In a speech that lasted over an hour, Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren unleashed a fiery defense of voting rights legislation that Democrats have labeled as being crucial to protecting democracy late Tuesday.
Warren railed against Republicans whom she said have undermined the ability for all Americans to have their voices heard at the polling booth. She blamed those including “dark money networks” and politicians led by former president Donald Trump, who have peddled baseless lies and conspiracies about the “integrity of our elections,” she said.
“Let’s be blunt,” the two-term Democrat said on the Senate floor. “American democracy is under attack from Republican politicians.”
Republican-led state legislatures nationwide, she said, have passed laws making it more difficult for citizens to vote, with marginalized groups and communities of color being disproportionately affected by the changes.
More than a dozen states have passed laws to restrict early voting and voting by mail, tighten voter identification requirements, and make it easier to purge lists of registered voters, according to the Brennan Center for Justice. The legislation follows the highest voter turnout in a federal election in a century.
Warren spoke as the Senate debated “The Freedom to Vote: John R. Lewis Act,” voting rights legislation that combines the Freedom to Vote Act and The John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act. Among numerous other measures, the legislation aims to preserve early voting and voting by mail, enact online and automatic same-day voter registration, and make Election Day a national holiday.
But the fate of the bill, which passed the House last week, is uncertain as Democratic senators Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona have said they will not support changing the Senate filibuster rule, which requires major legislation to receive 60 votes instead of a simple majority.
Warren said the voting rights legislation would “guarantee that every American citizen can easily vote and get their vote counted,” and “restore historic protections against state laws that have the purpose and the effect of discriminating on the basis of race.”
“Unfortunately, Senate Republicans would rather destroy our democracy than have free and fair elections,” she said. “Elections are about the will of the majority, but the Republicans in the Senate don’t want what a majority of Americans want.”
Warren proceeded to criticize her Republican colleagues in the Senate who she said would prefer to derail the legislation from “even getting a vote.” She added that her “view on this is that the filibuster has no place in our democracy.”
In the past, Warren said the filibuster “became the favored tool of racists and segregationists,” working to preserve “Jim Crow laws and [stalling] civil rights legislation for decades,” along with blocking the “passage of anti-lynching legislation for over 100 years.”
The filibuster, she said, has been “weaponized to intensify partisan division” and thwart “the will of the people” on matters ranging from immigration reform to abortion rights.
“Today’s filibuster doesn’t encourage debate, it promotes cowardice,” Warren said. “Senators can torpedo bills without saying a single word in public, or even stepping to the floor of the United States Senate. This is not how a so-called deliberative body should operate. Senators should be required to talk and vote, instead of hiding behind a rule. They should have to put skin in the game.”
Warren concluded her speech by urging for the legislation to be passed and gave the ultimatum that senators can either “choose to protect a tool of Jim Crow and segregation that is found nowhere in the Constitution” or “choose to defend the sacred right to vote.”
“If Senate Republicans will not join us, then we must reform the filibuster,” she said. “We must pass this vital legislation. Our democracy depends on it.”
Watch the full speech here:
Correction: An earlier version of this article misstated a quote from Warren discussing whether American democracy is under attack. Warren said, “American democracy is under attack from Republican politicians.”