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Floor Speech

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Mr. WARNOCK. Mr. President, I am so grateful for the remarks of my colleague and friend from the great State of Massachusetts and for his voice on this very important issue.

I rise today as a child of the Civil Rights Movement, as the blessed beneficiary of its bold moral witness in America, and as a member of only the second generation of our Nation to have full and fair access to the right to vote.

Some have argued that in a real sense, our country did not really become a democracy until 1965 when there were those who stood up with courage and challenged the Nation to live up to its ideals.

I stand here today, and I am able to work in this building on behalf of the people of Georgia--what an honor--to represent 11 million people, to carry on this grand experiment called democracy.

But it is never far from our memory that, at the time of my birth, Georgia's two Senators were Richard B. Russell and Herman E. Talmadge. In many ways, they were effective. They brought great things back to the State of Georgia, but we would not be honest, we would not be telling the full story if we did not remember that they were both archsegregationists and unabashed adversaries of the Civil Rights Movement, which sought to expand the electorate to ensure that this is a House where every American--the citizen--has a voice.

Senator Talmadge once said: We love the Negro in his place, and his place is at the backdoor.

Well, it is a testament to the greatness of this country that I sit in his seat because there were those who stood up to fight for the highest ideals of our country.

I reference that history because it is relevant in this moment. Nearly 62 years ago to the day, those two Georgia Senators, along with other southern Senators, began a weekslong effort to prevent people who look like me and my parents and my children from fully participating in our democracy. They were trying to narrow the electorate. So I find it interesting and ironic that my colleagues on the other side of the aisle who have been leading this effort in recent days have referenced this very history which is the cause for my being here in the first place.

One of them pointed out the fact that when we entered the debate about the civil rights legislation and tried to push it into law, that there were those who stood up day after day, week after week, and he dared to enlist that history as if, somehow, that was some inspiration for what they are trying to do in this moment.

Let me be very clear: You are on the other side of that history. You are on the side of those who are trying to narrow the electorate. So, if you want to pass the SAVE Act, that is your prerogative. If you want to argue that folks have to have a birth certificate or a passport just to be able to register to vote in a country where most Americans do not have a passport, if you want to effectively disenfranchise women, disenfranchise poor people, and working-class people who have to struggle for the right to vote, that is your prerogative. But be very clear: You are not on the side of the movement. You are on the other side of that history. Fight for this, if you will, but you ought to leave the Civil Rights Movement and Martin Luther King, Jr.'s, name out of your mouth.

This country goes through moments where the electorate expands, and then it goes through moments where it contracts. We are in a contraction moment. We are in a moment wherein the words of the administration itself--it was a Cabinet official in the White House herself who said that we just want to make sure ``the right people are voting''--the right people--``the right people are voting.''

That was the argument in the 1960s. Of those who wanted to make sure that the right people were voting, had they prevailed, I would not be standing here today.

I don't believe in the right people. I believe in ``we the people,'' ``we the people,'' ``we the people.'' That is not just the first three words of our charter document. It is a creed--``we the people.''

Every American citizen must have access to the franchise, and it must not be treated as a privilege. It is a right. When you put up unnecessary barriers, you undermine that basic understanding that the franchise is not a privilege; it is a right. I often say that a vote is a kind of prayer for the world we desire for ourselves and for our children, and our prayers are stronger when we pray together. There are no right or wrong people. There are only the American people.

They put up the SAVE Act, arguing that they want to make sure that it is only Americans who are voting, but they have not demonstrated, and they have provided no evidence that voter fraud is a real thing through voter identification. We know that this will disenfranchise thousands, if not millions, of Americans. We have no evidence that this is a problem that actually needs to be solved. Yet they have shut down much of the business of the Senate in order to do this. They are hell-bent on getting this done.

Donald Trump said that this is his No. 1 priority. So it begs the question, Why is this his No. 1 priority?

With all of the things wrong in our country, why is this the main thing that he feels he must get done? Why is he afraid?

I will tell you why. It is because he knows that he has broken every promise he made. He said that he was going to lower your costs. Instead, he has doubled healthcare premiums for 22 million Americans. His tariffs have cost the average family over $1,000 a year. Gas prices are spiking and show no sign of coming down anytime soon, but this is his No. 1 priority.

He said he was going to be the President of peace, but he has attacked 17 countries and counting. Yet again, we find ourselves entangled in another endless war with no endgame and no idea of what victory even looks like.

All the while, we have more important problems right here at home. Donald Trump promised to support our farmers. Instead, he has raised the cost of fertilizer and has hamstrung their exports, and farmers all across Georgia are suffering as a result.

So that is really what this is all about. Donald Trump is a failed President, and his support is collapsing. I hear it all across Georgia--in rural towns bearing the brunt of the President's immigration policies and farmers dealing with the realities of a trade war.

This President claims to be ``America First,'' but in the name of protecting U.S. citizens, his deportation machine has seized over 170 citizens. They have shot and killed two American citizens on a quiet street. I went to stand where they lost their lives. In a real sense, I felt like I was standing on holy ground, made sacred by the blood of patriots who stood up against abusive authority, under the color of law, to remind us that, at the end of the day, this is our country-- ``we the people,'' ``we the people.''

It is not the powerful interests who can write big checks to keep politicians in office--``we the people.'' Not the lobbyists--``we the people.'' Not the American oligarchs--``we the people.''

Now they want to prevent even more citizens from voting, from making our voices heard. They want to block our ability to stand up in November and say: Enough is enough.

So the President is panicking. He is doing what he always does. He is attacking our elections so that you cannot fire his foot soldiers in Congress. It is pathetic. He looks to me like a scared human being who knows that behind the curtain is a tiny man. We will not be intimidated. Our voices will not be silenced.

The President continues to push the lies that he spread, after he lost in 2020, to create a pretext to interfere in the midterm elections. That is why we saw an FBI raid in Fulton County, GA.

As I watched that FBI raid, I saw the Director of National Intelligence crouched in a corner, talking on a mobile phone, and I wondered, Why was she there? There were bomb threats in polling stations in poor and Black neighborhoods during the 2024 election, which were later traced back to Russian interference. I am still waiting on an answer from her on that.

There she was, engaged in this effort to count the ballots again in the 2020 election, even after the President's own Justice Department found no evidence of meaningful voter fraud. These claims about voter fraud--that is the fraud. That is the fraud. And I think Americans are growing tired of it.

You know, the wonderful thing about our country is that we get to have the argument. The Presiding Officer and I don't agree on a whole range of things, but I just want us to be able to have the argument. It gets rambunctious in the American public square in order to avoid violence, but at the end of the day, everybody gets to go to the polls, and the most powerful words in the democracy are: ``The people have spoken.''

So I will always cast my lot on the side of democracy. I am hopeful in this regard. I believe in the people. I want to make sure my constituents' voices are heard--all of my constituents--even when they don't agree with me, even when I don't get the outcome that I want.

When I think about the nature of human power and human pride--forgive me, but I am a preacher after all--and human sin and our desire to make sure that we slant things so that we get the outcome we want--we see it not just in governments; you see it in your own family--the question becomes, How do you balance all of those things? I think democracy is the best we have got. Given who we are as human beings, I will cast my lot with the people's voice, even when I think they have gotten it wrong. I would rather put my trust there.

Reinhold Niebuhr, perhaps, put it best. He said that human kind's capacity for justice makes democracy possible. Our capacity for injustice makes democracy necessary.

At the end of the day the thing that can fix it, whatever issue we have, I believe, is the people's voice. And so I am disturbed about what I am witnessing. I am disturbed about an attack on Fulton County and in Maricopa County, AZ. It troubles me when ICE lands in Minneapolis, and then the administration says that we are there to deal with violent criminals, we are there to deal with this immigration issue. But then when it comes down to it, the administration says: Do you really want ICE out of your community? Hand over your voter rolls.

Come on, man. I don't care whether you are a Democrat or a Republican, come on. You can see what this is about. What do voter rolls have to do with violent criminals? What kind of ransom note is that to send to the leaders of the people of Minneapolis?

And so the Big Lie continues to live and we need to kill it once and for all and the only thing that can do that is the people's voice.

The President continues to spread conspiracy theories and outright lies. Here is the reality: This bill will disenfranchise thousands, if not millions, of Americans, and that is why they want to pass it so desperately. They are using onerous citizenship verification as a pretext for voter suppression, requiring you to use a birth certificate or passport to register to vote.

And under this bill, a driver's license wouldn't be enough to register to vote. They ought to call the bill what it is. They ought to call it ``A Driver's License is Not Good Enough Act.'' They call it the SAVE Act, but the question is: What are they trying to save? They are not trying to save our elections; they are trying to save their own power at any cost--at the cost of the voices of ordinary people.

Let's think about this in practical terms. If you change addresses, even if you move down the street and you have been voting for years, do you want to have to track down your birth certificate--which you lost while you were moving--in order to register to vote?

You get married and you change your name, you have to go find your marriage license and a birth certificate or a passport to prove that you are a citizen.

More than half of Georgians, or 5.4 million people, lack a valid passport. And as many as 2.2 million women in Georgia may not have their birth certificate that matches their current legal name.

And so women are disproportionately disenfranchised by this piece of legislation, which again is a solution in search of a problem that does not exist.

Let me be really clear. Noncitizens should never vote in our elections. There is no argument about that. But this legislation will only make it harder for eligible American voters to make their voices heard. That is the actual work that this legislation will do.

We know that about 760,000 voting-age Georgians who are U.S. citizens would have difficulty showing documentation proving their citizenship. We know that.

By the way, we have voter ID in Georgia. And I will tell you, for the record, that I think you should have to prove that you are who you say you are before you vote. I support voter ID. We have voter ID laws in my State. You should have to prove that you are who you say you are before you vote. That is basic, but that is not what this is about.

This is about onerous voter ID requirements used as a pretext and as a tool for voter suppression because there are those in the administration who want to make sure ``the right people vote.'' There are currently strong laws on the books that keep noncitizens from voting. They face criminal prosecution and deportation if they vote.

So let's just think about the risk-reward analysis, the cost-benefit analysis. You will be criminally prosecuted if you try to vote and you are not a citizen. You are trying to tell me that folks will risk criminal prosecution in droves to change the potential outcome of an election? Are you trying to tell me that folks will try to vote twice? It is hard enough to get folks to vote once, let alone twice.

And that is probably why Republican secretary of state Brad Raffensperger found only 20 instances of noncitizens registered out of 8.2 million in Georgia--8.2 million people registered to vote in Georgia. The Republican secretary of state found 20 instances of noncitizens who were registered and only 9 had ever attempted to vote and the majority did so before 2012. This is a solution in search of a problem that does not exist.

And so this means that the SAVE America Act would burden or disenfranchise over 150,000 Georgians for every single instance of a noncitizen voting in the last decade. Does that make sense? You keep 1 noncitizen from voting and you disenfranchise 150,000 for every 1? You are trying to tell me that that makes the democracy stronger? more representative of our interests?

And so if there is no meaningful voter fraud, and if this law is so disastrous for voting citizens, the question is: Why is the President so desperate to sign the SAVE America Act into law? And I mean, he is desperate, so desperate that he has threatened his own Republican caucus, said: If you all don't do this, we are not going to do anything.

The President is trying to take away your right to vote so he can hold onto power, and Washington Republicans are trying to help him do it. They are using the SAVE America Act as a pretext for voter suppression. They know their policies are deeply unpopular with the American people, but instead of working to change their policies, instead of working to get more people access to the healthcare that they need, they are taking healthcare away from 15 million Americans. Instead of working to lower the cost of groceries, they are instituting reckless tariff taxes that make everything more expensive. Instead of actually working on behalf of the American people, they are working to change who can vote in the next election.

And so we are going to stand up. I am certainly going to stand up for all of my constituents, and I mean that. I want the Georgians who are in red districts to know that I am fighting for you and your voice because this administration's so-called SAVE America Act will disenfranchise many of my constituents in red districts. That is because, increasingly, the people's voices are being squeezed out of their democracy. It is the folks with a lot of money, it is the corporate interests that they want to hear from.

And you are living right now with what happens when your voice is diminished. I see it. I see it in rural red counties that I visit all the time where their rural hospital is either closed or it is almost near closing because they cut a trillion dollars out of Medicaid. I see it in the eyes of farmers who are burdened by these tariff taxes and how it is creating damage and wreckage for their businesses.

I saw it the other day in Social Circle, GA, where the administration is determined to put a 10,000-bed ICE detention center in a town of 5,000 people--5,000 people--in Social Circle, GA. The administration went in, bought a warehouse for $128 million, and the mayor, the city manager, the leadership of Social Circle, GA, learned that there would be a detention center in their town that would triple the size of their town by reading about it in the Washington Post.

So think about that. The mayor, elected to represent his people. The big, bad Federal Government comes in under cover of night and ambushes the duly-elected local officials because they didn't want to hear their voice. They were determined to bring this warehouse to their town whether they like it or not.

I am fighting for those people, even though it is, by and large, a red district. I don't have a lot of votes in Social Circle, GA, but I am a pastor first. I told the people of Georgia that I would fight for them, that I would walk with them even as I work for them. This is about the voices of ordinary people. This is about saving our democracy.

As I close--and nobody believes a Baptist preacher when he says ``as I close,'' but I am not trying to break any records today. Andrew Young tells me the story of when they passed the civil rights bill into law.

Dr. King and his lieutenants went to see President Johnson. The President was feeling good--and he should. They had passed the civil rights bill into law after that long filibuster that I talked about at the beginning of this speech. They passed the civil rights bill into law, and Dr. King and his lieutenants went to see the President, and Dr. King said: I am glad we got that civil rights bill into law. Without skipping a beat, he said: Now we need a voting rights law. He wasn't going to let the President bask too long in the glory of that victory. He said: That is great, but my people can't vote in the South. I need a voter rights law, and I need it yesterday.

The President said to Martin Luther King, Jr.: You are right. I get it. But I just can't get that done right now. I don't have the power.

They left the meeting, and the staff was feeling all demoralized and dejected, and they said to Dr. King: What are we going to do? The President said he doesn't have the power.

Dr. King just sort of shrugged his shoulders and said: Well, if the President doesn't have the power, I guess we are going to have to go and find him some.

Think about that. He was just a Baptist preacher, wasn't elected to anything. He was not a U.S. Senator, certainly not the President of the United States. But he said: We are going to go and find the President some power.

Dr. King understood and those who were around him understood that it is not about the people in power; it is about the power that is in the people.

So the people are standing up in this moment, and I am standing with them. No to the so-called SAVE Act; yes to saving our democracy.

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Mr. WARNOCK. Mr. President, I am so grateful for the leadership of Senator Schumer, and he speaks for all of us.

The thing that we have in common on both sides of the aisle is that my colleagues and I travel back and forth from this city to our home States every week. Airplanes are our other office.

So every week I fly here or fly back home. I pass by hard-working agents of the TSA. I get to see their dedication up close, their professionalism. They are public service in action, and they are working long hours around the clock every day of the year.

Wherever we are trying to go, our TSA agents get us there safely; safely to work, safely back to our families, wherever the public is trying to go. And these public servants sacrifice their holidays, their special moments with their families so that we can get to our families.

They work nights and weekends to make sure that we in this Chamber and the millions of Americans that travel from our Nation's airports can do that without fear.

So this is basic. No one should be fooling around with the TSA agents. We have our differences, our debates in this Chamber, but for the second time of the year, our TSA workers are working without pay because of Washington dysfunction.

Here is what I believe: I believe that if you are working-- particularly, during a government shutdown--then you should be fully paid. I believe this so much that I have broken with Members of my own party to vote to pay all Federal workers, which includes TSA officers, during government shutdowns.

I think it is simply wrong for my Republican colleagues to use these hard-working Americans as leverage, as pawns, in what they are presenting as a false choice to the American people.

Here is the choice that they are presenting to us. They are saying to us: Either shut down the government, denying working people the money that they have earned, or vote to continue to support the President's paramilitary force that is wreaking havoc in our streets and killing ordinary citizens for exercising their First Amendment rights.

That is a false choice--one I simply cannot accept--and it confounds common sense.

The time is always right, as Dr. King used to say, to do what is right. So I am calling on this Chamber to pay TSA workers right now before we, again, all head to the airports. Let's keep having this debate, but pay the TSA workers.

4127, the Transportation Security Administration Pay Act, that the bill be considered read a third time and passed, and the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table.
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Mr. WARNOCK. Mr. President, let me be very clear. Our differences here are differences in principle, and they have real consequences on the streets of America in realtime right now.

This is not just some theoretical argument. This is not about politics. This is about the people.

I disagree fundamentally that we ought to have an unaccountable paramilitary force wreaking havoc on the streets of our country. ICE, as Trump has remade it, is killing American citizens.

And I can't pretend like that is not happening. I stood where Renee Good was shot and killed while her vehicle was driving away. I stood where Alex Pretti lost his life while just trying to defend and protect a woman who we all saw being abused by ICE agents in realtime.

And so this idea that we either have to fund that or shut the government down is a false choice. Republicans have the majority in the Senate. They have the majority in the House. They have the White House. We can pay our workers right now.

By the way, ICE already has more than enough money. They gave ICE $75 billion in the ``One Big Ugly Bill.''

Let me put that in perspective. In terms of funding, ICE is now bigger than the U.S. Marines, and my Republican friends are saying to me and saying to my colleagues that if you don't give this overgrown paramilitary force of masked agents jumping out of unmarked cars more money, we are going to leave TSA workers and others unpaid.

I think that is patently unfair. I think we ought to fund the Federal workers; we ought to fund FEMA, the Coast Guard. We ought to fund Homeland Security while we have a principled argument about what is happening with ICE, because what is happening there gets to the very basic things that I learned in my ninth grade civics class about the engagement between law enforcement and ordinary citizens every single day. And what we are witnessing, in this moment, is unacceptable.

Pay the TSA workers. That is my offer. That is my request.

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