Alex Padilla U.S. Senator for California

WASHINGTON, D.C. — Today, U.S. Senators Alex Padilla (D-Calif.), Ranking Member of the Senate Committee on Rules and Administration and California’s former Secretary of State, and Jack Reed (D-R.I.), Ranking Member of the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Financial Services and General Government, held the Senate floor alongside their Democratic colleagues to speak out against President Trump and Republicans’ ongoing attacks on election integrity and led the charge calling for sufficient federal funding for election security. As Donald Trump marks 100 disastrous days in office, the floor block focused on Congressional Republicans’ Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act that recently passed the House of Representatives and Trump’s illegal anti-voter executive order, both of which threaten to disenfranchise millions of eligible American citizens.

Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Senators Michael Bennet (D-Colo.), Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.), and Peter Welch (D-Vt.) also joined today’s floor block. Video of Senator Padilla’s remarks is available here, and the floor block can be viewed in its entirety here.

• “I’ve seen firsthand not just for the last four years, but for the last eight, nine years, the growing threats to our democracy and the threats to the public confidence in our elections. Because sadly, the truth in the year 2025 is that it’s not just foreign actors trying to undermine our elections and the people’s confidence in the elections — it’s also so many Republican officials here at home.”

• “In state legislatures, in the Capitol, in the Oval Office, radical Republicans are working hard, actively working hard, to make it harder for eligible Americans to exercise their Constitutional right to vote. We see it in the endless lies and conspiracy theories about ‘massive voter fraud.’ We see it in the new barriers being erected that would make it harder for eligible Americans to simply register to vote. And we see it in the Trump Administration’s firing of the hardworking and dedicated security officials who are tasked with protecting our elections.”

Padilla highlighted the rising threats against election workers, including Republican clerk Tina Barton in Rochester Hills, Michigan, who received an anonymous phone call threatening her life after the 2020 election. He emphasized that Trump’s Big Lie falsely claiming the 2020 election was stolen has put election workers in significant danger. Trump’s efforts in his second Administration to dismantle the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency’s (CISA) election security work have further undermined the security of our free and fair elections.

• “For her dedication and hard work and professionalism, one week after the 2020 election, Tina received an anonymous phone call — not a phone call thanking her for her service, but a phone call threatening her life. The voice on the other end threatened to come after her family, to hold a knife to her throat, and to kill her.”

• “For as shocking as threats like that may be, Tina represents just one, the one in every three election workers who has reported receiving threats, harassment, and abuse. So for Tina, and so many others, that harassment grew worse with every lie spread by the Trump campaign about a so-called ‘stolen election’ — with threats against election officials continuing in subsequent elections.”

• “For those selfless election workers, Donald Trump hasn’t even tried to lower the temperature of political rhetoric or combat the disinformation that leads to the threats and harassment. Instead, he’s actually actively made it worse for those administering elections. Think of all the election workers and all the volunteers, volunteers who work polling places to help our elections and our democracy thrive. He’s made it worse for voters: he’s fired federal workers who combat election misinformation and disinformation. … By failing to counter, by failing to elevate the truth, Republicans in Congress have become complicit, as they just sit back instead of pushing back.”

Padilla emphasized that several Republicans stood up to Trump’s attacks on American democracy during the first Trump Administration, yet many have done nothing to stand up to his anti-voter executive order while instead advancing the SAVE Act. While Padilla was California’s Secretary of State, the first Trump Administration created a commission to investigate unfounded claims of “voter fraud,” demanding states provide sensitive, private voter information from every state. Forty-four states — Republican and Democratic — rejected Trump’s reckless demands.

Now, however, Republicans are trying to move forward their “un-American” SAVE Act. The SAVE Act threatens to disenfranchise millions of eligible American voters by creating overly burdensome documentation requirements, which would make registration harder for new voters, married women, rural voters, servicemembers abroad, and the tens of millions of Americans who register to vote online or by mail.

Padilla stressed that voting by noncitizens is already a federal crime and is incredibly rare, reiterating that the bill is “based on a lie” in effort to disenfranchise Americans. A review of the 2016 general election found that only 0.0001 percent of votes came from improper noncitizen voting among the jurisdictions reviewed.

• “You can imagine my disappointment when, fast forward to this past March, Trump announced yet another anti-voter executive order that would empower DOGE to access sensitive voter data, very reminiscent of their requests from their first term, now on steroids. And what did so many of our Republican colleagues here in the Senate and the House of Representatives say? Nothing.”

• “But it’s not just that Republicans have gone silent — they’ve actually become Trump’s enablers here in Congress by forgoing their responsibility to serve as a check and balance on the executive branch. Now, any day now here in the Senate, we could see Republicans take up the SAVE Act, a measure that recently passed the House of Representatives, a bill that I should say scapegoats immigrants simply to justify new barriers to voter registration.”

• “If Republicans were to have their way, American citizens, American citizens, will feel the impacts of the SAVE Act. From the active duty servicemember who has to move for a new deployment and has to work so much harder than they should have to to update their registration with their new address at the local elections office who could be hours and hours from the base where they’re assigned. Think of a married woman who chose to change her last name when she got married and now the… name listed on the birth certificate and the name on their ID no longer match and have… hurdles to jump over simply to register to vote.”

Padilla concluded his speech by vowing to fight to prevent the SAVE Act’s passage in the Senate.

• “Here in the Senate, I want people to know that together with my Senate Democratic colleagues, I will do whatever it takes to kill this bill, to stop it from passing, to keep it from even coming up if we can. Because we owe it to our constituents to fight every executive order that undermines our democracy, and to keep demanding answers on the firing of federal workers entrusted with safeguarding our elections.”

• “So over the course of the next hour, Senate Democrats will lay down a marker. We will stand strong against a rising tide of attacks on our democracy. And I will keep leading the fight to stop this cynical and dangerous bill — and to stop Trump and Republican attempts to undermine our voting rights.”

Senator Padilla has led the charge opposing President Trump and Republicans’ reckless attempts to restrict the right to vote. Earlier this month, Padilla warned Secretaries of State, Lieutenant Governors, and Chief Election Officials across the country of the devastating potential impacts of Republicans’ SAVE Act, concerns that have been echoed by top election officials across the country. Padilla also led 11 Senators in introducing the Defending America’s Future Elections Act to repeal Trump’s illegal anti-voter executive order and prevent the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) from accessing sensitive voter registration data and state records. Padilla previously led 14 Democratic Senators in calling on Trump to revoke his illegal anti-voter executive order and issued a statement slamming the order when it was announced.

Padilla and Representative Joe Morelle (N.Y.-25) have also pennedthreeletters to CISA leadership regarding the agency’s firings of election security workers and termination of election security-focused efforts.

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