. it's an important word to keep in mind. he's not alone. general wesley clark on cnn also on march 14 said the battle for ukraine is hanging in the balance if we can get enough in there, they'll push the russians out. victory. to continue his quote, it will be a tremendous win for the west. and apple balm knows probably at much about this area as anyone. she joined us on the munich securi

mr. whitehouse: madam president? the presiding officer: the senator from rhode island is recognized. mr. whitehouse: madam president, before i get under way with the business that brings me to the floor, i'd like to take a moment to say farewell and thank you to a member of my staff who is going on to other pursuits. her name is leah siegel. she is right behind me, and she was my scheduler for many, many, many years. as every senator knows, there's a special relationship between a senator and a scheduler. they have to be on duty more or less 24/7 when we're up and about, they have to deal with our day-to-day life and how it integrates with our offices. they very often are close to and involved with our families because of having to deal with keeping our family time extant and busy schedules. so i want to say a word of appreciation to leah. i don't know how many speeches she is he's scheduled me here on the floor for, all the scheme receives, probably all the time to make up speeches, and this one today. this one today she actually gets to be here for and doesn't have to watch on tele

mr. whitehouse: mr. president, as i rise today kleptocracy is on the rise in europe showing how unchecked corruption leads to evil. vladimir putin's corrupt regime fabricated a pretext to invade and subjugate the sovereign and peaceful nation of ukraine. putin's attack helps divert the russian people from his festering corruption and misrule , as jailed opposition leader alexi no value knee put it. america and our allies are meting out stiff penalties and my colleagues and i are working on additional measures to deliver financial blows to putin and his corrupt oligarchs. but we must consider how how we arrived at this moment. putin has for decades deployed corruption and kleptocracy to strengthen his grip on russia's government and to project power and influence throughout the region. in the process, he decimated russia's free press, attacked physically and economically all political opposition, and grew his own personal fortune to what is thought to be the largest in the world. i say thought to be becau

mr. whitehouse: thank you. let me thank senator thune for his remarks and simply add that i hope we can all keep in our hearts the prospect that the ukrainians might actually win this thing given the success they've already seen, as long as they get adequate support from us and the world community. i'm here, mr. president, for a rather different reason. it is to call this chamber yet again to wake up to the urgent threat of climate change. i wish i was done with these time to wake up speeches. frankly, i wish i never had to deliver a single one. i wish congress had dealt with this threat. for instance, back when another senator from rhode island, republican john chafee, held hearings on the looming challenge of carbon dioxide pollution, i wish we dealt with it when the house, under speaker pelosi, halved the waxman -- passed the waxman-markey climate change bill, only for majority leader harry reid and president barack obama to kill it in a democratic senate with a filibuster-proof majority. and i wish the citi

mr. blumenthal: i might add a footnote to senator whitehouse's very important comment which is that at the time of judge jackson's brief, i organized a brief on behalf of the attorneys general -- state attorneys general. i was attorney general of connecticut at the time. this issue really had nationwide import. her involvement and her brief, i think, elevated the discussion. and illucidated important legal and factual issues. i know at the time we were extremely grateful for the involvement of a broad array of organizations in that litigation, the attorneys general and my office were involved because we were on the front lines in connecticut of enforcing that federal statute. it was a federal statute. but we were involved in enforcing it. senator durbin: thank you. senator klobuchar. senator klobuchar: we had similar moments at that time. i wanted to add mine. we had a bombing of a clinic in our area. and i still remember getting a box in the mail and it was from someone i knew. we opened it up and this private citizen had sent me a bulletproof vest because i kept going to all of the event

mr. mclay. >> i would like to thank chairman whitehouse with ranking member kennedy and members of the subcommittee for inviting me to testify here today. my name is kevin mclay and here to talk about the texas two-step. the texas two-step is at its core extremely simple. the company splits into two entities, one of the entities gets nearly all assets. and whatever liabilities the company decides it wants to keep paying. the second company is a mere shell. it gets almost none of the assets but gets whatever liabilities the company chooses to stop paying. to date those disfavored liabilities have been those owed to tort victims like ms. naranjo sitting a chair over to my right. then the shell company files for bankruptcy protection. this immediately cuts off her ability to get paid for injuries. potentially for an extended period of time, while other creditors of the original entity continue getting paid in full and on time. indeed, from the perspective of the non-bankrupt company, almost nothing has changed. because that entity carries out business as unusual. under the same name as the original co

senator whitehouse: thank you very much. mr. secretary, thank you for being here. i understand there's been some suggestion that the department should not make any efforts to mitigate transportation greenhouse gas emissions or to ensure infrastructure resilience in the implementation of the infrastructure bill. i just wanted to ask it is true, is it not, the bipartisan infrastructure law includes a climate title? secretary buttigieg: direct. senator whitehouse: it includes funding that is required to be used on emissions reductions and resilience? secretary buttigieg: yes. senator white did the house: it requires all states to develop a strategy to reduce emission from the transportation sector? secretary buttigieg: yes. senator whitehouse: you have had questions about the application of the social cost of carbon decision out of the district court in louisiana. does that decision relieve you of any responsibilities to make decisions in a fact-based way, in a fact-based environment? secretary buttigieg: not at all. senator whitehouse: with respect to the administrat

whitehouse. senator lee of utah. >> thank you, mr. chairman. thank you, judge jackson, for joining us today. i appreciated you and the conversation i had in a couple of days ago. -- a couple of days ago. look forward to more of that this week. i enjoyed meeting your husband and your two lovely daughters. they are wonderful people. grateful to you for your service. your service to the federal judiciary as a member of the bar. you bring to the court, as i mentioned to you last week, a unique set of experiences. if you are confirmed, you will be someone who has served at all three levels of the federal judiciary and as a result of that you will have a perspective that is different than that of most to have served on that court during the modern era. i appreciate your willingness to be considered and to be here to talk to us about our questions. i echo what many of my colleagues have said today in that i am dedicated, as i always have been, to making sure these hearings are respectful,. engaging in the politics of personal destruction is not something we should ever aspire to. it is something th

whitehouse. senator lee of utah. >> thank you, mr. chairman. thank you, judge jackson, for joining us today. i appreciated you and the conversation i had in a couple of days ago. -- a couple of days ago. look forward to more of that this week. i enjoyed meeting your husband and your two lovely daughters. they are wonderful people. grateful to you for your service. your service to the federal judiciary as a member of the bar. you bring to the court, as i mentioned to you last week, a unique set of experiences. if you are confirmed, you will be someone who has served at all three levels of the federal judiciary and as a result of that you will have a perspective that is different than that of most to have served on that court during the modern era. i appreciate your willingness to be considered and to be here to talk to us about our questions. i echo what many of my colleagues have said today in that i am dedicated, as i always have been, to making sure these hearings are respectful,. engaging in the politics of personal destruction is not something we should ever aspire to. it is something th

mr. chairman. i yield back. >> thank you, senator ossoff. senator whitehouse. >> thank you. >> we have had some in rhode island with community violence prevention programs. one run by our senator for nonviolence. that is called the street workers program. it finds people who may have had some experience with street crime and are certainly known or active in the community. this ties them up with the police department so that they can provide what you might call early warning systems and also if it looks like something very productive -- provocative has taken place, to reach out to the community to try to defuse tensions before further violence takes place. our experience has been very successful. providence police swear by their relationship with the street workers program. i wanted to get your opinion on whether the positive experience with the providence police -- whether it has been replicated elsewhere or if this is a consistent pattern of success. >> in our area, there is one called operation cease fire. some don't have that partnership with law enforcemen

mr. chairman. >> happy to take the question back. >> senator whitehouse. >> i'm delighted to see you here. your work. hate crimes have spiked to the point as to describe they are a top national threat priority. this is probably an easy answer for you but why is it important that a crime be charged as a hate crime rather than just a crime? >> thank you. senator whitehouse, hate crimes not only target particular individuals send a message to entire communities that they are not wanted so it's important that we stand up to hate crimes because of the reverberating affects that they have across communities. >> and i noticed in your testimony most of the cases you referred to the individual who committed the violent crime was the individual charged with a hate crime and you also mentioned a new jersey case at which there was a conspiracy charged involving an organization that i guess the crime itself was the repeated evangelization of properties. how often are you able to go beyond the actual individual at the point of violence in a hate crime and look at the organization that the individual may

mr. drayton: not a thing. sen. durbin: i recognize senator whitehouse for the few remaining moments of his time and we will try to establish if senator blackburn is available after him. if she could reach out to us and let us know if you will be contacting us virtually. sen. whitehouse: i would like to ask judge williams, are you familiar with the phrase asked and answered? judge williams: i am. sen. whitehouse: under what circumstances would the phrase asked and answered come up? judge williams: when a witness is asked a question then continues to be asked the same question there would be an objection by opposing counsel, and that objection would be sustained. sen. whitehouse: the role of the judge is to do what? judge williams: the role of the judge is to monitor the trial, to monitor, to make sure that the evidence is coming in and is properly admitted. when i say administer, something like ask and answered, if we allowed counsel to ask the same questions over and over we would never conclude the trial. judges manage trials. that is part of the critical role of a judge. sen. whitehouse: thank you, your honor. sen. durbi

judge jackson: thank you, senator whitehouse, and you join with the yielding of seven minutes. senator lee? sen. lee: thank you, mr. chairman. thank you, judge. i want to talk next a little bit about a case you were involved in mountain watch versus united states at the department of interior, a ruling you issued in 2015 while on the federal district court. i know you have had a lot of cases. i cannot imagine by nearly triggering the case name that would necessarily wring it back, but this case involved a challenge to an administrative action within the department of interior on some issues bearing on coal mining within the state of west virginia. there were two parallel challenges brought against that parallel action, one in a federal district court in west virginia, where they landed in the question was located, and another in u.s. district court for the district of columbia, where you set. the government defending itself against that action brought by some environmental groups asked that you dismiss the d.c. case so that the matter could be litigated in west virginia. you denied that. does that ring any bells,

mr. cruise. senators voting in negative, cassidy, cruz, johnson, tubberville. ms. baldwin, aye. ms. cortez masto, aye. whitehouse, aye. mr. schatz, no. >> didn't forget to vote. >> ms. shaheen, aye. build blumethal, aye. is hyde-smith no. mr. murphy, aye. mr. portman, aye. >> mr. lujan, aye. mr. reed, aye. >> ms. stabenow, aye. >> ms. cantwell, aye. mr. lanford, no. >> mr. young no. >> mr. warnock, aye. >> mr. murphy, aye. ms. klobuchar, aye. >> mr. leahy, aye. ing. >> mr. heinrich, aye, mr. scatz, aye. >> mr. cotton, aye. >> ms. feinstein, aye. >> mr. chester, aye. mr. kasey, aye. mr. graham, aye. >> mr. moran, aye. >> mr. durbin, aye. >> ms. smith, aye. vote: vote: the presiding officer: the yeas are 69, the nays are 30, and the nomination is confirmed. 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 actions. the clerk will report the motion to invoke cloture. the clerk: cloture, we, the undersigned senators, in accordance with the provisions of rule 22 of the standing rules of the senate do hereby mov