During a Wednesday Senate Rules Committee spotlight forum, Senator Reverend Warnock questioned former U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder about recent and widespread voter suppression tactics led by Washington Republicans
The forum followed Senator Warnock’s reintroduction of the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, a bill that would strengthen protections against discriminatory voting practices across the country
Georgia’s state government is currently purging nearly half a million registered voters from the voter rolls, one of the largest voter purges in the state’s history
In Texas, state lawmakers, at the direction of President Trump, are looking to add five additional Republican seats in a cynical ploy to maintain the House of Representatives
Senator Reverend Warnock during the forum: “Voting rights are preservative of all other rights”
Watch Senator Warnock during the spotlight forum HERE
Washington, D.C. – Today, U.S. Senator Reverend Raphael Warnock (D-GA) joined members of the Senate Committee on Rules and Administration and the Senate Judiciary Committee for a spotlight forum titled “Protecting the Future of American Democracy: Fighting a Surge in Voter Suppression.” During the forum, Senator Warnock questioned former Attorney General Eric Holder on the Trump Administration’s efforts in Texas and other states to implement mid-decade racial redistricting for partisan political purposes.
The forum was one day after Senator Warnock led the reintroduction of the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act. The bill, named in honor of the late Georgia Congressman John Lewis, would strengthen protections against potentially discriminatory voting practices like voter purges across the country.
“Voting rights are preservative of all other rights,” said Senator Warnock. “We talk about a lot of rights, but voting is the whole game. Democracy is the house we live in, and it’s the foundation and the framework in which we get to fight for the things that matter. And so, it’s almost impossible to overstate the importance of this conversation, when every citizen can make their voice heard.”
The forum came as the Secretary of State’s office in Georgia is purging the state’s voter rolls of nearly 500,000 voters, amounting to 6% of Georgia’s 8.4 million registered voters. Senator Warnock’s voting rights legislation would strengthen protections against racially discriminatory voting procedures, which include improper voter purges. Most of the cancellations affect voters in metro Atlanta’s counties of DeKalb, Cobb, Fulton and Gwinnett.
In addition to what is going on in Georgia, in Texas, where, following historic disapproval of Congressional Republicans’ Tax Bill, Texas state lawmakers are looking to add five additional Republican seats. The move comes in direct response to President Trump’s fears that voters may flip the House in the 2026 midterms.
Watch the Senator’s full remarks and line of questioning HERE.
See below a full transcript between Senator Warnock and the witnesses below:
Senator Reverend Warnock (SRW): “Voting rights are preservative of all other rights. We talk about a lot of rights, but voting is the whole game. Democracy is the house we live in, and it’s the foundation and the framework in which we get to fight for the things that matter.
And so it’s almost impossible to overstate the importance of this conversation. When every citizen can make their voice heard, our democracy serves all of us better.
However, the reverse is true, and we see it playing out right now in Texas. By shamelessly re-engineering their maps in the middle of the decade, Washington and Texas Republicans are trying to allow politicians to pick their voters, rather than their voters selecting their representatives.
And it’s ironic, literally, these were the folks who, a few weeks ago in this building, were taking people’s doctors away. 16 million people. As many as 16 million people would lose Medicaid, 20 million people see their health care premiums go up. So they’re taking away people’s doctors, and they know it’s unpopular, so now they’re trying to doctor the maps to squeeze the people’s voices out of their democracy.
Good to see you, General Holder. The Supreme Court, of course, paved the way for shameless acts like these we’ve seen in Texas. You are at the center of that fight.
If these redistricting attempts took place not in 2025 but in 2005 before the Supreme Court gutted the Voting Rights Act, would it be as easy for Texas to gerrymander its maps, to create more Republican seats?”
AG Eric Holder (EH): “No, it would not be. I mean, you would have the Justice Department would have a series of tools that it could use, chief among them being the ability to preclear in a covered jurisdiction, I believe Texas was a covered jurisdiction.
The Justice Department would have the ability to oppose, to stop that which Texas was attempting to do. Texas would have the ability to go into court and then to try, in the three judge panel in Washington to challenge what the Justice Department was trying to do.
But it also had a prophylactic effect, because the Justice Department had that power. States did not attempt to do the kinds of things that they knew the Justice Department would say no to. In the Shelby County case, in 2013 took away, really weakened the tool, that vital tool that the Justice Department had.”
SRW: “Yeah, I like what you said, is having a prophylactic effect. I seem to recall Supreme Court Justice Ginsburg in her dissent saying we’re getting rid of our umbrella in the middle of a rainstorm, because we’re not getting wet.
And the argument was that, you know, a lot has changed since the 1960s and that’s true. I’m sitting here, after all, a lot has changed. But it’s interesting that the very states, and they’re not the only ones, though, but in the case of Texas, the places where we saw discrimination before Shelby versus holder, we’re seeing it again.
So could you say more about how the Supreme Court’s undermining of the Voting Rights Act in is the last two decades, getting rid of the umbrella, how has that enabled what we are seeing right now?”
EH: “Well, the Supreme Court decisions, as I was saying before, you know, Shelby County, the Rucho decision was said, you can’t bring partisan gerrymandering cases in federal courts. These suite of Supreme Court cases, has made possible that which you’re seeing happen in the States: the closure of polling places, the purging of voter rolls, which disproportionately happen in communities of color or places where it is perceived that Democratic voters actually reside.
All of these things have been made possible by a Supreme Court that I think has acted in a way that’s inconsistent with precedent, inconsistent with principle, and really just a function of who serves on the court.
You know, we get a six, three majority, and all the kinds of things that previous Supreme Courts said you couldn’t do. They said, well now we have the power so we’re going to exercise. And we see that in a whole range of cases, but in particular with regard to the cases that have come out of the Supreme Court in the democracy.”
SRW: “And now you have a President of the United States literally announcing that we’re getting ready to do, or as we say in the south, fixing to do, what they wouldn’t have been able to do a few years ago.
Tell me, what are the long term consequences for our democracy when politicians hand pick their voters. You know, there’s a tendency in our country to think about the short term, about the very next election. I’m thinking about the next generation as a father of a eight year old and a six year old. What are the consequences for the democracy?”
EH: “Yeah, I think you know, by underestimating the capacity of the American people, by turning their backs on the American people, by being afraid of the American people, they sow division, they balkanize our country.
I mean, you look at the impact of gerrymandering, people are not concerned about a general election. You know, you’re worried about a primary challenge, which pushes people in the Republican Party further and further to the right to make sure that you don’t get a challenger.
It means that people in the Republican Party less likely to reach across the aisle and work with their democratic counterparts, because that is seen as a sign of weakness and invites a primary challenge, and therefore things don’t get done at the state legislative level, don’t get done in Congress.
So there’s not substantive change, and then there is dissatisfaction on the part of the American people to think, well, our institutions don’t work. All of that goes back to gerrymandering and to the other things that the folks in power, this President, his party, have put in place to make it more difficult for the American people to participate in a process and to have people who participate in that process think, I hear it all the time when I’m out there, my vote doesn’t count, you know. And unfortunately, in a lot of places, that is, to some degree true. It’s true.
Doesn’t mean that people shouldn’t participate, but they have made it very difficult for people’s votes in certain places to have the 100% impact that it you know that it should.”
SRW: “So this corrosive effect on the democracy means it’s hard to get anything done. People become more cynical, politicians become increasingly craven, and it sets the tone for authoritarianism. That’s a good context for would be strong men. I don’t know how much time I have. Could I ask one more question?
So Justice Riggs, you saw firsthand in North Carolina the challenges, the burdens that happen when there’s these kinds of attacks on democracy, when your challenger tried and then failed to throw out 10s of 1000s of votes.
We’ve seen voter purges in Georgia. We also have a law on the books, by the way, in Georgia, that allows a single voter to challenge unlimited numbers of voters. And so we literally saw six right wing activists tie up the whole process challenging 89,000 voters, six people.
Do these challenges make voters, especially those who decide to skip elections from time to time, feel welcome to continue participating in our democracy again? What’s the impact on the democracy?”
Justice Allison Riggs (AR): “It’s obvious that they don’t. When we erect barriers to political participation, we are sending a clear message about whose voice matters, whose say we want heard in the political process.
But I will also say there, having lived through some very trying times. I would be remiss if I didn’t leave you with some notes of optimism too. Which is that, as we were litigating $2 million we were also planning to chase and cure 68,000 votes. We identified and made contact with a military voter stationed in Antarctica.
So if the American people, if North Carolinians, can reach as far as the South Pole to make sure that each other’s voices are heard. If we play a game of Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon, who do you know whose vote might be at risk, then a state like North Carolina, which is likely to have the most competitive US Senate race in the country next year, is going to have a critical North Carolina Supreme Court race, where my colleague, Justice Anita Earls is in a tough fight to keep her seat.
We can do this. I want folks to understand that folks only try and silence voices and votes that they’re scared of. And so we will find that silver lining, keep fighting, and even though we know these will keep coming until policymakers push us in a different direction we’re up to that fight.”
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