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Floor Speech

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Mr. MARKEY. Mr. President, the Republican majority, representing the views of the President here on the floor of the Senate, are trying to engage not in a save-democracy but a steal-democracy movement. That is what this entire debate is about.

It is about a great fear which the Republicans have that because of their healthcare policies that are raising the price of healthcare for Americans across our country, because of the anger which Americans have, the dramatic spike in the price of oil and gas and home heating oil, that voters are angry across our country, that voters across our country are angry at the lies and the price for food across our Nation, that voters are angry, that there is a dramatic spike in the concern which Americans have about the arresting and incarceration of innocent citizens in our country who have no previous criminal records--all of this is a part of an attempt by the Republicans to steal the election of 2026.

They are afraid that they are going to go to the minority, that they will lose their power, and they know that the only way they can win now is if they steal the election. So this should not be called the SAVE Act; it should be called the Steal Act because they are going to try to suppress the votes, especially of Black and Brown citizens in our country. They are going to attempt to make it very difficult for them to vote, and then, as a result, they are hoping with their fingers crossed that they can win a very narrow election in 2026 in our country.

So democracy is on the line, and the SAVE Act--misnamed--is a direct attack upon our abilities to have free and fair elections in our Nation.

They want to make it very difficult for people to be able to register to vote. They want to make it very difficult for people to be able to actually vote on election day. That is their goal. Their goal is to suppress the vote, not to make it easier to vote in our Nation.

Rather than working with Democrats on this issue, they are just going ``my way or the highway.'' They are just going in a direction which tries to save the Republican majority this year. The SAVE Act is to save the majority for the Republicans that is right now in serious jeopardy.

Even today, we see that the latest news is attacks upon further Iranian natural gas fields, which is leading to a further spike in the price for oil and gas and home heating oil in the United States of America. People are being shaken upside down at the pumps in our country. People are now paying upwards of 90 cents or a buck more for a gallon of gasoline. That is going to mean, over the course of a year, $400, $500 more out of the pockets of every American family.

It is a tax. This war that is illegally and unconstitutionally being run by Trump in the Middle East, in the Persian Gulf, is a tax first on Americans, who will have to pay for that war in higher taxes, and then, as they hit the pump or pay their home heating oil bill or their natural gas bill or their electricity bill, they are going to pay another tax in terms of the higher price they have to pay on top of the price for lost lives. That is the highest price of all. And those lives are being lost in the conduct of an illegal war.

It is all now coming back to our homeland. It is all coming back to the price of oil, of electricity, of natural gas, of home heating oil that every American family is going to have to pay.

The only way to solve this problem is to end that war because as the price of a barrel of oil goes from $70 a barrel to $80 a barrel to $90 a barrel to $110 a barrel, that then gets translated at the pump into $3.40 a gallon, $3.80 a gallon, $4 a gallon, $4.20 a gallon, and it is just going to continue to rise and rise and rise as long as this war continues.

So it is absolutely imperative that Trump end this war because families at home are paying the price. It is directly translatable into every single product which is purchased in our country, from food, to the price of airline tickets, to the price of transporting on trucks every single good across our country. That gets built into the price for everything that people are going to be buying this year.

So all I can say is that is what we should be debating on here. We should be debating that war. We should be debating the impact it is having on our economy.

The stark difference between the priorities of both parties is on display here on the Senate floor right now.

The Republicans are trying to suppress the vote so that voters are going to have a more difficult time in reflecting their views on election day this year on this dramatic spike in home heating oil, gasoline, electricity, and natural gas prices in our country. They don't want people to be able to easily vote on them.

They don't want people to be able to easily vote on the fact that 22 million Americans have seen a dramatic spike in their premiums for their healthcare insurance in our Nation.

They don't want it to be easy at all for people to be able to vote on the price of food or the effect which naming the head of the World Wrestling Federation to be the head of the Department of Education is having upon children's ability to get access to the education they need in every city and town in our Nation, the destruction of the Department of Education. That is cascading down into every community as well. That is reducing funding and requiring communities to talk about raising taxes at the local level.

All of that is what we should be debating out here on the floor, and what the Republicans are saying is: No, we want a debate about suppression of the vote--reducing the number of people who can easily access the ballot box this fall in order to express their views on all of their policies.

So that is really why we are here today. We are here in order to witness the Republicans' lack of priorities, their lack of focus upon the issues which the American people care most about--gasoline prices, electricity prices, natural gas prices, home heating oil prices--as they watch every day this dramatic rise in those prices as a result of the war in the Persian Gulf--the war illegally declared by Donald Trump--with an escalation again today.

Every time they hit all of those energy facilities in the Middle East, we pay the price. Every consumer, every family pays the price at their kitchen table as they try to figure out their payment of the bill that they are responsible to pay for their family for energy in our country.

So that is what we should be debating, and it should be an all-out debate. We should be having hearings on this issue. We are not having those hearings. We are not having that debate. The only thing the Republicans want to talk about is the suppression of the vote-- especially in minority communities and especially in the States that have the highest probability of electing Democratic Senators and House Members this year.

That is what this is all about. It is why Trump tried to cut a deal with Minneapolis on the day that Alex Pretti was murdered, and the White House, his administration, said to Minnesota: If you give us access to your voting rolls, then we will negotiate with you on pulling ICE out. Then they sent Tulsi Gabbard into Georgia just to try to grab all of the election materials at Fulton County--all as a prelude to, as the President says, the invocation of the Insurrection Act, which means the activation of the Marines and the Army in order to be deployed on election day in 2026 to suppress the vote. And we know where he wants to do that--in the States that they are most afraid of losing this year to the Democratic Party.

When he talks about the nationalization of elections, of course it is in complete violation of the U.S. Constitution, which gives that power to the States.

So we are heading towards a constitutional crisis later on this year. Donald Trump is a walking, talking constitutional crisis roaming around the Oval Office every single day trying to figure out how to avoid any accountability, any checks and balances that would be imposed by the U.S. Congress or by the Supreme Court upon his actions.

That is where we are right now. That is the status of the United States of America, and that is why Democrats are going to be standing up and making this case to the American people that they are trying to suppress the vote in order to protect all the impacts which their misbegotten policies have had upon American families in our country. They are living with the consequences economically at home.

Republicans today, by their actions, with their attempt to pass their ``Steal the Election Act,'' are trying to make it very difficult for the American people to make the Republican Party accountable.

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