Debates on legislation to protect americans Voting Rights. Once again the senate republican minority has launched a partisan blockade of a pressing issue here in the United States senate. An issue no less fundamental than the right to vote. Could we have order, madam president. The. Senate will be in order. I laid out the facts for weeks. Republicans, state legislators across the country are engaged in the sweeping Voter Suppression in 80 years. Capitalizingli on and capitalizd by Donald Trumps big why these state governments are making it harder for younger, poor, urban and nonwhite americans to vote. Earlier today, the Republican Leader told reporters that, quote, regardless of what may be happening in some states, there is no rationale for federal intervention. Thetl Republican Leader stated that no matter what the states do to undermine our democracy, Voter Suppression laws, partisan takeovers the senate should not act. My colleagues if senators 60 years ago held that the federal government should never intervene to protect Voting Rights, this body would have never protected past the Voting Rights act. The Republican Leader uses the language and the logic of the senators in the 60s who defended states rights and it is an indefensible position for any senator, let alone the Minority Leader to hold and yet that was the reason given for why republicans voted in lockstep aytoday. Regardless of what may be happening in some states. There is no rationale for federal intervention that is both ridiculous and awful. All we wanted to do here on the floor is to bring up r the issue of the Voting Rights and debate how to combat these vicious often times discriminatory restrictions and today every single democratic senator stood together in the fight for something in america. The democratic party in the senate would always stand united to demand or democracy. I spoke with president biden as well. Hes been unshakable and i want to thank the President And Vice president for their efforts. But regrettably, our efforts were met by the unanimous opposition of the senate minority. Once again, senate republicans signed their names in the ledger of history alongside the Donald Trump with Voter Suppression to their enduring disgrace. Its become a part of the official platform of the republican party. Now the republican senators may have prevented us from having a debate of the voting Rights Today but i want to be very clear about one thing. The fight to protect the rights is not over by no means. The fight for Voting Rights, this vote was a starting gun, not the finish line. When John Lewis he started down that bridge anyway. Today, democrats started on march to defend the Voting Rights of all americans and it could be a long march, but it is one that we are going to make. Today we make progress for the great time. We got all 50 democrats unified behind moving forward on a strong and comprehensive Voting Rights bill. And make no mistake about it, it will not be the last time Voting Rights comes up for the debate in the senate. Republicans may want to avoid the topic hoping the efforts to suppress the votes and defend the big lie will go unnoticed. Democrats will not allow that and it will never let the Voter Suppression be swept under the rug. We have several serious options for how to consider this Issue And Advance legislation to combat Voter Suppression. Voting rights are f two fundamental. This concerns the very core of our democracy and what we are about as a nation. So, we will not let it go. We will not let it die. This Voter Suppression cannot stand and we are going to work tirelessly to see that it does not stand. I yield the floor. The clerk will call the role. The senator from rhode island. Unanimous consent the Quorum Colby vitiated. I would ask im delighted to follow the Majority Leader and his strong remarks about the beginning of the process of passing not only to deal with the question of Voting Rights, but to deal with the question of dark Money Plague that is interesting or democracy and taking the power over decisionmaking in this body and in this building it away from regular n people into the hands not only of specialinterest and spectral interest of those to operate in secret. One of the ways the power has been deployed has been with respect to the judicial branch of government and i am here now for my third speech in the Scheme Series to draw attention to this problem. In the first two scheme speeches, i describe the corporate Power Game Plan offered by the lawyer to the u. S. Chamber l of Commerce And Y justice Lewis Powell appointed to the u. S. Supreme court two months into his secret Game Plan went to the chamber. With a political response recommended for americas traditional corporate elite which had been traumatized by theze social upheaval of the 1960s. The second thread was a separate strain on the fringe for many decades. The extremists on this were traumatized by things long accepted as mainstream by most americans. The fringe resentments shifted with varying tides of news and events but regularly boiled over against several targets. One was the role of jewish people in finance and the Press And Hollywood and after fdr in government. There was the improved economic social condition of minorities. Another was the arrival of immigrants particularly noneuropean immigrants but backslash had been profound is my home state experience. It springs from the Conspiracy Theory delusions and crackpot ideas. With the essay of paranoid Style Politics Leader a popular book. This latent strain of paranoid extremism showed itself in groups like the John Burke Society that never gained social or political acceptance was fed and nurtured by a handful of foundations set up by a few colossally rich and politically irate and frustrated families. It boiled up in the president Ial Campaign of Senator Barry Goldwater that ended in one of the worst landslide defeats in american history. It drove the occasional aspirations of the libertarian party who was extremist platform that suffered predictable, but humiliating at the polls. All of this defeat overall these decades concentrated the strain isolated as the determined elements. One was the existence of government regulation. It was on the platform of ending social security and ending medicare, closing the post office, undoing the american highway program, stopping public education and eliminating all the public regulatory agencies even the federal Aviation Administration that keeps the planes from bumping into each other. This platform barely attracted 1 of the vote and unsurprising but humiliating. That was suffered by david coke, libertarian Party Candidate for Vice President and the parties major funder. The family is spectacularly unimaginably rich. Privately held industries for hundreds of millions of dollars into their pockets every year. The family annual income exceeds most family streams of lifetime wealth. They put their names on educational tv programs. The family have long and sometimes dark international experience including odious efforts and previous decades to build factories for evil regimes. Made confident by the arrogance of wealth, driven by extremist ideology, spurred by the resentment of humiliating political rejection, experienced in the devious ways of the international world, steeped in the long Term Planning and Patient Execution and with unlimited resources to indulge themselves, charles and david were uniquely positioned to take thisg longstanding latent Extremist Fringe and amplify it and direct it by plans in secret and over decades if need be. The front groups needed to be set up, so be it. Subsidiaries were a familiar concept if identities needed to be laundered off money they gave, so be it. Telling lawyers to find a way to do thatam was familiar. If the fringe groups needed to be coordinated to work collectively with each other, so be it. Organizing through associations and lobbying groups was familiar activityee and if money needed o be spent, so be it. Money was no object. And getting people to do things for you was a familiar practice of the very rich. The Nurture And Guidance breathed new Strength And Life and deregulatory purpose into the nativist far right fringe. Meanwhile, in the regulatory arena we did the third of the three. Major corporate interests to the polluting industries had assembled over time a quietly powerful presence to help them in administrative agencies to assure the regulation was friendly to business and even more than that under the right circumstances with the right people and pressures could be turned to advantage of the regulated industries. In administrative hearings in Ad Rule makings, regulated Industries Law firms dedicated to this lucrative for regulatory practice sprouted. Gleaming stables were kept with well attended professional witnesses who could reliably spout the corporate line of agency proceedings. Companies played the game in these regulatory Agencies Inch by inch that together summed up to major gains. Many of these were deeply buried in the weeds of the arcane policies and technical detail to the general mediame and so. The Agency Decision makers often reflected the values, priorities and interest of the regulated industries and not the general public. At the extreme the regulatory agency became servant to the industry master. The phenomenon wellknown and welldocumented and is regulatory capture. I wrote a separate book on this, captured. So i will not dwell on it at great length here. Its enough to note that regulatory capture is so common that its been a robust field of academic research and writing now for decades both in economics and administrative law. It is seeking to reclaim their power and the unwelcome changes in the american society. The extremists of great wealth brought to the right Wing Fringe and its array of extremist groups and unprecedented discipline of limited resources and the tactics of the corporate organization the regulatory a Capture Apparatus was there for the hiring eager to pursue the new prospects offered by the big industries and eccentric billionaires. Out of this immense wealth, extreme political Ambition And Expertise of regulatory capture, how long would it take for people to start thinking about capturing not just regulatory agencies, but courts. Indeed the United States supreme court. As it turned out, not long. The court had made itself a target of the right wing. Brown V Board of education provoked massive resistance across the south out to defend segregated public schools. Roe v wade as it still provokes the religious right. So did restricting prayer in schools. Those upset by the 60s revolution, miranda v arizona, Ohio And Gideon of the Rain Wainwright to the far right the court offered a bounty of things to hate. Even without the power Memos Plan of, and i quote, exploiting judicial action, quote, within activist, minded supreme court, the court would have likely been taan irresistible target. Mr. President the efforts have likely been the most effectual the appointment of right wing and corporate resources into our common american political life. And america is now a very different place as a result. Much of it, like the proverbial frog in the proverbial