[Congressional Record Volume 172, Number 95 (Thursday, June 4, 2026)]
[House]
[Pages H3898-H3902]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
FIGHTING BACK AGAINST DISMANTLING OF VOTING RIGHTS
(Under the Speaker's announced policy of January 3, 2025, Mr. Jackson
of Illinois was recognized for half the time until 10 p.m. as the
designee of the minority leader.)
General Leave
Mr. JACKSON of Illinois. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that
all Members may have 5 legislative days in which to revise and extend
their remarks and include extraneous material into the Record.
The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Downing). Is there objection to the
request of the gentleman from Illinois?
There was no objection.
Mr. JACKSON of Illinois. Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleagues for their
presence.
Mr. Speaker, I ask the question: Which side of history are you
standing on? Now, some of you are here because you want to be here.
Some of you are here simply because you walked past this floor to get
somewhere else.
Either way, God has a plan, and that plan today is that you are going
to hear the truth because this is a Special Order hour, and the order I
have been given not by the Speaker of this House but by God, who made
us all equal in his eyes, through this Republic, has never fully agreed
and understood by all Members of this body that we have the right to
stand in this well on the floor of the people's House and ask every
Member of this body a question that cannot be avoided. It cannot be
postponed, and it cannot be answered with procedural language or
partisan talking points.
The question is this: On the eve of America's 250th birthday, which
side of history are you standing for?
Now, I want you to notice something. In a few weeks, this Nation is
going to celebrate. There are going to be parades. There are going to
be speeches. They are going to have fireworks that light up the skies
from sea to shining sea. Politicians on both sides of this aisle are
going to stand at podiums and invoke the Founding Fathers and speak
about liberty and justice and the greatest democracy the world has ever
seen.
I want to ask you, gently, at first: What democracy are you talking
about because I know my history, and I was born in this country, and I
have read the documents.
The democracy that we are celebrating this summer, the democracy of
1776, did not include me or my ancestors, did not include my
grandmother or my great-grandparents, did not include my great-great-
grandmother who was somebody's property under the law of this land. It
did not include the millions and millions of women and children who
built this country's wealth with their bodies and their blood and their
genius and were given in return not citizenship but chains.
{time} 2030
In 1776, it was not a democracy. In 1787, it was not a democracy.
They counted us as three-fifths of a human being to give slaveholders
more power in this very Congress.
In 1865, it was not a democracy. We got the 13th Amendment and got
the Black codes in the same season. In 1868, it was not a democracy.
The 14th Amendment was ratified while African Americans and elected
officials were being murdered across the South.
In 1870, it was not a democracy. The 15th Amendment was passed, and
within 10 years, the Supreme Court had gutted its enforcement, and the
Redeemers had taken back the South at the point of a rifle.
In 1920, our country was not a democracy. Women got the right to
vote, but most Black women in the South could not exercise it. America
did not overcome.
By any honest definition, it was not a democracy in this country
until August 6, 1965, the day that President Lyndon Baines Johnson
signed the Voting Rights Act, the day that this Nation finally, after
189 years of claiming to believe in democracy, extended a meaningful,
enforceable, protected right to vote to all of its citizens regardless
of race, 189 years in the making.
Let that sink into your spirit: 189 years of fireworks, 189 years of
founding myths. ``We the people,'' it was said, and not one day of
actual democracy for the people who look like me.
I am 60 years of age. I was born in 1966. In 1965, the Voting Rights
Act was passed. I am the first generation of Americans ever born with
equal rights under the law of this land. My generation is the first in
250 years. We are the first, 60 years of age.
If that doesn't disturb you, if that doesn't shake something in your
soul, if you can hear that and feel nothing, then I want to suggest
respectfully that something has gone wrong, something has gone morally
numb.
Now, the Supreme Court, in a 6-3 decision in Louisiana v. Callais,
has gutted section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, has taken the spine out
of the only serious legal protection that Blacks, Mexicans, women, and
others have had since 1965. It has done, with legal language and
constitutional reasoning, what the White Citizens' Council and the Ku
Klux Klan used to do with economic pressure and shotguns. They have
changed the method. They have not changed the mission.
Mr. Speaker, it is now my privilege and pleasure to yield to the
gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Garcia), one of the leading outstanding
voices for human rights and democracy in the United States of America
and my colleague and friend.
Mr. Speaker, I am honored to be joined by the first Mexican American
to serve in the United States House of Representatives from the entire
Midwest. He has fought for the rights and well-being of his
constituents and all Americans for decades. I am honored to yield to
the gentleman, the first person of Mexican-American ancestry to serve
in the House of Representatives from the State of Illinois, the
Honorable Congressman Mr. Chuy Garcia.
Mr. GARCIA of Illinois. Mr. Speaker, I thank Representative Jackson
for leading this Special Order hour for the Congressional Progressive
Caucus, shining a spotlight on the Voting Rights Act, progress that has
been made, and, most importantly, efforts to dismantle it and
disenfranchise millions of people across the land and undermine our
democracy.
Let me share a personal story. I arrived in the United States in
1965, the same year the Voting Rights Act was passed. I was a little
boy from Durango, Mexico. I didn't speak a word of English, let alone
know about the Constitution or the Founding Fathers, but I understood
one thing: My parents believed in this country and brought me to this
country because they knew that we could do better and that we could
pursue our dream of a better life in America.
Years later, I became a citizen.
The Voting Rights Act gave me the opportunity I never dreamed
possible: running for office. It was not because power invited me in,
but because people in my community organized. We built power and
exercised our right to vote. That is the magic of the Voting Rights
Act.
[[Page H3899]]
Yet, it is precisely why Republicans have been working for decades to
weaken our voting rights. When our opponents recently broke Black
neighborhoods in Memphis into pieces, they knew exactly what they were
doing. In Tennessee, Alabama, and Louisiana, getting rid of majority
Black districts isn't accidental, either.
Heading to Court to make section 2 of the Voting Rights Act weaker,
it is deliberate, and when Republicans push a bill that prevents
married women from voting over name changes and restricts some eligible
voters, that is their plan.
This is not election integrity. It is Klan tactics in a business
suit, the Jim Crow school of law. They do not say ``literacy test''
anymore. They say: Bring us new paperwork. They don't say ``Whites
only'' anymore. They say: Race neutral.
To them, fair means our communities can contribute to society by
working and paying taxes, but we are not worthy enough to elect our own
Representatives. It also means that you can pack, slice, and scatter
Black and Latino voters, as long as those calling the shots label it
smart politics.
Chicago's Latino community waited decades for real representation in
Congress. The Fourth Congressional District of Illinois became the
first Latino-majority congressional district in the Midwest because the
Voting Rights Act had teeth and because our communities refused to
disappear.
The only thing that they wanted was a level playing field, to be
represented. We organized and won the Fourth Congressional District.
Thirty years later, there is still just one other Latino in Congress
from the whole Midwest region. She is a Latina, and I am proud to serve
with her.
Representation matters, and that is why our opponents are attacking
our voting rights. Nobody spends years in court trying to weaken voters
who do not matter. They do not redraw maps because we are weak. They
redraw maps because we are powerful. They fear Black power. They fear
Latino power. They fear Asian power. They fear working people standing
together and saying: We will not bow to white supremacy.
Right now, it is Black districts, but Latino districts are next, mark
my words. Right now, it is Black districts, but Latino districts will
follow.
They are coming after our power because they are afraid of what
happens when working people stand together. I learned that from Harold
Washington. Before he became Chicago's first Black mayor, Harold
Washington served in this House of Representatives from the First
District of Illinois, Representative Jackson, and helped to strengthen
the Voting Rights Act. When I served with him as a member of the
Chicago City Council, I saw true multiracial democracy come alive
because of the Voting Rights Act.
{time} 2040
So let's call the attack on working rights on voting rights for what
it is: It is about power and control.
Our neighbors did not cross rivers and bridges, march in the streets,
organize in church basements, fight in courtrooms, and knock on doors
to sit down now.
I came here the year the Voting Rights Act became law. Sixty years
later, I am here to say: We are not sitting down. We are not turning
back. We will continue to work today for voting rights and
representation for all.
I thank Congressman Jackson for raising his voice and the awareness
for all of our American people to know.
Mr. JACKSON of Illinois. Mr. Speaker, I thank Congressman Chuy Garcia
for his remarks. I must say it is a pleasure and the privilege of a
lifetime to serve in Congress with a childhood hero and friend of mine,
my colleague, Congressman Chuy Garcia.
I would like to also note for the Record, Congressman Garcia was the
chair of the Illinois Legislative Black Caucus when President Barack
Obama was a former State senator from the State of Illinois.
Congressman Garcia has always affiliated himself with the working
class. He has never forgotten his roots. I thank him for his service
and his kind words and his steadfastness.
Mr. Speaker, it is my privilege and indeed my pleasure to introduce,
to share with my colleague Congressman Takano.
This is indeed LGBTQ month, Pride Month. Congressman Takano is the
first person of the LGBTQ community and of color to openly serve in the
House of Representatives. Congressman Garcia was the first Mexican
American.
Mr. Takano is the first person of Japanese ancestry to serve in the
United States House of Representatives. Many people of our community
have just gotten to this great body that has contributed so much, but
he is also the son and great-grandson of immigrants that were detained
in U.S. concentration camps of Japanese ancestry. He bears the history
and the lineage and the legacy of that tormented history, and he
proudly serves. He has contributed so much for so many.
Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from California (Mr. Takano),
and I thank him for his service.
Mr. TAKANO. I thank Congressman Jackson for yielding. I thank him for
that wonderful introduction. I won't claim to be the first Japanese
American in Congress. There were many that came before me, such as
Senator Inouye, Senator Spark Matsunaga, and many others such as Bob
Matsui in the House of Representatives. But all of what you said about
my family having been interned or incarcerated during World War II,
that is the burden of history that I do carry and it is something that
I think is very important and relevant to today.
I want to focus on the Voting Rights Act, which is the topic of this
Special Order presented by the Congressional Progressive Caucus
tonight.
In 1965, when I was probably 4 years old, President Lyndon B. Johnson
gave a historic address to the Congress in the wake of Bloody Sunday.
Bloody Sunday, you will recall, is that moment in Selma when John
Lewis, among others, crossed the Edmund Pettus Bridge and were met with
State troopers and the local police and they were bludgeoned and
whipped and were charged by officers on horseback because they were
marching to Montgomery to demand voting rights.
What America saw shocked their conscience, and what they saw was what
shocked the conscience of America. It led President Johnson to address
Congress, and he said these words before in this very Chamber to a
joint session. He said: ``The most basic right of all was the right to
choose your own leaders.'' A few months after that speech, the Voting
Rights Act was the law of the land. And that is our topic today.
The voting rights protections, the Voting Rights Act protections were
historic and gave rise to what historians consider the second
Reconstruction era because for the first time in history the government
ensured that minority Americans, Americans of color, could elect their
own preferred candidate. The practice of gerrymandering to dilute the
ability for communities of interest, communities of color to be able to
elect their preferred candidate was the norm.
So one of the people who benefited from that first redistricting
after the 1965 Voting Rights Act was put into law was Barbara Jordan
from Houston, Texas, the first Black woman to represent the South and a
personal hero of mine.
She was elected to Congress in a newly drawn Houston, Texas, district
in 1972. I remember watching Barbara Jordan on television as a 13- or
14-year-old. She was famously a member of the House Judiciary Committee
that was considering Articles of Impeachment against then-President
Richard Nixon.
She famously called herself on the dais an inquisitor, and she
recounted how improbable it was that she was an inquisitor sitting on
the House Judiciary Committee.
She was there in great part because of the Voting Rights Act. If you
just learned the history about this remarkable Member of Congress, she
said on the House Judiciary Committee: ``My faith in the Constitution
is whole; it is complete; it is total.'' That declaration made a huge
impact on me. To see an African-American woman who talked about how
improbable it would be for her to be a Member of Congress, it made me,
a very young boy, believe that some day I could be a Member of this
body.
Thanks to the Voting Rights Act, this Congress is the most diverse
Congress in history. With 26 percent of its
[[Page H3900]]
Members being people of color, our legislative body is the most
reflective of the country's population than it ever has been.
The Supreme Court has taken a wrecking ball to that progress in its
decision in Louisiana v. Callais. Now Republican Governors and State
legislatures have canceled primaries to ram through maps, oftentimes in
a matter of days, that suppress the voting power of Black and Hispanic
Americans.
Mr. Speaker, instead of the Republican Party passing bills to lower
the cost of living, they have seen fit to rig maps to try and keep the
Republicans in power.
The Republicans would rather shred the single most transformative
piece of legislation in the history of our democracy that has ever
been, and they will do it if it means that the President can continue
to build his ballroom, continue his insane war, and enrich himself and
his family.
{time} 2050
The President knows that if congressional maps were fair there would
be enough of us here in Congress who would demand accountability for
the grift he is running out of the White House. There would be enough
voices demanding that he get the help he urgently needs as he continues
to unravel in front of the world.
However, Mr. Speaker, my faith in the Constitution is whole, it is
complete, and it is total. I know that while the Supreme Court may have
dismantled the Voting Rights Act, Congress is not powerless, and the
American people, in spite of the efforts to rig the maps and to draw
districts to keep Republicans in power, we can and will prevail in the
coming months. We will have the votes. If we have the votes, then we
can put an end to gerrymandering and restore and strengthen protections
against racial discrimination in voting so that every voice counts.
There is no question that this Supreme Court is facing a crisis of
credibility. Americans are questioning the Court's legitimacy to make
decisions based on the law and the history of this country.
Mr. Speaker, it is also time to put a check on the Supreme Court, the
Supreme Court that has taken a wrecking ball to the Voting Rights Act.
Mr. JACKSON of Illinois. Mr. Speaker, I thank Congressman Takano. I
thank him for honoring his family's history and legacy. I am thankful
for his service. I thank him for his voice during this critical hour
when America's democracy is being challenged.
Mr. Speaker, it is now my honor and my privilege to share this podium
with an outstanding young man of Indian ancestry and of the Hindu
faith. He is the first person of Asian and Hindu faith to grace this
esteemed body under this dome, on this floor, and in this well.
Mr. Speaker, I yield to the honorable gentleman from the great State
of California (Mr. Khanna).
Mr. KHANNA. Mr. Speaker, I thank Congressman Jackson for his
leadership and vision on this 250th anniversary year of our country. He
spoke out when there was silence in this body, when our leadership was
distracted, and when the country was consumed by Donald Trump's
diversions.
The gentleman spoke out and said that there was a case in the Supreme
Court that is gutting the Voting Rights Act and that will take away
from Black Americans the right to freely choose their Representatives.
We were all complacent while the gentleman was sounding the alarm.
My friend knew, as the son of the great Reverend Jackson and as
someone who has spent his entire life fighting for civil rights, he
knew the dangers when powerful people try to strip away civil rights
and freedoms from Black Americans.
Unfortunately, Congressman Jackson was right. A Supreme Court
decision has been the fastest rollback of Black freedom and Black
political rights since Rutherford Hayes ended Reconstruction.
Now I read that they want to go after districts with representation
of majority Black Americans, majority Asian Americans, I don't believe
they should go after my district just because it happens to be a
majority Asian-American district with people of all backgrounds having
a community of interest. I don't think they should be splitting up
Congressman Jackson's district just to give the Democrats a little bit
more of a partisan advantage, to take away a community that has
struggled for freedom and civil rights for decades and split that up
and not allow them to freely choose who their Representative is. That
is what is going on in this country, and it is wrong.
Tonight, as someone who is the grandson of a freedom fighter who
spent 4 years in jail with Gandhi and as someone whose parents
sacrificed everything they had so that I could have a chance, I stand
in solidarity with my friend to say that we have come too far to roll
back.
I stand both for my friend's voting rights amendment and affirmative
amendment next week which he will be introducing and for his standing
up for voting rights in majority-minority districts.
Mr. JACKSON of Illinois. Mr. Speaker, I thank Congressman Ro Khanna
for his leadership and lending his voice. He is another first in the
House of Representatives whom I am proud to call a Democrat, and I am
proud to call a great American who is standing on the right side of
history.
Mr. Speaker, it is my pleasure to introduce the next speaker who is
the first in her family to graduate from college and went on to become
a critical care physician and steadfast public servant. She answered
the call to public service. She understands the urgent need to help
ensure and help provide care for all Americans.
Mr. Speaker, I yield to the honorable gentlewoman from Oregon (Ms.
Dexter).
Ms. DEXTER. Mr. Speaker, I thank Congressman Jackson for convening
this Special Order hour and for humbling me with such a kind
introduction, but mostly for the gentleman's leadership and his
steadfast commitment to protecting the Voting Rights Act.
When I was completing my medical residency in Colorado in the early
2000s, I distinctly remember standing in line for hours to vote with
two small children in tow at the single polling location available to
me. It was hours with toddlers in the glory of Colorado's most
unpredictable weather.
That experience was a world away from voting in my home State of
Oregon where, since 1996, our State has proudly chosen to vote entirely
by mail. It is safe and secure. You can't hack paper. It is harder to
intimidate a voter in their own home, and turnout is higher. In fact,
in 2023, Oregon had the single highest voter turnout in the Nation.
That is how representative democracy is supposed to work. People
should be able to easily exercise their voices and to use their power.
For generations, the Voting Rights Act helped move us closer to that
promise. It stood as one of the most successful civil rights laws in
our Nation's history, borne from those who marched, bled, and died for
the right to have a say in their government.
Today, that promise is under assault. Over the last decade, a series
decisions handed down by a radical Supreme Court has steadily weakened
voting protections. Most recently, Trump's hand-picked Supreme Court
Justices gutted section 2 of the Voting Right Act which allowed voters
to challenge racially discriminatory maps.
This has unleashed a wave of racist gerrymandering across the South
designed to dilute Black voting power, erase hard-won gains of the
civil rights movement, and rig the political system for Republicans to
stay in power.
In Alabama, the far-right Republican State legislature is now moving
forward with a congressional map that all but erases one of two
majority Black districts.
This is a map that judges in Alabama rejected, but that Trump's
handpicked, radical Supreme Court is letting move forward.
It is a betrayal, and that betrayal and assault is why last month I
traveled to Montgomery, Alabama, with Members of Congress from the
Northeast to the West to stand in solidarity and to say: We are not
going back.
Standing there, I felt the weight of history. The people, including
the gentleman's father, courageously led this Nation in the fight
against segregation and Jim Crow. They will not stand alone now.
We will fight back, and we have the playbook in front of us. This
fight is
[[Page H3901]]
won in courtrooms and at kitchen tables, at the ballot box and marching
in the streets.
Our role here in Congress is clear: to serve as a check on a
judiciary that is straying from its constitutional role and weakening
the protections that ensure free and fair elections for all Americans.
That is why I support term limits for Supreme Court Justices, a binding
and enforceable code of ethics for the Court, and to ensure no court
and no State legislature can ever again undermine the sacred right to
vote.
Congress must pass the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act to
restore Federal protections against racial discrimination in voting.
The right to vote is the foundation of our democracy. Oregonians sent
me here to protect it, and I will keep fighting to do just that.
Mr. JACKSON of Illinois. Mr. Speaker, I am so appreciative of the
Congresswoman Dexter's words and her leadership.
Mr. Speaker, I am honored to introduce our next speaker whose
district was effectively disenfranchised last year during the longest
delay in inducting a Member to the House of Representatives. She is
also the first Latina ever elected to Congress in the entire history in
the State of Arizona.
She is a woman who comes from a proud, progressive, and staunchly
American legacy in the ancestry of her father, Raul Grijalva, who stood
with us, who led us, and who taught us. He stood by his values. He has
instilled those, and he poured those into his outstanding daughter who
is now, I am proud to say, the Congresswoman from the great State of
Arizona.
Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentlewoman from Arizona (Mrs. Grijalva).
{time} 2100
Mrs. GRIJALVA. Mr. Speaker, I thank Representative Jackson for his
steadfast leadership in this fight to protect our democracy, and I
thank the CPC for bringing us together for this Special Order hour.
Mr. Speaker, we often talk about the right to vote as if it is just
another issue before Congress. It is not just another issue. It is
foundational. The right to vote is how people make their voices heard.
It is how communities hold their government accountable. It is the
foundation upon which every other right rests.
This is why the Supreme Court's decision in Louisiana v. Callais is
so alarming. For generations, we have marched, organized, and
sacrificed to secure protections enshrined in the Voting Rights Act.
Those protections helped ensure that communities of color could fully
participate in our democracy and elect Representatives who would fight
for their interests.
Today, those hard-won protections are being chipped away piece by
piece. We are already seeing the consequences across the South.
Politicians are rushing to redraw maps and dilute the political power
of communities of color. Instead of expanding participation in our
democracy, they are looking for new ways to silence voters, undermine
fair representation, and make it more difficult for people to get
involved in our democracy.
As an Arizonan, this fight feels especially personal. The Voting
Rights Act is not some abstract law to the people I represent. Southern
Arizona is home to communities whose political representation has been
protected by the Voting Rights Act for generations. Those protections
helped ensure that Latino voters and other communities of color had
meaningful opportunity to elect leaders who understood their
experiences and would fight for them.
The truth is, without the Voting Rights Act, Arizona's political
landscape would look very different. The Voting Rights Act helped make
it possible for leaders like my dad, Congressman Raul Grijalva, to
serve southern Arizona. It helped make it possible for me to stand here
today as the first Latina ever elected from the State of Arizona to
Congress.
That representation did not happen by accident. It happened because
generations fought to ensure that every community, regardless of race,
language, or ZIP Code, could have an equal voice in our democracy.
That is why what is happening today is so dangerous. When courts
weaken the Voting Rights Act and politicians engage in racial
gerrymandering, they are not just changing lines on a map. They are
weakening the voices of entire communities, undermining the promise of
equal representation, and silencing people, period.
Congress must act. We must restore the full protections of the Voting
Rights Act. We must defend fair representation. We must strengthen our
democracy so that every community has equal voice and equal opportunity
to be heard.
Mr. JACKSON of Illinois. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself the balance of
my time, and I thank the honorable and great Congresswoman Grijalva for
her remarks.
Mr. Speaker, the arch-segregationists have changed their method. They
have not changed their mission. The mission has always been the same:
control who votes, control who counts, control who can challenge the
powerful, control the map, control the district, control the outcome,
and control the future.
Crack the Black community across three districts, pack it into one so
overwhelmingly it elects one Congressman where it should elect two.
Dilute the vote until it is so thin it cannot quench the thirst for
justice. Then stand before the cameras and say: We believe in color
blindness. We believe in equal protection. I don't see race. I don't
see color. We believe every vote counts the same.
A lie dressed up in the Constitution is still a lie.
Let me make the history plain to my colleagues who might have missed
it or who might have arrived late to this speech or to this subject.
After the Civil War, the 15th Amendment was passed in 1870. It said
the right to vote cannot be denied on account of race. Within a decade,
follow me closely, the Supreme Court in Cruikshank, gone; the poll tax,
gone; the literacy test, gone; the Grandfather Clause, gone; the White
primary, gone. Gone meaning gone from the grasp of Black citizens. Gone
meaning the right existed on paper and nowhere else.
It took Jimmie Lee Jackson being shot by a State trooper in February
1965; it took John Lewis and Hosea Williams and 600 people walking
across the Edmund Pettus Bridge on a Sunday morning in Selma, Alabama--
walking peacefully, walking prayerfully, walking legally toward a
courthouse to register to vote--and getting beaten with clubs, trampled
by horses, gassed in the open air on American soil--broadcast on
American television for the world to see--that is what it cost to get
the Voting Rights Act passed.
This was paid for in blood. It was not a speech, not a court brief,
not a strongly worded letter, but blood on the Edmund Pettus Bridge.
Mrs. Viola Liuzzo, a White mother from Detroit, shot dead in her car,
called a Negro lover on the Alabama highway because she came to help
register people to vote. She believed in America. Chaney, Goodman, and
Schwerner, two Jews and a Black man, buried in the Mississippi River.
The four little girls--Addie Mae, Cynthia, Carole, and Denise--blown
apart in their church on a Sunday morning in Birmingham. They all died
so that America could vote and finally become a full democracy. They
paid in full.
The question today is whether this Congress intends to honor their
payment or to squander it.
I will talk to my colleagues on the other side of the aisle, not at
them but to them, because I believe we have something in common.
Beneath the party, the discipline, and ideological positioning, there
is a human being who understands that what is happening in this country
now is fundamentally wrong.
I will ask them directly: What side of history do they want to be
recorded on when they stood up at their town hall and talked about
freedom? Were they telling the truth?
When they invoked the Founding Fathers and the Constitution, were
they telling the truth? What side of history will they be on when they
put their hand on their heart and they put their hand on the Bible and
swore an oath to support and defend the Constitution of the United
States, were they telling the truth?
What side of history do they want to be recorded on? Because the
Constitution includes the 14th Amendment. The Constitution includes the
15th Amendment. The Constitution includes the mandate that Congress
shall have the power to enforce these amendments by
[[Page H3902]]
appropriate legislation. That legislation is the Voting Rights Act. To
let it die, to stand here and do nothing while it is dismantled from
across the street, is not constitutional conservatism. It is
constitutional abandonment.
Let me say something about this word that keeps being propped up:
``color blindness.'' They say the Constitution requires color
blindness. They say that we must treat all citizens the same regardless
of race. They say the Equal Protection Clause demands it, and I want to
say yes, I agree. I have always agreed. Every sensible person agrees,
but here is what they are leaving out.
Color blindness applied to the remedy while the disease is still
active is not justice. It is called ``malpractice.''
You cannot break a man's legs for 200 years and then hand him a pair
of crutches and say now we treat you equally before the law, no special
treatment. The legs are still broken. Our democracy is still in its
infancy. The crutches are the remedy and the remedy is not the problem.
It is the solution.
That is why we need the Voting Rights Act and section 2 for
protection.
Notice how the legislator in Tennessee right after this law was
passed inaccurately went to the gravesite, went to the balcony of the
Lorraine Motel where Reverend Martin Luther King was assassinated and
attacked that one district, that African-American district.
When Louisiana drew two majority Black congressional districts to
have equal representation, it was not creating racial inequality. The
racial inequality was already there. This was the cure, written into
200 years of American history in slavery, a century of Jim Crow,
separate but equal unequal laws, decades of deliberate under funding
and exclusion and redlining and deliberate disenfranchisement.
{time} 2110
The district was the answer to the inequality, not the cause of it.
To call the remedy unconstitutional while the disease runs free, that
is not law, Mr. Speaker. That is protection of power by people who
benefit from this power and this disaster of a decision.
I will recognize my colleagues who have spoken up, but the silence is
deafening. For 250 years, as we celebrate our great country, a country,
indeed, in progress of equal justice for all, where just 60 years ago
was the starting line of democracy, 60 years ago was my birth and my
timeline, and already the forces of regression and those great-
grandchildren and grandchildren of the segregationists are now tearing
down the guardrails that got us to a more pluralistic America.
The question has not been completed, and it is not complicated. The
question is not subtle. The question is not one reasonable people can
be on different sides of.
You are either for voting rights or you are against them. You are
either for democracy or you are against it. You are either standing on
the side of Selma, or you are standing on the side of the men who swung
the clubs on the Edmund Pettus Bridge.
There is no middle ground. There is no procedural abstention. History
does not grade on a curve.
Choose your side, colleagues. History will be watching. The future is
listening. The people are watching. History will not forget.
Mr. Speaker, may I inquire how much time is remaining.
The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Barrett). The gentleman has 2 minutes
remaining.
Mr. JACKSON of Illinois. Mr. Speaker, as we discuss the dismantling
of voting rights and how many of my colleagues and I will continue to
stand up to defend our most sacred right, I am proud to be joined by my
colleagues who have stood up for the right side of history.
Mr. Speaker, I want to say something about what I have heard and what
I have not heard from the other side. My colleagues on the other side
have had a great deal to say about constitutional principles, but I
have not heard a plan to protect the votes for all Americans. I have
not heard them say how these congressional maps will be fair for all
people. I have heard a great deal about legal frameworks, but I have
not heard a single proposal to replace the protection that Callais has
taken away.
I have heard about process and procedure through the proper channels,
but I have not heard anyone on the other side of the aisle stand up and
say in plain language that Black voters deserve full and equal
representation and that this Congress will make sure that they get it.
Why not? It should not be a complicated sentence.
Let me talk about the history for a moment because one of the things
I have heard today is the suggestion that we are living in the past.
That is not true. We are relitigating things that have already been
solved. It is time to move forward. We want to go forward to make
America better and to keep America strong.
Unfortunately, there is an eerie silence. There is a duplicity and a
complacency, and trying to rest upon the laurels. There is something to
be said by God himself about trying to turn a blind eye toward
injustice. It should haunt your conscience.
Your children are watching. The future will be taking note. History
shall record us all. What side of history will you stand on? Will you
say anything to stand up for justice?
Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time, and I thank you for
your consideration.
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