During remarks on the Senate floor, Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) denounced the Supreme Court over gifts and awards from special interest groups.
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00:00him once again for his courtesy. Senator from Rhode Island. Thank you, Leader
00:05Schumer. The right-wing FedSoc justices also took away women's right to an
00:12abortion, leaving millions of women unable to make basic decisions about
00:17their own reproductive health and endangering women experiencing
00:23troubled pregnancies. They overturned long-standing and overwhelmingly popular
00:29gun safety laws, leaving our communities exposed to the epidemic of gun violence.
00:34They eviscerated the government's ability to fight climate change and to
00:41protect consumers from corporate profiteering. And they invented, out of
00:46thin air, the idea that former presidents are absolutely immune from being held
00:52accountable for using their office to break the law, to commit crimes, even to
01:00commit treason. On top of all this, the court has done its best to prevent the
01:07American people from fighting back through the democratic process. It's made
01:11it harder for ordinary people to vote, while making it easier for billionaires
01:16and deep-pocketed special interests to impose their will on the American people
01:22with unlimited amounts of dark money. How did we get here? A decades-long scheme,
01:30led by creepy billionaires and backed by a deluge of dark money, captured the
01:36court like some crooked 19th century railroad commission. This court capture
01:43operation was not cheap. The latest estimate put it at more than $580 million,
01:50and that's a minimum. That money flowed in from creepy billionaires, laundered
01:57through right-wing front groups like the Federalist Society and Judicial Crisis
02:00Network, where the donors, the real donors, could hide their identities behind the
02:06front groups doing their dirty work. This dark money funded full-scale campaigns
02:13to stack the Supreme Court with justices who would deliver for the billionaires.
02:19The scheme's major victory came when Senate Republicans blocked Merrick
02:25Garland's confirmation to the Supreme Court. That set the stage for Donald
02:29Trump to fill that seat through a process outsourced almost entirely to
02:36the billionaire's operative Leonard Leo and his array of right-wing dark money
02:41front groups. Once these hand-picked nominees landed on the court, the dark
02:47money network tells them how to rule, supplying them with extremist legal
02:53arguments through so-called friend-of-the-court briefs designed to
02:58reach their desired results. And the parallel between what the friend-of-the-
03:04court brief flotillas recommend and what the fed sock justices do is nearly
03:10perfect. Leo and his cronies also orchestrated a secret gifts program for
03:18their amenable justices, keeping them happy with lavish gifts of luxury
03:24vacations and other high-value freebies. Despite a clear federal ethics law
03:31requiring Supreme Court justices to disclose even small gifts, these
03:37justices kept hidden years of free private jet travel, free yacht trips, free
03:45tickets to sporting events, even for one justice two hundred and sixty thousand
03:51dollars of loan forgiveness for a luxury motor coach. Justices have flouted the
04:00federal law requiring recusal from cases where they have a conflict of interest.
04:05Justice Thomas sat on cases involving efforts to overturn the 2020 election
04:12despite his wife's involvement in efforts to overturn the 2020 election.
04:18Worst of all, the court has refused to take any real steps to clean up this
04:24mess. After substantial public pressure, it first wrote a useless letter about
04:31ethics and then it adopted a toothless ethics code with no mechanism for
04:38either investigation or determination or enforcement. The Supreme Court now stands
04:46alone in all of government, free from any fact-finding about ethical misconduct. As
04:54a result, the court's legitimacy in the eyes of the American people is now at an
05:00all-time low and falling. Well, against all that mess, earlier this week something
05:08big happened. On Monday, President Biden and Vice President Harris endorsed two
05:15common-sense proposals to help restore the court's legitimacy. And happily, I
05:23have bills that perfectly align with both. First, the Supreme Court needs a
05:30binding enforceable code of conduct. The Supreme Court should not violate one of
05:36the most basic principles of the law, nemo judex in sua causa. No one should be
05:43a judge in their own cause. Yes, that is a principle so old and so venerated that
05:50it is in Latin. And they violate it non-stop. The justices of the Supreme
05:58Court should have ethics rules at least as strict as the other branches of
06:04government, with a real process for finding out what happened and holding
06:10miscreants accountable. And overwhelmingly, Americans agree. Last
06:16week, Justice Kagan suggested that a panel of experienced lower court judges
06:22could review ethics complaints, compile a report, and then make recommendations to
06:29the Supreme Court. That's exactly what my Supreme Court Ethics Recusal and
06:35Transparency Act would do. And by the way, it's also what most all state Supreme
06:41Courts do. They all face the same problem of being the top Supreme Court in their
06:47sovereign entity, and they all face ethics review by other judges or panels.
06:54This is a solvable problem. My bill would also impose stricter disclosure of gifts
07:02justice receive, enhance existing recusal laws, and require the flotillas of phony
07:09front groups who lobby the court through friend-of-the-court briefs to
07:14disclose their actual funders and connections. My bill passed the Senate
07:20Judiciary Committee last summer with the warm and welcome support of the
07:25presiding officer, and it's now awaiting a vote on the Senate floor. Democrats
07:31stand ready and willing to deliver on President Biden's and Vice President
07:36Harris's goal of bringing real transparency and accountability to the
07:40Supreme Court. President Biden and Vice President Harris also announced their
07:46support for 18-year term limits for Supreme Court justices, with new
07:52appointments to the court occurring every two years. That would counter the
07:58Republican Supreme Court justices' penchant for strategically timed
08:03retirements that tip the court into Republican hands. Term limits are a
08:09common-sense proposal with long bipartisan support. Supreme Court
08:14justices, including Chief Justice Roberts, have expressed support for term limits.
08:19Even some of our Republican colleagues have endorsed the idea, and a Fox News
08:24poll earlier this month showed that this idea has support from more than 75% of
08:30Americans. Fortunately, Democrats stand ready to deliver on this idea, too. My
08:37Supreme Court Biennial Appointments and Term Limits Act, which the distinguished
08:42presiding officer is a co-sponsor of, would make the court more representative
08:46of the American people and lower the political stakes of Supreme Court
08:50nominations. Under our bill, the president would appoint a new justice
08:55every two years. Justices would serve full-time on the court for 18 years,
09:02after which they would acquire a form of senior status, something familiar to
09:08anybody who knows federal courts, where in district courts and circuit courts of
09:13appeal, judges go on senior status regularly. And these justices on senior
09:20status would remain on the court to hear the original jurisdiction cases
09:26that are required by the Constitution for the Supreme Court to entertain. The
09:32nine most recently appointed justices would hear what the Constitution calls
09:38appellate jurisdiction cases, which the Constitution expressly gives Congress
09:45the power to regulate. So Congress can pass this long overdue reform while
09:53preserving judicial independence and without a constitutional amendment.
09:59President Biden noted that he has overseen more Supreme Court nominations
10:03as senator, vice president, and president than anyone living today. Vice President
10:11Harris, a former member of the Senate Judiciary Committee herself, has echoed
10:16the president's calls for reform. Both the president and the vice president have
10:24immense respect for our Supreme Court and for a strong and independent
10:30judiciary. They've demonstrated it through their lifetimes, and that is
10:34exactly why we should listen to them when they tell us that the time has come
10:39for reform at the Supreme Court. This has been a long and often lonely fight in
10:45the Senate. The big-money right-wing apparatus has tried over and over to shut
10:52me up. I think I may have a record for hostile Wall Street Journal editorials,
10:59and may I tell the Wall Street Journal editorial board, thank you, that is a
11:05badge of honor. Realization of what is needed to save the court from itself has
11:14spread, first through the halls of Congress, then into the national
11:20consciousness, and now to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. That is good reason
11:28for hope. So bravo, Mr. President and Madam Vice President, now it's up to us
11:34in Congress to deliver and repair and redeem this captured court. To be
11:44continued. I yield the floor.