The Congressional Record is a unique source of public documentation. It started in 1873, documenting nearly all the major and minor policies being discussed and debated.
“Voting Rights (Executive Calendar)” mentioning Patrick J. Leahy was published in the Senate section on pages S4888-S4890 on July 14.
Of the 100 senators in 117th Congress, 24 percent were women, and 76 percent were men, according to the Biographical Directory of the United States Congress.
Senators' salaries are historically higher than the median US income.
The publication is reproduced in full below:
Voting Rights
Madam President, more than 156,000 Allied troops stormed the beaches of Normandy on D-day. Among them were 2,000 African-American soldiers. Within that group was an even smaller band of brothers: 700 members of the 320th Barrage Balloon Battalion, the only--only--all Black combat unit to take part in D-day.
Ten days ago, on the Fourth of July, Henry Parham--the last known living member of that historic African-American battalion--died at a veteran's hospital in Pittsburgh. He was 99 years old.
He was one in a million, literally. He was one of the 1 million African-American men and women who served in the branches of the military that were still segregated for U.S. Armed Forces during World War II. Many of these Black patriots believed they were fighting for a double victory, to beat fascism and to beat segregation and racism at home.
Another African-American soldier who took part in the Normandy invasion left high school at 17 to enlist in the Army. He served 2 years in France and Germany.
When he returned to Mississippi, Jim Crow was waiting for him with
``Whites only'' water fountains, segregated public schools, discriminatory poll taxes, and literary tests when you showed up to vote. So this veteran of the U.S. Army, this Black veteran of the U.S. Army who risked his life to fight for democracy, had to return to America and fight for it again.
In 1954, he became the first Mississippi field secretary for the NAACP. One of his first assignments was the 1955 killing of Emmett Till. He was asked to look into that for the NAACP. He organized boycotts of segregated businesses, and voter registration drives were established to help African Americans. For his efforts, he received countless death threats. His home was fire-bombed, and they tried to kill him more than once.
On June 12, 1963, he arrived home after a midnight meeting, got out of his car, took a few steps, and was shot in the back by a White supremacist Klansman. The bullet pierced his heart and killed him. He was 37 years old.
I remember the news reports on this. I was just a kid in college. The victim's name was Medgar Evers. When he was murdered, he was carrying in his arms NAACP T-shirts that read ``Jim Crow Must Go.''
Sixty years later, I am afraid Jim Crow is still around. The invidious voting discrimination that Medgar Evers, John Lewis, Fannie Lou Hamer, and so many others sacrificed so much to end has not just returned in Mississippi, is not just returning to the South but across America. We are witnessing a coordinated, relentless, nationwide attack on voting rights and on free and fair elections in America.
Already this year, 17 States have enacted 28 new laws to make it harder for Americans--especially people of color--to vote. A total of nearly 400 bills eliminating the right to vote have been introduced in 48 States. These new voter suppression laws and proposed laws are the poisonous fruit of a dangerous, discredited lie, the Big Lie, the same one that brought a murderous mob from a Trump rally to this Capitol on January 6.
An angry, insecure man with a fragile ego can't bear the thought of losing. He can't stand the notion of public rejection, so he summoned the mob to the Capitol on January 6 to try to overturn the Presidential election. They were on a mission for the President. As a result of their storming this Capitol, more than 140 Capitol Hill and other police officers were injured. One died defending this Capitol, defending us.
The fact is, the 2020 election was free and fair, and Donald Trump lost. Despite all of his protests and lawsuits, there is no evidence other than that.
A record number of Americans in that election braved a deadly pandemic to cast their votes. The Department of Homeland Security called the election ``the most secure in American history.'' More than 80 judges, including many conservatives appointed by President Trump himself, threw out his claims in court that the election was stolen.
When a voting machine company sued one of those lawyers for defamation over false claims of switched and stolen votes, the defense her lawyer offered was that ``no reasonable person'' would believe his client's voter fraud lies. Yet Republican lawmakers in nearly every State are now using those same lies and the Big Lie to wage a sweeping assault on voting rights.
These new voter suppression laws would make it harder for millions of Americans to cast their votes. Many who are eligible to cast their votes would lose the opportunity because of these new laws. Even more alarming, in many States, new laws would make it easier for partisan election officials to simply throw out election results they don't like.
Donald Trump used all the powers of his Presidency to try to force State election officials to overrule the will of their State's voters and he failed. The rule of law won. Remember the recording he had with the election official in Georgia? He did everything but threaten him with criminal action if he didn't change the final official vote tally. Now some Republicans State legislators want to change the laws to make voter nullification schemes legal. Never before in American history have we allowed anything like that.
This is not democracy, and it must not be allowed to happen. This week, 51 lawmakers from the State of Texas took the extraordinary step of leaving their State to deny the Texas House a quorum and prevent it from passing yet another State voter suppression law. The Texas law, among other things, would end the very practices that made it possible for historic numbers of Americans to vote safely and securely last November, things like drive-through voting, 24-hour polling places, ballot drop boxes. Each one of these changes would make it harder for poor people and minorities to vote, and that is what this is all about.
In fleeing their State and traveling to Washington, the Texas lawmakers are sending an SOS for American democracy. They are sending a distress signal for voting rights. They are pleading with the Senate, our Senate, to act, to end the Republican filibuster of the For the People Act and update and pass the John Lewis Voting Rights Act now. Only Federal action and Federal protections can stop this assault on America's voting rights.
Madam President, there are solutions. This onslaught of attacks on voting rights and election independence would not be possible without two rulings from the conservative majority of the Supreme Court that have gutted the Voting Rights Act.
Earlier today, the Judiciary Committee's Subcommittee on the Constitution held a hearing on what it takes to restore the Voting Rights Act after the misguided Shelby County decision and Brnovich decision this month. I want to thank Senator Blumenthal for chairing that important hearing.
I want to commend President Biden for speaking out so forcefully about protecting voting rights in his speech yesterday in Philadelphia. Like President Kennedy nearly 60 years ago, President Biden reminded us that voting rights are not just a political issue; they are a moral issue. It is not just merely a legal concern; it is a concern that goes to our values as Americans. I also strongly support Attorney General Garland's decision to double the size of the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division after years of attrition.
But the only way to truly end this unprecedented assault on voting is for Congress to step up. It is our responsibility. The Big Lie that brought a deadly insurrection into this Chamber on January 6 has American democracy in its crosshairs. We have to act, and now is the time.
The Senate must end the Republican filibuster of the For the People Act, stop voter suppression in States, get dark money out of politics, prevent billionaires from buying elections, and end partisan gerrymandering. We cannot stand on ceremony and tradition while the pillars of our democracy are destroyed. If we lose free and fair elections, we lose our democracy. We must also introduce and pass the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act to restore and expand those rights and prevent voter suppression. I am working with Senator Leahy to that end.
The right to vote is an American ideal. It shouldn't be a partisan battle. John Lewis told us so often--``The vote is precious,'' he said.
``It is almost sacred. It is the most powerful nonviolent tool we have in a democratic society. And we have to use it.''
I will close with this story. Every year, John Lewis led a group of Congress Members and others on what he called a pilgrimage to some of the sacred places of the American civil rights movement. I had the privilege of attending one of those pilgrimages.
In 2014, John Lewis led the pilgrimage to a different hallowed ground in American history. That year, the 50th anniversary of the Freedom Summer, John Lewis led groups to Money, MS, to the place where Emmett Till was murdered. Remember Emmett Till, the teenager from Chicago who was brutally murdered in the South in Mississippi? They went to Philadelphia, MS, as well, where three young civil rights activists--
names well known to my generation--James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner, were kidnapped and murdered during Freedom Summer because they were there to register Black voters. Then they traveled to Jackson, MS, to the house where Medgar Evers was cut down by an assassin's bullet.
Standing on the spot where Medgar Evers fell, John's voice caught as he said:
The night this man was shot and killed, something died in all of us in the [civil rights] movement.
John Lewis led his pilgrimage to Mississippi that year because he wanted us to never forget the terrible sacrifices of so many to fulfill the promise of our Nation and secure voting rights.
This Saturday will mark the 1-year anniversary of John Lewis's passing. I miss him. He was a real friend. When he left us, something in all of us wept. We can keep the spirit of John Lewis alive by defending the greatest cause of his life, the cause for which he nearly died as a young man on that bridge in Selma: the right of every American to vote.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Oklahoma.
Mr. INHOFE. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that I complete my remarks before the vote is called.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
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