WATCH: Padilla Sounds the Alarm on Trump Administration’s Threats to 2026 Election

WASHINGTON, D.C. - A day after Democrats' landslide state electoral victories across the country, 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 Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) held the Senate floor alongside their Senate colleagues, leading a warning to Americans about the Trump Administration's ongoing efforts to rig election rules one year out from the 2026 midterms. Senators Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), Tim Kaine (D-Va.), and Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) also delivered remarks.

As Trump's tariff wars raise grocery and energy prices and as Republicans refuse to protect health care and SNAP benefits, Padilla emphasized that the President and his party would rather undermine future elections by laying the groundwork to purge state voter rolls and by instituting partisan mid-decade redistricting than change their harmful policies.

Padilla highlighted California's overwhelming passage of Proposition 50 in response to Texas' partisan racial gerrymander, which Governor Abbott pushed through to create five additional Republican seats at President Trump's direction. Padilla emphasized that he and Democrats across the country have offered Republicans an offramp from the redistricting arms race through his bicameral bill to prohibit states from mid-decade redistricting and require every state to adopt nonpartisan, independent redistricting commissions.

Continuing his usual habit of false claims and election denial, President Trump baselessly claimed yesterday that the Proposition 50 vote was "rigged" and called on Republicans to eliminate the filibuster to ban mail-in voting and pass other "voter reform." The White House is also drafting a new executive order to ban mail-in voting and further restrict access to the polls to complement Trump's illegal anti-voter executive order, much of which has already been blocked by federal courts.

Padilla blasted the Trump Department of Justice's (DOJ) illegal ongoing attempts to pressure states to purge voter rolls and restrict the right to vote across the country by suing states for voter information and developing a massive interagency database of Americans' sensitive personal data. DOJ has sent letters to at least 40 states demanding information about state voter maintenance practices, while recently filing targeted lawsuits against eight states, including California, for their refusal to hand over unfettered access to their state's sensitive voter information and registration lists to the federal government.

As Trump and Republicans continue to spread mis- and disinformation about voter fraud and the 2020 election, Padilla also warned that the White House is hiring prominent election deniers and that President Trump is being pressured to declare a fake "national emergency" to unlawfully influence state elections. Padilla made clear that he would force a vote on the Senate floor to stop any unjustified election-related emergency.

He concluded by calling on his colleagues to stand up to Trump's attacks on elections and urging the public to continue exercising their fundamental right to vote.

Key Excerpts:

• Enough of the Republican chaos, enough of the power grabs, enough of the corruption, and enough of Trump's billionaire assault on working families.

• But even after the success of last night, let's also be clear about this: one free and fair election does not guarantee the next one. We have to fight to ensure future elections. We have to keep asking ourselves: What do we do between now and next November to protect the next election? Because at this very moment, the President and his allies are doing everything they can to rig the rules of the game.

• Americans … are fired up. They're angry at a president and a party that are looking out for themselves more than they're looking out for the country as a whole. But … instead of changing their policies before the midterm elections, President Trump and Republicans would rather change the rules. And we have a responsibility to sound the alarm before it's too late.

• When we knew what Texas was going to do - a midterm partisan redistricting - Californians knew right away that enough was enough. And that's what yesterday was all about: leveling the playing field.

• I invite my Republican colleagues to join me, to join us, in supporting true nationwide redistricting reform. And yes, we do have a bill to do just that. … But no. Republicans would rather try to cling to power by changing the rules of the game.

• Donald Trump is also staffing up the White House with likeminded election deniers and conspiracy theorists, hinting at future actions that could disenfranchise even more voters. Of course, the President's been slandering places like California and our elections practices for years, and he did it once again just yesterday on Election Day. … The President lies and shouts 'fraud' without a shred of evidence.

• Members of Congress can and must stand up to every one of Trump's unconstitutional power grabs over state election authority. I'm committed to doing my part: if the Trump White House tries to declare some fake national election emergency to create a pretense for federal intervention, I will force a vote here in the Senate to stop it.

• But no matter what happens, voters cannot lose hope. That's what's most important. We need Americans to keep showing up each and every election, and show up in overwhelming numbers, just as they did yesterday, just as they did for hundreds of years prior, and make clear that it will be the people and only the people who will determine the future of our democracy.

Watch Padilla's full remarks here. Video of Senator Padilla's remarks can be downloaded here.

As Ranking Member of the Senate Rules Committee with oversight over federal elections, Senator Padilla has led the charge opposing President Trump's attempts to restrict the right to vote across the country. Padilla and Congresswoman Joyce Beatty (D-Ohio-03) recently announced the Voter Purge Protection Act to prevent the Trump Administration's ongoing voter purge efforts, including by prohibiting the removal of individuals from the voter rolls due to changes in residence or not voting in previous elections. Last month, Padilla warned that Trump may declare an election-related national emergency after the White House alarmingly hired former "Stop the Steal" and Trump campaign lawyer Kurt Olsen as a "special government employee" to "investigate" the 2020 election again, five years later. Padilla has also co-authored an amicus brief and letter expressing serious concerns that recent changes to and the expanded use of the insufficiently tested Department of Homeland Security's (DHS) Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE) program could purge eligible citizens from state voter rolls. In September, Padilla condemned DOJ's lawsuits against states for seeking to protect their sensitive voter information.

Additionally, Senator Padilla and Representative Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.-18) are leading the Redistricting Reform Act of 2025 to combat Republican efforts to rig the rules and implement partisan racial gerrymanders before the next census. In July, Padilla convened a Rules and Judiciary Committee Democrats spotlight forum focused on racial gerrymandering and voter suppression, during which he questioned former Attorney General Eric Holder and Loyola Law School Professor Justin Levitt on the Trump Administration's efforts in Texas and other states to implement mid-decade racial redistricting for partisan political purposes.

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