Fighting Back Against Dismantling of Voting Rights

Floor Speech

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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 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.

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.

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