Directing the Removal of United States Armed Forces From Hostilities Within or Against the Islamic Republic of Iran That Have Not Been

Floor Speech

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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 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.

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