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. PADILLA. Mr. President, before I offer remarks this evening on voting rights, I want to take a moment to acknowledge a horrible tragedy that struck my home State of California just yesterday.

Yesterday afternoon, two assailants opened fire at the Islamic Center of San Diego, in what authorities are now investigating as a possible hate crime. Three people were killed: a security guard and father of eight named Amin Abdullah; Mansour Kaziha, a store manager at the mosque for 40 years; and Nader Awad, a member of the mosque who lived right across the street and whose wife was a teacher at the school.

Amin is credited with sounding the alarm bells as soon as the incident began, heroically saving the lives of everybody who was inside the mosque. And while authorities are still piecing together exactly what happened, what we do know is that Mansour and Nader somehow drew the shooters away from the mosque, into the parking lot, long enough for them to choose to flee the scene, as hundreds of police officers arrived.

Their sacrifices and their bravery were not in vain. Mr. President, 140 children were inside the center's school at the time, and they are all OK, now reunited with their parents.

Our prayers are with the victims, their families, and everyone impacted by this horrific act of violence.

I want to share my particular gratitude with the women and men of the San Diego Police Department and other first responders who responded literally within moments of first being alerted about the shooting, saving hundreds of lives in the process.

I want to echo the words of San Diego mayor Todd Gloria, who said yesterday:

[A]n attack on any one of our communities . . . because of who they are, what they believe, or how they pray--is an attack on all of us.

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.

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