[Congressional Record Volume 172, Number 85 (Tuesday, May 19, 2026)]
[Senate]
[Pages S2355-S2362]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
DIRECTING THE REMOVAL OF UNITED STATES ARMED FORCES FROM HOSTILITIES
WITHIN OR AGAINST THE ISLAMIC REPUBLIC OF IRAN THAT HAVE NOT BEEN
AUTHORIZED BY CONGRESS--Motion to Discharge
Mr. KAINE. Mr. President, pursuant to 50 U.S.C. 1546a and in
accordance with section 601(b) of the International Security Assistance
and Arms Export Control Act, I move to discharge the Committee on
Foreign Relations from further consideration of S.J. Res. 185.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will report.
The senior assistant legislative clerk read as follows:
Motion to discharge from the Committee on Foreign
Relations, S.J. Res. 185, a joint resolution directing the
removal of United States Armed Forces from hostilities within
or against the Islamic Republic of Iran that have not been
authorized by Congress.
Vote on Motion to Discharge
Mr. KAINE. Mr. President, I know of no further debate.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there further debate?
Hearing none, the question is on agreeing to the motion to discharge
S.J. Res. 185.
Mr. KAINE. I ask for the yeas and nays.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there a sufficient second?
There appears to be a sufficient second.
The clerk will call the roll.
The senior assistant legislative clerk called the roll.
Mr. BARRASSO: The following Senators are necessarily absent: the
Senator from Texas (Mr. Cornyn), the Senator from North Carolina (Mr.
Tillis), and the Senator from Alabama (Mr. Tuberville).
The result was announced--yeas 50, nays 47, as follows:
[Rollcall Vote No. 129 Leg.]
YEAS--50
Alsobrooks
Baldwin
Bennet
Blumenthal
Blunt Rochester
Booker
Cantwell
Cassidy
Collins
Coons
Cortez Masto
Duckworth
Durbin
Gallego
Gillibrand
Hassan
Heinrich
Hickenlooper
Hirono
Kaine
Kelly
Kim
King
Klobuchar
Lujan
Markey
Merkley
Murkowski
Murphy
Murray
Ossoff
Padilla
Paul
Peters
Reed
Rosen
Sanders
Schatz
Schiff
Schumer
Shaheen
Slotkin
Smith
Van Hollen
Warner
Warnock
Warren
Welch
Whitehouse
Wyden
NAYS--47
Armstrong
Banks
Barrasso
Blackburn
Boozman
Britt
Budd
Capito
Cotton
Cramer
Crapo
Cruz
Curtis
Daines
Ernst
Fetterman
Fischer
Graham
Grassley
Hagerty
Hawley
Hoeven
Husted
Hyde-Smith
Johnson
Justice
Kennedy
Lankford
Lee
Lummis
Marshall
McConnell
McCormick
Moody
Moran
Moreno
Ricketts
Risch
Rounds
Schmitt
Scott (FL)
Scott (SC)
Sheehy
Sullivan
Thune
Wicker
Young
NOT VOTING--3
Cornyn
Tillis
Tuberville
The motion was agreed to.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Curtis). The joint resolution is
discharged and will be placed on the Calendar.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from California.
San Diego Shooting
Mr. PADILLA. Mr. President, before I offer remarks this evening on
voting rights, I want to take a moment to acknowledge a horrible
tragedy that struck my home State of California just yesterday.
Yesterday afternoon, two assailants opened fire at the Islamic Center
of San Diego, in what authorities are now investigating as a possible
hate crime. Three people were killed: a security guard and father of
eight named Amin Abdullah; Mansour Kaziha, a store manager at the
mosque for 40 years; and Nader Awad, a member of the mosque who lived
right across the street and whose wife was a teacher at the school.
Amin is credited with sounding the alarm bells as soon as the
incident began, heroically saving the lives of everybody who was inside
the mosque. And while authorities are still piecing together exactly
what happened, what we do know is that Mansour and Nader somehow drew
the shooters away from the mosque, into the parking lot, long enough
for them to choose to flee the scene, as hundreds of police officers
arrived.
Their sacrifices and their bravery were not in vain. Mr. President,
140 children were inside the center's school at the time, and they are
all OK, now reunited with their parents.
Our prayers are with the victims, their families, and everyone
impacted by this horrific act of violence.
I want to share my particular gratitude with the women and men of the
San Diego Police Department and other first responders who responded
literally within moments of first being alerted about the shooting,
saving hundreds of lives in the process.
I want to echo the words of San Diego mayor Todd Gloria, who said
yesterday:
[A]n attack on any one of our communities . . . because of
who they are, what they believe, or how they pray--is an
attack on all of us.
[[Page S2356]]
Colleagues, we must remain united against hate in all its forms and
reject those who spread Islamophobia and White supremacy of any type.
And I want the Muslim community of San Diego, the community
throughout California, throughout the country, who may be angry or
anxious at this moment to know this: We stand with you. We mourn with
you. And we will not allow hate and violence to divide our country or
define us.
Voting Rights
Mr. President, our late friend and colleague Congressman John Lewis
once said:
The vote is precious. It is almost sacred. It is the most
powerful nonviolent tool we have in a democracy.
Today, that sacred right is under assault. And with its recent
Callais decision, the Supreme Court of the United States has dealt our
right to vote another devastating blow.
Sadly, this ruling did not happen in isolation. It is the culmination
of a decades-long effort to undermine the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and
the promise of American democracy itself. As Justice Elena Kagan wrote
in her dissent, this decision marks the ``latest chapter in the
majority's now-completed demolition of the Voting Rights Act.''
All in what appears to be Donald Trump and his allies' attempt to
cling to power--not by addressing the exploding costs of living that
are crushing so many families across America, not by ending this
unauthorized war in Iran, but by undermining our democracy, rigging
electoral maps, and gaming the system in their favor.
What is clear with the Callais decision and earlier voting rights
decisions by the Supreme Court is that they have rejected both the text
and the purpose of one of the most important laws of American history.
You see, the Voting Rights Act was born out of struggle, including
the struggle of Americans who marched across the Edmund Pettus Bridge,
decades ago, and endured incredible violence and persecution simply for
demanding that democracy in America truly include everyone.
When the Voting Rights Act finally became law 61 years ago, America
made good on a promise: that our democracy would truly belong to
everyone. And the results were undeniable. In just the first decade
after its passage, the disparity in voter registration rates between
Whites and minority communities dropped from 30 percent to 8 percent--
huge progress. And communities that had long been denied a meaningful
voice in their government gained representation in local city halls, in
State legislatures, and--yes--right here in Congress.
The law enjoyed decades of bipartisan support. Its initial passage
and every reauthorization had been bipartisan. In fact, the last time
Congress reauthorized the Voting Rights Act, in 2006, it passed the
Senate unanimously.
Yet we know there have been always those determined to undermine and
weaken this landmark law, including Chief Justice Roberts himself. When
he was a young lawyer in the Reagan administration, he wrote memos
attacking the Voting Rights Act and devising legal arguments to
undermine it. And he succeeded. Beginning with the Supreme Court's 2013
Shelby County decision, he and the Court's extreme majority began
dismantling the law's core protections.
In the Shelby decision, the Court declared that the law's
preclearance protections were no longer necessary because of how far we
had come as a country, ignoring the mountain of evidence that they were
presented with, showing the chronic problem that voting discrimination
continued to be.
The consequences of that decision were both predictable and swift.
Republican State legislatures immediately unleashed a flood of new
discriminatory voting bills. Many turned into laws--everything from
restrictive voter ID requirements to closing polling sites in minority
communities, to restricting voter registration drives and attacking
early voting.
It is no surprise, then, that the participation gap between White and
minority voters soon began growing again, after decades of narrowing,
including and especially in the States that were previously covered by
section 5 of the Voting Rights Act. According to one Brennan Center
analysis, as many as 9 million more ballots would have been cast in the
2020 election without the Shelby decision of 2013.
And, now, the Callais decision goes even further. This decision has
already thrown elections into chaos, with States racing to redraw
political maps ahead of this November's midterm elections.
You don't believe me?
The Supreme Court has already given Alabama permission to use a map
found by a lower court to be intentionally racially discriminatory. But
the Supreme Court is sanctioning Alabama's use of that map.
The State of Louisiana, which just had a primary election yesterday,
dropped the State's House primary elections, even after absentee voting
had already begun, in order to redraw congressional districts for the
current year.
And, as we speak, in South Carolina, they are debating whether to
redraw the map to entrench Republican power.
Colleagues, this is not representative democracy; it is a political
power grab. Sadly, Callais is just one part of a broader effort to skew
our upcoming elections and make participation in our democracy process
harder for millions of Americans. We see it in efforts to purge voters
from the rolls using flawed Federal databases. We see it in attempts to
impose burdensome ID requirements that threaten to disenfranchise
women, students, seniors, Native communities, and both rural and blue-
collar voters who may lack passports or their original birth
certificates. And we certainly see it in Trump's obsession with the
SAVE Act, which would make it harder for eligible Americans to register
to vote, stay registered to vote, or actually cast their ballot.
Colleagues, all of these efforts are rooted in the same dangerous
idea: that political power can be preserved by restricting rather than
expanding voter participation.
That is un-American.
We are living in a pivotal moment for American democracy. In the
difficult days of Jim Crow, Americans chose to organize, to march, and
to sacrifice to pass the Voting Rights Act. And now, following their
example, Americans today are marching again.
Last weekend, thousands from across the country gathered in Alabama
and returned to the Edmund Pettus Bridge, determined to carry the
legacy of the Voting Rights Act and the civil rights movement forward.
A new generation is taking up the torch to defend the principle that,
in a democracy, every voice matters and every vote counts equally.
Colleagues, we have a duty to join them, beginning with the passage
of the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act to restore the
protections gutted by the Supreme Court.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Democratic leader.
Mr. SCHUMER. Mr. President, first, let me thank my good friend
Senator Padilla from California for his good work on this issue and so
many other issues of civil rights and of keeping our democracy secure
and safe, of voting rights. He is an amazing asset not just to this
Senate but to California and to the country, and I thank him for his
continued, ever-present leadership on these vital issues, which I know
he feels so deeply about.
Now, in America, voters choose their leaders; leaders don't choose
their voters. But MAGA has launched a coordinated campaign to handpick
the electorate in 2026. That effort spans all three branches of
government.
Donald Trump has virtually made election denialism a prerequisite for
serving in his administration. You have to lie about the election--lie
to yourselves, lie to other people--to get a job in any sensitive area
in this administration. Trump and his band of MAGA loyalists have
jumped at every opportunity to intimidate election officials, to attack
vote-by-mail, to seize voter data, and to undermine our elections in
any way they can.
In Congress, Trump's MAGA majorities keep pushing the SAVE Act, which
we know would disenfranchise tens--tens--of millions of voters.
With the SAVE Act, Republicans would purge millions of American
citizens from the voter rolls through a screening algorithm designed by
none other than the trio--the evil trio--of
[[Page S2357]]
Trump, Vought, Musk, and their DOGE squad.
And as I have been saying for months--I started saying this months
ago--it is Jim Crow 2.0. And when I started saying it, now when I say
it, the MAGA right goes crazy. They get angry. They get apoplectic. Do
you know why? They know it is true.
They know it is Jim Crow 2.0, and they know they are doing everything
they can to steal our election, rather than compete in our election.
The radical rightwing majority on the Supreme Court has aided Trump's
assault on our democracy every step of the way. The Callais decision
was the MAGA Court's latest move to resurrect Jim Crow South, upending
half a century of precedent and progress when it gutted the Voting
Rights Act for which Martin Luther King, Jr. and so many others
marched, bled, and ultimately gave their lives.
The decision issues a deliberate blow to democracy, stripping voters
of protections while handing MAGA politicians free rein to rig maps
that drown out their voices, especially those of historically
disenfranchised communities. Callais did not come out of nowhere. Oh,
no. For years, beginning with Chief Justice Roberts in the awful and
evil Shelby County decision, the Republican-appointed majority, led by
Roberts, chipped away at the Voting Rights Act in decision after
decision.
Indeed, Roberts began railing against the Voting Rights Act since the
early eighties. Now Roberts says his job is to call balls and strikes--
bull. For someone who famously said that his job is ``to call balls and
strikes, and not to pitch or bat,'' John Roberts sure is swinging for
the fences to help Donald Trump subvert our elections. Democrats are
not going to wait until the damage is done. Oh, no. That is why Senate
Democrats launched our Election Protection Task Force, the most
expansive election protection effort our caucus has ever undertaken.
We are going to bring together lawyers and observers, rapid-response
teams, cyber security experts, State and local officials, and the most
renowned election experts in the country to protect our democracy
before, during, and after this election. We are going to fight like
hell to make sure our elections belong to the voters--not to Donald
Trump.
I yield the floor.
I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The senior assistant bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Ms. KLOBUCHAR. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order
for the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
The Senator from Minnesota.
Ms. KLOBUCHAR. Mr. President, I rise to join my colleagues in
standing up for democracy where every eligible American has a voice and
the right to vote.
I want to thank Ranking Member Padilla for organizing this floor
block today and for his leadership in the fight for our democracy. The
freedom to vote is the bedrock of our government, and it is fundamental
to all of our freedoms. It is how Americans make their voices heard and
hold their elected officials accountable.
It has stood the test of wars, economic strife, and a global
pandemic. And now, despite continued attacks on access to the ballot
box, we must continue the difficult but critical work of protecting and
advancing this right. It is on every generation to do that.
That work hasn't always been easy. Throughout our country's 250-year
history, there have been moments when we have needed to course correct
and take action to ensure that our country lives up to its ideals. This
is one of those moments.
On April 29, in a decision joined by six Supreme Court Justices, the
Court in the words of Justice Kagan: Completed the demolition of the
Voting Rights Act.
In doing so, it undermined fair representation across the country and
made it harder for all Americans to have an effective voice in our
political process; and it created chaos, including in Louisiana where
ballots were already being cast.
Congressman John Lewis once said that voting is the most powerful
tool we have to create a more perfect Union. It was John Lewis' faith
in our country and our democratic ideals that led him to Selma, AL,
where he helped lead 600 marchers across the Edmond Pettus Bridge on
that dark day that became known as Bloody Sunday. The horrific events
of the day shocked the Nation. Soon after, President Lyndon Johnson
came to the Capitol and, as he said, with the outrage of Selma still
fresh urged Congress to guarantee the freedom to vote.
Months later, with the help of former Minnesota Senator and Vice
President Hubert Humphrey, whose desk I stand behind right now, whose
name is carved into this desk, the Voting Rights Act was signed into
law.
And historically, protecting meaningful access to the ballot box has
brought both sides of the aisle together. The Senate reauthorized the
Voting Rights Act in 1982 by a vote of 85-8, including 43 Republicans;
in 1992, by a vote of 75-20, including 25 Republicans; and in 2006,
with a unanimous 98-0 vote, 51 Republicans.
But now so much of the progress that Americans have fought and even
died for is at stake. In case after case, these Justices have gutted
critical statutes that protect Americans' constitutional rights and
diminish our voice in democracy. In cases like Citizens United, the
Court unleashed a wave of special interest spending in our elections.
In the Shelby County and Brnovich decisions they led to a flood of laws
that made it harder for eligible Americans to vote.
The Court has barred Federal courts from policing partisan
gerrymandering as well. And now in Callais, it has allowed States to
dilute minority votes. In parts of our country, these actions are
already effectively shutting minority voters out of the political
process. Six Justices overturned Congress' express purpose and
effectively eroded section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. The Court has
green-lit racial gerrymanders that undermine fair and equal
representation, and in the words of Justice Kagan in dissent
``threatens a half-century's worth of gains in voting equality.''
In her dissent in Brnovich, Justice Kagan noted that the Voting
Rights Act reminds us of the best of America because it, in her words
``marries two great ideals: democracy and racial equality''--and the
worst of America because it was and remains necessary. That couldn't be
clearer today. After the Callais decision came down, Republican
legislatures immediately started the process to carve up majority-
minority districts. In some cases, like in Louisiana, they did so even
though the votes had already been cast.
The fact that all these States have rushed to change their maps to
dilute the votes of certain communities shows that the Voting Rights
Act is needed now more than ever.
It shows, as Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg noted in her dissent in
Shelby County, the shortsightedness of undermining a law that is
serving its purpose, likening the Court striking down at that time
section 5 of the Voting Rights Act to ``throwing away your umbrella in
a rainstorm because you are not getting wet.''
And yet it also demonstrates the power of the vote, the power that
the American people hold when they exercise their constitutional rights
and hold their leaders to account. In election after election, it is
clear the American people are demanding change. This is no surprise.
This administration has been hurting people across the country with
their costs, chaos, and corruption.
The President went into a unilateral war without coming to Congress,
and in a significant vote today, Congress said no. Congress should have
a say. The Senate should have a say.
Americans, why are they so angry? Well, they are seeing rising costs,
not just for gas prices from this unauthorized war, but also for food
and housing and healthcare costs from these tariffs and refusal to
extend the ACA, the Affordable Care Act tax credit, and a refusal to
step back and say: Perhaps we should just have targeted tariffs instead
of pushing the economy into a tailspin with these across-the-board
tariffs. And then trying to do it again and again and again even when
the Court says that the IEEPA tariffs were illegal.
The President himself has said:
I don't think about Americans' financial situation.
[[Page S2358]]
Americans heard that loud and clear.
The fact is our colleagues know that this agenda is not right. They
know that they shouldn't be rubberstamping everything the President has
done, as a number of our colleagues just showed with this vote on the
war powers.
Well, now we ask them to join us, to listen to the American families
and change these policies. This administration is doing all it can to
make it harder for the American people to have a meaningful say in our
democracy.
You know, Democrats win sometimes; Republicans win sometimes. And
when you lose an election, as we have been seeing in these races across
the country, then you should listen. You should say: We should maybe
change our policies or maybe we should change our candidates or maybe
we shouldn't just listen to everything about what the President wants
or who the President wants us to vote for. That is how a democracy
works.
But instead with both the SAVE America Act and with this court
ruling, they are trying to change the rules of the election and trying
to change the people who can vote instead of changing their policies
and candidates, which has historically been how Americans have been
able to find agreement and a party is able to win because they actually
find policies and ideas that people want to hear about and that they
think will change and improve their lives.
So the SAVE America Act, legislation that Donald Trump, by his own
admission, has said ``will guarantee the midterms,'' that bill would
create burdensome hurdles for people to register to vote and result in
voters' sensitized data being turned over to the Federal Government,
something the Justice Department has already tried to illegally
pressure States to do, and that is far from the only attack on
elections by this administration.
The President has repeatedly threatened to nationalize election
administration, replacing the judgment and experience of State and
local officials--Democrats and Republicans--going so far as to say:
Republicans should say we want to take over. We should take
over the voting . . .
Now, Minnesota and 18 other States have sued and have won a
preliminary injunction because, as the judge wrote, the Constitution
does not grant the President any specific powers over elections.
Undeterred, the President continues to float illegally ending mail-in
voting nationwide and directing the Postal Service to simply refuse to
deliver some voters' mail-in ballots.
There are also concerns that Federal agents could be deployed to
polling locations to intimidate voters--something that is of special
concern in my State given what we saw with the overrun of ICE agents
doubling the number of Minneapolis-St. Paul police for months.
Make no mistake, six Supreme Court Justices have damaged our
democracy, but they do not have the last word because, as Justice
Ginsburg, whom we miss very much, noted in her Shelby County dissent:
Under our constitutional structure, Congress holds the lead
rein in making the right to vote equally real for all U.S.
citizens.
It is long past time for Congress to pass the John R. Lewis Voting
Rights Advancement Act, and it is long past time for us to pass other
commonsense bills, like the effort I worked on alongside the ranking
member of the Rules Committee, Senator Padilla, and Senator Schumer, to
advance the Freedom to Vote Act--legislation that, instead of creating
barriers to the ballot box, expands access to the polls to ensure all
eligible Americans can vote regardless of their ZIP Code.
Ultimately, the final check on a Supreme Court weakening our
democracy and an administration that is doing all it can to rig the
rules--that check is the people. Americans are seeing what has
happened, and it really makes them mad. They have turned out to vote in
municipal elections, in the Mar-a-Lago legislative election, in cities
from Omaha to Miami, in places like Texas--all over this country.
In Selma, the police brutally attacked the peaceful marchers. John
Lewis' skull was fractured, and he bore the scar for the rest of his
life. The images were broadcast nationwide and shocked the American
people.
Every year since, there is a ceremony to commemorate Bloody Sunday. I
was there a number of years ago with Congressman Lewis. That weekend,
after 48 years, the White police chief of Montgomery handed his police
badge to Congressman Lewis and publicly apologized for the police not
protecting him and the freedom marchers. Nearly half a century later,
that apology came.
Mr. President, 48 years is a long time to wait for an apology, and it
only happened because people like Congressman Lewis never quit fighting
for progress, for civil rights, for economic justice, and to defend the
voting rights of every American. So today, less than 1 month after the
Callais decision, when the challenges we face are clear, we cannot quit
either.
Just this past weekend, thousands again protested in Selma and
Montgomery for the fundamental freedom to make their voice heard in our
democracy because the people of this country will not be silenced. They
marched because, in Congressman Lewis' words, ``The right to vote is
precious and almost sacred, and one of the most important blessings of
our democracy.''
When those marchers did what they did and proved then what we must
remember now and what those marching in Selma and across the country
remind us today is that although progress may not be without setbacks--
and we are in a major one right now--no obstacle will block the
American people from having their voice heard.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Democrat whip.
Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, the issue is our right to vote in this
democracy and in this country. For many of us, that has never been a
big question. We registered. We vote regularly. We show our
identification. We get our ballots, do our civic responsibility, push
the ballot into the machine in my hometown, and get a little sticker to
wear on your lapel that says ``I voted.'' It is simple, easy.
But I can remember when voting was not so easy for a lot of people.
The year was 1965, and I was a college student here at Georgetown in
Washington, DC. We heard about a march that was going to take place in
Selma, AL, and a number of my fellow students and I sat up one night
and said: Why don't we go? Let's go. Let's be part of this.
So we talked about it, and here is the way the conversation went:
Do you remember what happened in Mississippi last year when those
three guys from up north--New York and places like that--went down to
Mississippi for the Civil Rights Movement, and they were murdered, and
they never found their bodies?
At that point in time, they had not found their bodies. They did
later.
They associated the murders with members of the Ku Klux Klan who were
out to get these foreign meddlers who were coming into Mississippi,
pushing for the right to vote for Black people.
We talked about it and said: Well, is it safe to go down there and
march?
We went back and forth and back and forth and ultimately decided not
to go. Bad decision. I wish I had gone.
Why were they marching in Selma, AL--a town you haven't heard of
except for that march? It was over the issue of the right to vote for
Black Americans in that town.
Here are the numbers. There were 15,000 eligible Black voters in
Selma, AL. How many were actually registered to vote out of the 15,000?
There were 335. What happened? Why didn't more register? Because they
put a test down, a literacy test, before they could vote, and you had
to pass that test to be eligible to vote. They asked constitutional
questions like ``The Constitution has the phrase `letters of marque and
reprisal.' What does that mean?'' I am not sure I can answer it
standing here today as a Senator. They couldn't answer it, either, and
they were denied the right to vote.
That was the reality of the voting crisis in America in the 1960s
that led to the Civil Rights Act.
Let me fast-forward in my story to a much more recent time. It was
about 25 years ago. I was on a trip down to Alabama, this time with
John Lewis, my friend and fellow Member of Congress, who actually
marched in Selma the day that I didn't go. We went to a number of
places and saw a number of key locations in Birmingham and Montgomery,
AL, where important civil rights events had occurred.
[[Page S2359]]
The highlight of the trip was going to be on Sunday. After breakfast,
we were going to go march together across and down the Edmund Pettus
Bridge in Selma, AL. Unfortunately, I was called back home. I had to
leave to catch a flight.
I said to John Lewis: I am sorry to miss this opportunity, my friend.
I really wanted to be there finally to march in Selma.
He said: What time is your plane?
I said: 8 o'clock.
He said: We are going to get up at 5 and go over there, you and me,
and I will march with you down the Edmund Pettus Bridge and show you
where they almost killed me.
I said: I wouldn't miss it for the world.
We got up at 5 o'clock, took the drive over to Selma, and marched
down and across that bridge. And I thought of all the times I had seen
the video and film of John Lewis--this young, idealistic Black man--
wearing a tan raincoat, marching with the folks across the Edmund
Pettus Bridge, and the troopers coming up and battering him so badly,
they fractured his skull and almost killed him. He survived, thank God.
And he talked about that day and what it meant to him. I wish I had
been there. I hope I would have survived it, as he did. I hope I
wouldn't have had to go through the beating that he did.
When we talk about the right to vote and the Voting Rights Act, it
was created here in Washington the next year by Lyndon Baines Johnson,
as President, because he said: Once and for all, we have to put an end
to this. We have to say that every American, regardless of race, creed,
or color, has an opportunity to vote, and they can never be denied for
their racial composition or whatever it might be.
We are back debating the same issue, and, of course, the question is:
Do we need a Voting Rights Act? Senator Durbin, you are talking about
something that was passed 50-plus years ago. Why do we have to continue
to have a provision in the law to protect your right to vote?
Well, my experience as a Congressman and as a Senator has been that
there are nefarious, devious ways to make it tough to vote. You can
draw a map that basically says you will never get to vote for anybody
you want. You are always stuck in the wrong district, the wrong place.
That is called gerrymandering or redistricting to deny a constitutional
right. Or you can basically be the object of discrimination. That can
happen too.
So the issue of voting is so sacred and key to our democracy that I
believe the Voting Rights Act should be in place. As a warning to those
who would violate it, there is a price to be paid. That, to me, doesn't
seem like too much to ask. In fact, it gets down to the heart of who we
are and where we are today.
You hear a lot of people now talking about illegal and ineligible
people who are trying to vote. There have been suggestions that some of
them are illegal, undocumented people living here who should never have
come into this country and once here, should never be allowed to vote.
In fact, the other side has proposed--the Republicans have proposed
that people prove they are American citizens before they can vote.
The interesting thing is, they say: We want to see your
identification before you vote.
Well, what identification would you produce? The same thing you
produce every day--your driver's license, right? Everybody uses their
driver's license. I do to prove who I am when I buy a plane ticket or
something.
But the Republican approach says that a driver's license is not
eligible to be used for identification under their new law. Under their
new law, you basically have to produce one of two things.
A passport.
Well, I have a passport. Doesn't everybody?
No. Half of Americans don't own a passport.
Well, then get one before the election.
I have a problem. I need $165 to buy a passport, and I have to wait a
few weeks, maybe a few months if it doesn't come through quickly.
So that is one proof of identification, which many people don't have
and can't get in time for an election, not for sure.
The second thing they would like you to produce is your birth
certificate that proves you are who you say you are because your name
is on it. It is OK for me, if I can ever find the darn thing up in that
box in my closet. But I can find my birth certificate that has my name
on it.
My wife is not so lucky. It has her maiden name on her birth
certificate, of course, so she has to go ahead of time and obtain a new
birth certificate, pay for it, and get it delivered with her married
name on board.
Why? The basic premise is to make sure that you are an American when
you vote.
Well, this must be a real problem. If we are going to ask people to
produce a passport or a birth certificate with their birth name on it
because we want to keep ineligible people from voting, this must be a
real problem.
Well, we took a look at it, and here is how it turns out. Over a span
of 20 years of voting in America--imagine the millions and millions of
votes that were cast--they found a number of people who were ineligible
because they weren't citizens of the United States, who actually tried
to vote.
Out of 40 million people, how many do you think they found? Seventy
thousand? No. Seven thousand? No. Seven hundred? No. Seventy-seven.
Seventy-seven people who tried to vote who were ineligible.
Now the other side--the Republicans--is coming up with the idea to go
buy a passport to prove you are eligible; go find a birth certificate
that fits the law to show you are eligible.
The point I am making is this: 77 people who were stupid enough or
devious enough to try to vote and weren't eligible shouldn't create a
hardship for every other conscientious American who gets up regularly
and never misses the opportunity to vote. To put some new
identification requirement in there for registration just makes no
sense to me whatsoever. That is why we continue to debate about voting.
Incidentally, let's say the obvious. One of the reasons we continue
this debate is that a former President, and now President again, has
decided he never lost an election. He says, in the year 2020, he never
lost to Joe Biden.
It has reached a ridiculous point, where nominees to become a Federal
judge for life--attorneys--come before us; take an oath; and testify in
the Judiciary Committee, where I am the ranking member.
We ask these judicial nominees a basic question: Who won the election
in 2020?
I will bet you, if I went to the Galleries up there, everybody could
answer: Why, of course, Joe Biden won that election.
These nominees cannot say those words. They are afraid of the
reaction of Donald Trump when he hears that they are not promoting the
Big Lie--that he never lost an election.
Think I am exaggerating?
Just 2 or 3 weeks ago, Senator Coons of Delaware started asking those
nominees who had won a lifetime appointment on a Federal bench another
basic question. The amendments to the Constitution include an amendment
that says: If you have been elected two times as President of the
United States, you can't run for a third term. So Senator Coons asked
these nominees that question: Do you believe that because Donald Trump
was elected twice as President that he is prohibited from running for a
third term?
They refused to answer. ``It may be an issue on a case before me
someday.'' That is not what it is all about.
Donald Trump likes to hold out the possibility that he will run
again, even though it is clearly, clearly unconstitutional for him to
even consider it. But these nominees are in such fear that he will end
up vicing them or taking them off the list to be judges that they won't
answer these basic questions about who won the election or whether or
not Donald Trump can run for a third term. That is the ridiculous
extreme we have reached in this country.
There will come a day for some of these people--and they will be put
on the Federal bench by my colleagues on the Republican side--when
somebody is going to assemble a video of their testimony. It will be a
moment of embarrassment for them to think what they had to do to
finally get approval before the Judiciary Committee.
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Today, the right to vote is under attack in this country. We are
witnessing a brand of politics we have never seen before. The Trump
administration has shown they are dead set on restricting Americans'
right to vote by pushing for partisan gerrymandering, restricting mail-
in voting, and demanding unreasonable voter registration requirements,
such as those I just mentioned.
Incidentally, the President of the United States says he wants to
eliminate vote-by-mail, which many of us have used over and over again,
because of the fraud involved in it. How did the President of the
United States vote in this last election in Florida? He voted by mail.
Go figure. This is supposed to be a corrupt form of voting in America.
Yet the President, who wants to end it, uses it himself.
All Americans need to have a fair say in who represents them, but in
being led by a President who tried stealing an election, Republicans
have lost all respect for election integrity. We are now witnessing a
never-before-seen political pressure campaign to rig our elections by
enabling politicians to choose their voters, not the other way around.
Rather than tit-for-tat political games, the American people deserve
stability at the voting booth. The Voting Rights Act used to be an
overwhelming bipartisan sentiment that we are all in this together and
that we don't want anyone to cheat their way into public office.
In the most recent Supreme Court case of Louisiana v. Callais, the
Court had an opportunity to protect this representation for all
Americans, especially those who have been historically disenfranchised
by gerrymandering and other discriminatory voting practices. Instead,
the Court's conservative supermajority has again turned its back on the
promise of an equal right to vote, further gutting the Voting Rights
Act.
The impact is already being felt. Across the South--primarily in the
former Confederate States--you see decisions being made to eliminate
African-American Representatives from congressional districts.
Justice Kagan, in writing for the dissent, said the Voting Rights Act
was ``born of the literal blood of Union soldiers and civil rights
marchers.'' We cannot allow that blood to have been spilled in vain. We
must fight these dangerous attempts to restrict the right to vote, and
we must restore confidence in our democracy by ensuring that every
eligible American has access to the ballot.
That is why, in honor of my late friend and voting rights pioneer
Congressman John Lewis, I have been proud to introduce a bill that
bears his name. It is the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act,
which would restore and strengthen the Voting Rights Act.
It has been an honor to work with Senator Warnock of Georgia, who is
cosponsoring this bill with me. We are going to try to make sure it has
its day in court--or its day in the Senate, as we say.
We also need to advance additional tools against current voter
suppression efforts. Attacks on voting rights aren't happening in a
vacuum. Across this country, Republican lawmakers and litigators are
using every trick in the book to rig the rules of the game. Why? They
are afraid of losing in November. Purging voter rolls, closing polling
places, restricting mail-in voting, and undermining the Voting Rights
Act all serve one purpose--to limit access to the ballot box.
America is better than that.
Some Democrats will continue to stand up and push back against this
effort. It is about time that this became a bipartisan effort again.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Connecticut.
Mr. BLUMENTHAL. Mr. President, I am honored to follow my colleague
from Illinois on the topic of paramount interest to this body and to
the American people.
You know, future generations of Americans will read the Supreme
Court's decision in Louisiana v. Callais with dismay and embarrassment.
Right now, there are a lot of Americans reading it with not only dismay
and embarrassment but with outrage and fear because, in that decision,
the Court gutted section 2 of the Voting Rights Act--landmark
legislation that ensured minority communities had the opportunity to
elect a representative of their choice--in other words, the people
picking their political representatives, not the political
representatives picking the people, the constituents whom they will
represent.
That decision was not handed down in a vacuum. It comes as President
Trump and his handpicked Supreme Court majority launch a two-front
attack on our elections: voting rights and the democratic structure.
Trump has sought to purge voters from the rolls, has demanded voters'
most sensitive data, has threatened to send ICE to the polls, has
raided election offices to seize ballots, has tried to kill mail-in
voting, and has claimed he will nationalize elections.
That is his word--``nationalize'' elections--meaning have the Federal
Government take over elections, which constitutionally are the States'
responsibility under the law, under the Constitution.
Meanwhile, the Supreme Court lent a helping hand to President Trump,
inflicting generational damage on our democracy as well. In its
decision demolishing voting rights, the Supreme Court decided that it
knows best when it comes to societal, political, electoral conditions
on the ground. The people's elected representatives simply can't be
trusted in their determination that every American ought to have a
meaningful right to vote. Election rights are too important to be left
to elected representatives. The Supreme Court knows best.
Justice Alito's majority opinion blithely justifies the decision on
the grounds that the ``Voting Rights Act led to `great strides' '' in
electoral opportunities, since it was enacted, such that section 2 is
no longer necessary.
Of course, if you want the definition of an activist Court out of
control, it is a Court that makes the judgment on what it thinks are
the facts without having any factual evidence that a provision of law
is no longer necessary. That provision of law was passed by the U.S.
Senate and the U.S. House of Representatives, but the U.S. Supreme
Court thinks it knows better.
As Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said in her dissent to a previous
ruling of this Court diminishing voting rights, the logic of tossing
away section 2 because it has worked so well--that is Justice Alito's
logic--``is like throwing away your umbrella in a rainstorm because you
are not getting wet.'' That rainstorm now has come. Before the ink was
dry on the Court's decision, States were already carving up Black
majority districts with reckless abandon.
So, with the President and his Court majority's hostility toward
American democracy, there is only one branch of the Federal Government
left standing to protect our voting rights, and it is the branch that
the Constitution actually entrusts with authority over elections--the
U.S. Congress. Yes, us. Now, more than ever, it is incumbent upon the
Members of this institution to take action to preserve our great
Republic.
As Benjamin Franklin said, it is ``a republic, if you can keep it.''
Now is the time that we are called upon literally to keep it. We have
done it before in circumstances not dissimilar to the crisis we face
today.
In 1965, when our democracy was at an inflection point, as millions
of our fellow Americans were being blocked from exercising the
franchise, our predecessors passed the original Voting Rights Act in
the face of unprecedented political resistance. You need not be a
constitutional or a historical scholar to remember the great fight that
was entailed in the Civil Rights Act of 1965, which guaranteed voting
rights.
Then, in 1982--much like today with the Supreme Court's gutting of
section 2--Congress passed and President Reagan signed a law overruling
the Court and emphasizing that Congress meant what it said: All
Americans--all Americans--must have the opportunity to choose
representatives as they wish.
Now, to be sure, we face a new and profoundly dangerous situation
today. The sitting President of the United States is actively seeking
to undermine free and fair elections in our country, and the Supreme
Court has entirely abdicated its responsibility to safeguard our
fundamental rights. The Supreme Court is doing his bidding. It is in
his pocket. The Justices of the Supreme Court are regarded these days
by
[[Page S2361]]
a lot of Americans as nothing more than politicians in robes.
We ought to learn from the courage of civil rights leaders,
legislators, and ordinary people who have come before us. Their
insistence that our democracy belongs to all Americans was the force
that led to the passage of the Voting Rights Act and its later
amendments.
We, too, now must act with urgency. Healing the damage done to voting
rights and rebuilding our democratic structures will take substantial
reforms. We can start right now, today, with measures that should be
uncontroversial.
We must pass, for example, the John R. Lewis Voting Rights
Advancement Act. I am proud to be a supporter of it. I have tried to
help lead it. We must significantly increase election security grant
funding to ensure that local election officials can smoothly and
securely administer our elections as these midterms approach--smoothly
and securely administer elections.
And that kind of support is more essential than ever at a time when
elections are under real threat. We must significantly work with and
support State leaders who have stood up to the administration and
refused to hand over voters' most sensitive information.
We must defeat the attempt to further disenfranchise voters through
the so-called SAVE America Act. It seems moribund, but we need to be
wary that it could be revived.
And we must ensure that this evermore Supreme Court does not have the
final word on the right to vote in America. Just like in 1982, Congress
has an obligation and an opportunity to pass a voting rights statute so
powerful and unambiguous that not even this Court can find a way to
overrule it.
We are approaching our Nation's 250th anniversary, a great milestone
for a republic that Benjamin Franklin said we would have to work to
keep. Now is our time to keep it.
Callais reminds us that the American experiment has been an ongoing
struggle to fulfill the ideals of the Revolution for all people of the
country. By and large, that history has been one of expanding rights,
embracing more people with liberties and power to control their own
lives and a say in the government that makes decisions about those
lives. We have expanded voting rights, until now. And, right now,
voting rights are in the balance.
Our history has not been linear. Every two steps forward, sometimes a
step back because of reactionary backlash to advances in rights and
liberties, but Americans have never stopped fighting to ensure that all
this Nation's people have a say in determining how we can make our
Union more perfect.
The Supreme Court's decision in Callais--dangerous and misguided as
it is--will not stop us from continuing that 250-year fight. Now I ask
all of my colleagues to join in this effort to preserve our democracy.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Vermont.
Mr. WELCH. Mr. President, I thank my colleague the senior Senator
from Connecticut, and I too want to join him in commenting on the
Callais decision. And I want to put the decision also in a context of
what the Supreme Court has been doing consistently since at least Bush
v. Gore, and that is, on the one hand, they have been stripping the
House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate--the legislative body--of
their legislative powers. On the other hand, they have been extending
unprecedented extension of powers to the executive. It is a threat to
democracy. The Supreme Court is doing real damage to everyday people in
all of our country by upsetting the constitutional order of the
separation of powers in coequal branches of government.
Let me talk a little bit about the Callais decision. You know, I was
inspired to get involved in politics, in public service, by the civil
rights movement in the sixties. In 1967, I dropped out of college. I
hitchhiked to Chicago, and I began working against housing
discrimination against African-American citizens on the West Side of
Chicago. And it was amazing to me two things: one, how much of the
discrimination they suffered was legal. A veteran who served in World
War II, if he was Black, could not get a mortgage. Banks were allowed
to redline districts where it meant nobody who lived in them--and they
were Black neighborhoods--could even get a mortgage. It was legal.
But what I was also astonished by and aspired by, as I am to this
day, was the generosity, the resilience, and the determination of
people who were on the receiving end of what, in effect, was Jim Crow
discrimination to forge ahead, to help each other, and to make changes.
The civil rights struggle in that decade culminated with the legal
protections delivered by the Voting Rights Act.
The Supreme Court's recent decision in Louisiana v. Callais literally
turns the clock back on that hard-won progress. Already--already--in an
instant, States from Louisiana to South Carolina to Tennessee have
called for redistricting ahead of the midterm elections in 6 months.
And hundreds of thousands--if not millions--of voters are being
impacted by this decision.
In addition, in my view, being wrong on the merits and incredibly
damaging, the Supreme Court's decision is the latest example of what
the Court is doing that is, in fact, eroding our democracy. A trail of
decisions has led us to this remarkable moment. Look at what has
happened over just the last decade and a half.
In 2010, Citizens United, the Supreme Court opened the door to
unlimited gargantuan sums of money in our elections. Money is speech.
And, of course, what has happened is that, literally, billionaires
dominate funding for elections. And it is not about what the country
needs; it is about what they want.
In 2013, in Shelby County v. Holder, the Court removes the Federal
oversight of potentially discriminatory State voting restrictions that
threatened the access to the ballot itself. Since that decision, States
have added nearly 100 restrictive voting right laws.
In 2018, Rucho v. Common Cause, the Court refused to act on
partisan--wildly partisan--gerrymandering.
And by the way, both parties have engaged in that. So I am condemning
that radical gerrymandering, regardless of which party uses it for
their own advantage.
But now, across the country, in light of this recent decision, we are
literally seeing a race to the bottom where Members of Congress--pardon
me--where members of State legislatures, with the assent of many
Members of Congress, are choosing their voters by this radical
gerrymandering on a partisan basis where the goal is to get your side
elected and to do that by picking your voters. And then we are seeing
the spectacle of redistricting every 2 years instead of every 10 years.
It is stripping away the right of the voters to be the ones picking
their leaders, as opposed to the leaders picking their voters.
And, of course, in 2024, Trump v. United States, that decision defied
our 250 years of history which said that no person, including the
President of the United States, was above the law.
Every single one of these decisions by the Court has made our
democracy less democratic. And now this Court's decision in Callais can
be added to that really damaging list.
The Court has gutted section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, as passed by
Congress, making it exceedingly difficult for plaintiffs to prove
discrimination. They have to prove ``intent''--impossible burden with
535 Members and every one may have a different intent. They have to
disregard, now, the actual impact of the map that is put together by
partisan State legislators.
The Court decision has also given the green light for States to
reduce the electoral role that minorities have played in our democracy,
unraveling one of the last opportunities for minorities to elect people
of their choice.
Let me go through a few of the States. In Louisiana, a third of the
population is African American. Joe Biden won 40 percent of the vote
there. Yet after Callais, Louisiana has proposed a map that won't even
come close to one-third representation for African Americans--and by
the way, that might be a Republican or a Democrat; it is the voters'
choice. There will only be one Black Representative out of six House
Members.
The Supreme Court knows exactly what it is doing. By blessing
partisan
[[Page S2362]]
gerrymandering while gutting the Voting Rights Act, the Roberts Court
has completed the mission of the Jim Crow laws in the South: removing
the ability of elected representatives to be Representative of and
responsive to those they represent.
Equally concerning, partisan gerrymandering all but guarantees that
the politicians will choose who wins elections--not the people of their
State and their district. They are picking their voters. This is a race
to the bottom that is detrimental to the country and should be rejected
by both parties.
It is very concerning to me as well how the legislative branch, by
its passivity, has allowed this to happen. Under the Constitution, the
Congress--as I mentioned, the branch most responsive to the will of the
people--is supposed to be the counterweight against the other branches
of government. But as Congress has stood on the sidelines, the
executive branch, aided by the Supreme Court, has unleashed the
unrestrained power in our campaign financing system of billionaires to
play an oversized role--a decisive role--to select their own political
elite.
But the outcome of Callais is not just about the degradation of our
democracy. The Supreme Court reached its judgment based on its own
individual assessment of the protections that were codified by the
judgment of Congress that recognized and protected against racial
discrimination in voting. Congress said those protections continue to
be necessary. The Supreme Court casually blew that off and said: No,
they are not necessary. Now the Supreme Court has overruled Congress on
a question of policy which was within the purview of this institution
to make.
Congress has reauthorized the Voting Rights Act five times in
recognition of the need to prevent voting discrimination in this
country. And despite such clear instruction, the Court has still taken
it upon itself to encroach upon Congress' prerogative by requiring
victims of racially discriminatory gerrymandering to prove that States
had a discriminatory motive--an impossible task to prove, even when the
impact is absolutely clear.
Justice Kagan, dissenting from the Callais decision, put it plainly:
[The Voting Rights Act] was born of the literal blood of
Union soldiers and civil rights marchers. It ushered in awe-
inspiring change, bringing this Nation closer to fulfilling
the ideals of democracy and racial equality. And it has been
repeatedly, and overwhelmingly, reauthorized by the people's
representatives in Congress. Only they have the right to say
it is no longer needed-not the Members of this Court.
It is incumbent on us that we, as Congress, reassert our authority to
make judgments about what is best in terms of access to the ballot.
My view, by the way, is that this race to the bottom is going to be a
killer for our democracy, and I believe both parties should renounce
radical partisan gerrymandering, and I believe both parties should
support eliminating these every 2-year redistrictings that all have, as
their stated goal, advantaging one party over the other.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Wyoming.
____________________