Ban Partisan Gerrymandering
When politicians get to handpick their voters, elections become rigged from the start, and true accountability vanishes. True representation vanishes. That is why I am proud to have co-led the introduction of S. 2885, the Redistricting Reform Act, which would establish independent redistricting commissions in each state and prohibit mid-decade redistricting.

Congress must pass a ban on partisan gerrymandering nationwide to ensure fair maps for all. If any Republicans refuse, we should put them on the record and have them explain why on the floor of Congress and to the American people.

Stop Billionaires from Buying our Elections
Billionaires represent less than 0.01% of the American population yet are responsible for 19% of all money spent on federal elections. Congress must work to limit billionaires’ spending on elections and tighten restrictions on Super PACs. We need billionaires to spend less on elections and more in taxes.

Statehood for DC and Self-Determination for Territories
The 700,000 residents of D.C. live in America, are American citizens, pay federal taxes, enlist in our military, yet lack full voting representation in Congress.

As a cosponsor of S. 51, the Washington, D.C. Admission Act, I believe that Congress must admit the District of Columbia as a full state into the Union and grant D.C. residents the full Congressional representation and voice that they deserve. Congress must also expand self-determination for U.S. territories.

Guarantee the Right to Vote for All Americans
Congress must enshrine in the Constitution the affirmative right to vote for every American, including minimum standards for how our elections are conducted. After Congress puts in these safeguards, we need a Constitutional amendment to enshrine this fundamental right once and for all.

I think a vote is a kind of prayer about the world we desire for ourselves and our children. And our prayers are stronger when we pray together.

As you may know, I am a fierce advocate for voting rights. I have co-led the introduction of legislation like S. 2523, the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, which would update and restore critical safeguards of the landmark Voting Rights Act of 1965, and S. 4484, the Right to Vote Act, which would enshrine the affirmative right to vote in federal elections. I have demanded accountability from the Trump Administration for their efforts to access sensitive voter information, including the baseless effort to seize ballots from Fulton County. I will continue to fight in the U.S. Senate to protect our elections and your right to vote.

In the meantime, I encourage you to register to vote. Checking your voter registration status, accessing voter resources, and finding information on upcoming Georgia elections ensures you have direct control over your ballot. You can also help strengthen our elections by signing up to be an official, nonpartisan poll worker.

I have always said that voting rights are preservative of all other rights. They are the context in which all other debates can take place. By protecting votingrights, Congress can empower Americans to make their voices heard and shape the future that they want for themselves and their children.

As a U.S. Senator for all Georgians, it is the honor of my life to continue to fight for you and our great state.

Keep the faith, and keep looking up.

U.S. Senator Reverend Raphael Warnock

Our country must reckon with a difficult truth: We should have never entered this war in the first place.

Donald Trump brought us to the precipice of global disaster by choosing war over diplomacy.

We lost American lives.

We killed innocent civilians, including over a hundred precious little girls, with our bombs.

We undermined America’s standing in the world.

We spent billions of taxpayer dollars.

This war has made life more expensive for Americans. All the while, leaving the core national security objectives unachieved and the Strait of Hormuz, which was open prior to Trump’s erratic and unfocused actions, under Iran’s control.

We will live with the consequences of the President’s war for years to come.

The question before us now is how did any of this make us safer? How is America better off? I intend to demand accountability.

I am praying the ceasefire holds. I am praying that diplomacy gives way to a lasting solution. And above all, I am praying for peace on earth.

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TRANSCRIPT: Mr. President, I’m so grateful for the remarks of my colleague and friend from the great state of Massachusetts, and for her 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. There were those who stood up with courage and challenged the nation to live up to its ideals.

I stand here today, and I’m 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’s never far from my memory that at the time of my birth, Georgia’s two senators were Richard B. Russell and Herman E. Talmich. 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 arch segregationists and unabashed adversaries of the Civil Rights movement, which sought to expand the electorate. To ensure that this is a house where every American citizen has a voice. Senator Talmadge once said, “We love the Negro in his place, and his place is at the back door.” 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 week-long effort to prevent people who look like me and my parents and my children from fully parenting in our democracy. They were trying to narrow the electorate. And 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, to reference 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 enter the debate about the Civil Rights legislation and try 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’re on the side of those who are trying to narrow the electorate. And 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, working-class people, who have to struggle for the right to vote, that is your prerogative. Be very clear, you are not on the side of the movement, you are on the other side of that history. Fight with us if you will, but you ought to live 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 when it contracts, and we are in a contraction moment. We’re in a moment where, in the words of the administration itself, it was a cabinet official in the white house herself who said, “ We just want to make sure that, quote, the right people are voting.” The right people. The right people are voting. That was the argument in the 1960’s. And had those who wanted to make sure that the, quote, 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. And when you put up unnecessary barriers, you undermine that basic understanding that the franchise is not a privilege, it’s 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 is no right or wrong people. There’s only the American people. And they put up the SAVE Act, arguing that they want to make sure that it’s only Americans who are voting, but they have demonstrated, 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, and 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 was his number one priority, and so it begs the question, why is this his number one priority? With all the things going on in our country, why is this the main thing that he feels he must get done? Why is he afraid? I’ll tell you why. It’s because he knows that he has broken every promise he has made. He said that he was going to lower your costs. Instead, he’s doubled health care premiums for 22 million Americans. This has cost the average American family over $1,000 a year. Gas prices are spiking and show no sign of coming down any time soon, but this is his number one priority. He said he was going to be the president of peace, but he has attacked 7 countries and counting. Yet again, we find ourselves entangled in another endless war with no endgame and no idea what victory looks like, all the while we have important problems right here at home.

Donald Trump promised to support our farmers, and instead, he’s raised the cost of fertilizer and hamstrung their exports. And farmers all across Georgia are suffering as a result. And so that’s 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 United States Citizens his deportation machine has seized over 170 citizens. They’ve shot and killed two American citizens on a quiet street. I went to stand where they lost their lives, and in a real sense, I felt like I was standing on holy ground. 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. We the people. Not the lobbyist. 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.” And so, the president is panicking. He’s doing what he always does. He’s 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 the pretext to interfere in the midterm elections, which is why we saw an FBI raid in Fulton County, Georgia. And 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 she was there. There were bomb threats in polling stations in poor and black neighborhoods during the 2024 election, which was later traced back to Russian interference. I’m still waiting for 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’s the fraud. That’s the fraud. And I think Americans are growing tired of it.

You know the wonderful thing about our country, Mr. President, is that we get to have the argument. You 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 to avoid violence, but at the end of the day, everybody gets to go to the polls, and the most powerful words of democracy are that the people have spoken. And so, I will always cast my lot on the side of democracy. I’m hopeless in this regard. I believe in the people. I want to make sure my constituents’ voices are heard, 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, and forgive me, but I’m a preacher, after all, human sin. 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 avail us all of those things? I think democracy is the best we’ve 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. Rheinold Niebuhr put it best. He said that humankind’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’m disturbed about what I’m witnessing. I’m disturbed about an attack on Fulton County and in Maricopa County, Arizona. It troubles me when ICE lands in Minneapolis, and then the administration says that we are there to deal with violent criminals, we’re 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’tcare whether you’re 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 a passport to register to vote. 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 the “ 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’re 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’ve 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’ve got 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’s 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 United States 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’s 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 and cost/benefit analyses. You will be criminally prosecuted if you try to vote and you are not a citizen. And you’re 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’s hard enough to get folks to vote once, let alone twice. That’s 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; 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. 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 one noncitizen from voting; you disenfranchise 150,000 for every one? You’re trying to tell me that that makes the democracy stronger? More representative of our interests? So, if there’s 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’s desperate. So desperate that he’s threatened his own Republican caucus. Said if y’all don’t do this, we’re not going to do anything.

The president is trying to take away your right to vote so he can hold on to power. The Washington Republicans are trying to help him do it. They’re 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 health care that they need, they’re taking health care away from 15 million Americans. Instead of working to lower the cost of groceries, they’re imposing reckless tariff taxes that make everything more expensive. Instead of actually working on behalf of the American people, they’re working to change who can vote in the next election. So, we’re going to stand up. I’m 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’m fighting for you and your voice, because this administration’s so-called SAVE America Act will disenfranchise many of my constituents in red districts. And 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 the consequences of your voice being 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 is almost closing. Because they cut a trillion dollars out of Medicaid. I see it in the eyes of farmers burdened by these tariffs, and in the damage they’re inflicting on their businesses.

I saw it the other day in Social Circle, Georgia. 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, Georgia. The administration went in, bought a warehouse for $128 million, and the mayor, the city manager, and the leadership of Social Circle, Georgia, learned that there would be a detention center in their town that would triple its size after 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 the 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 liked it or not. So, I’m fighting for those people, even though, it’s by large, a red district. I don’t have a lot of votes in Social Circle, Georgia, but I’m a pastor first, and I told the people of Georgia that I would walk with them even as I work for them.

And so, 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’m not trying to break any records today. Andrew Young tells me the story that when they passed the Civil Rights Act into law, Dr. King and his group went to see President Johnson. They were feeling good, and they should. They passed the Civil Rights Act into law after the long filibuster that I talked about at the beginning of this speech. They passed the Civil Rights Act into law, and Dr. King and his lieutenants went to see the president. And Dr. King said, “I’m glad we got that civil rights bill into law,” and 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 that victory. He said, that’s great, but my people can’t vote in the south. I need a voting rights law, and I need it yesterday. The president said to Martin Luther King Jr., “ You’re right, I get it, but I just can’t get it done right now. “They left the meeting, and the staff was feeling dejected. The staff said, “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’re going to have to go and find him some.

Think about that. He’s just a Baptist preacher. Wasn’t elected to anything. He was not a United States senator, certainly not the President of the United States, but he said, we’re going to go and find the president some power. Dr. King understood, and those who were around him understood that it’s not about the people in power. It’s about the power that’s in the people. So, the people are standing up in this moment, and I’m standing with them.

No to the so-called “SAVE Act”. Yes, to saving our democracy. I yield the floor.