A joint resolution to direct the removal of United States Armed Forces from hostilities within or against the Islamic Republic of Iran that have not been authorized by Congress.

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.

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.

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.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.