[1]Jon Ossoff for Senate logo

Yesterday I rallied thousands in Savannah to oppose this Administration’s unprecedented attack on our constitution and the rule of law.

(You can watch my speech here on YouTube.)

Here’s what I said:

Hello Savannah! Thank you all so much for being here.

First, I want to thank all of the law enforcement keeping us safe today. Thank you to Savannah PD and all the security staff.

And I want to ask all of our veterans in the room to raise your hand up high and be honored by all of us. Thank you for your service.

Now Savannah, I'm here with a report from our nation’s capital – and it’s not good news.

It turns out... when Donald Trump said he was going to fight for working class Americans… what he *really* meant was: He’s going to take away your health care to cut taxes for the rich.

Now you may remember — we were told this was a different Republican Party.

We were told Donald Trump’s new GOP cared about working people.

But you can’t claim to be for working men and women... when you defund their hospitals and nursing homes.

You can’t claim to be for working men and women... when you defund school lunch programs to help feed little boys and little girls... whose hard-working parents are struggling to fill the fridge.

You can’t claim to be for working men and women… when you do these things so you can cut taxes for the richest people in the country.

There was a Republican Senator with the integrity to oppose this. Thom Tillis, of North Carolina. Did you see that?

He was on the Senate floor, pleading with Republicans to do the right thing.

Senator Tillis warned that 663,000 North Carolinians will be pushed off Medicaid.

He warned President Trump was breaking his promises.

He took a stand and he voted against the bill.

And they ran him right out of the Republican Party.

It took courage, what Sen. Tillis did.

Among the Republicans who represent Georgia in Congress... no such courage.

Just: “Yes sir, no sir, Mr. Trump.”

Let me tell you what it was like in Washington these last six months.

See, we had the leaders of Georgia’s clinics and hospitals and nursing homes, caregivers for seniors and the disabled, nurses and doctors, teachers and school principals, the folks who run food pantries — they all came up to Washington, and they begged Georgia’s representatives in Congress... they said, please don’t do this, it’s going to be devastating for health care and seniors and kids.

Sen. Warnock and I listened. We fought that bill, and we voted No.

We put Georgia first.

But every Republican member of Congress who is supposed to represent Georgia put loyalty to Trump over loyalty to our state.

They’re destroying the Medicaid program when 40% of all kids in Georgia are covered by Medicaid. 50% of all births in Georgia are covered by Medicaid. 70% of all seniors in nursing homes are covered by Medicaid.

37 Georgia nursing homes are at risk of closure because of this law — seven of them are less than a two hour drive from here.

Remember what President Trump said about Medicaid? “We’re not going to touch it.” Direct quote.

Like Senator Tillis said – a broken promise.

One of many.

President Trump promised to end the wars.

He promised to release the Epstein files.

Did anyone really think the sexual predator president who used to party with Jeffrey Epstein was going to release the Epstein files?

So many broken promises.

More people are unemployed. The wars are still raging. Oil drilling is slowing down. The debt is exploding. Prices are going up.

The other day I was watching part of an interview with Marjorie Taylor Greene.

Which... you never know what you’re going to get.

But just a few weeks ago, she said of the Trump Administration, she said, “We” (as in, MAGA), Marjorie said “we’ve been in power for six months. And I was so excited in the beginning thinking there’s nothing we can’t do.” Then Marjorie said, “But six months in, “there’s literally nothing that we can do.”

Well, they have done one thing. They’ve destroyed Medicaid and defunded hospitals and added four trillion dollars to the debt to cut taxes for the rich.

And by the way, Marjorie, it’s not too late to run for Senate. Don’t listen to the polls. You can do it!

(I believe in you.)

4 trillion dollars — that’s trillion, with a T — to the national debt.

I don’t want to hear another Republican Member of Congress ever again pretend they care about deficits and debt.

These cowards and hypocrites in the Freedom Caucus, they make their entire fake personas about cutting deficits. Then they get threatened with a primary and they fold for a Big Mac on Air Force One.

So now our kids, and our kids’ kids, and their grandkids have four trillion dollars more debt to pay down. And it’s not even like it’s for a good cause. It’s so someone worth $50 million can buy another vacation home to visit once a year.

Meanwhile, there are plenty of things that are worth public investment.

I would like one of my Republican colleagues to explain why an American family has to pay $3,000 to ride a few miles in an ambulance to the hospital...

...when we’re handing out million dollar tax breaks to the wealthiest people in the country?

Or why they’re cancelling the projects that can actually make a difference for hard-working people in our state.

Do you all know Thomasville, Georgia?

Just a few miles from the Florida line. Small, rural. Thomasville’s never gotten much love from Washington. They’re short health care options. Infrastructure’s old. So a couple years back, we allocated federal funds to help them build a new health clinic and upgrade their sewers.

Health clinics and sewers didn’t used to be controversial.

But then out of nowhere the Trump Administration cancelled the grant. Y’all know why?

First, because the project had the word “justice” in it, And “justice” is now a forbidden word.

Second, because a tiny amount of the grant was for electric lawnmowers, to maintain the new facilities. And electric vehicles, which were supposed to be Georgia’s economic future, are now considered woke.

So no more health clinic and sewer upgrades for Thomasville.

See, they’re all wrapped up in this right-wing internet ideology. Battery powered lawnmowers make them feel unsafe. Diversity and justice are too triggering.

These are the guys who were going to end cancel culture.

Now they’re trying to cancel Big Bird.

No literally, they are trying to cancel Big Bird. We’re voting next week on their bill to defund public television. They are boldly standing up to Elmo and the Deep State Woke Mob.

Do you remember when JD Vance gave a whole big lecture to foreign leaders in Europe about free speech?

Now JD Vance will throw you in a Homeland Security dungeon for writing an op-ed he doesn’t like.

What’s happening to our country right now should chill us to the bone.

The use of official power to intimidate and destroy critics and political opponents, law firms, and universities. A government that openly defies the courts while federal troops police our cities.

A President threatening to strip Americans of their citizenship and send them to foreign prisons.

Before you elected me, I led a team that exposed corruption and war crimes all over the world.

We worked in places where criticizing the government is dangerous,
where whistleblowers and witnesses have to meet in secret,
where protest carries the risk of prosecution.

Savannah: when the federal police are wearing masks and refusing to identify themselves, that’s a bad sign.

Fear is the currency of tyranny.

I've heard it from people at every level. Including powerful people, people with status and resources.

They come to my office and tell me they’re afraid to say anything.

They’re afraid of retribution, investigation, destruction.

Vengeance from their own government.

Donald Trump wants the whole country to fear him.

He’s attacking the freedom of the press...
He’s enlisting intelligence contractors to harvest our data and profile us...
He’s still working to undermine elections.

Remember, this guy already tried once to overthrow the government.

The same day you sent me and Raphael Warnock to the Senate, his mob sacked the Capitol Building.

On January 5th you elected us. On January 6th they tried to seize power, and failed.
On January 7th we got to work.

We capped the price of insulin for seniors.
We expanded Social Security for teachers, police officers, and first responders.
We saved more than a million pensions from insolvency.
We delivered the biggest investment in HBCUs of all time.
We confirmed Ketanji Brown Jackson to the Supreme Court of the United States.
We upgraded infrastructure in every part of our State of Georgia.
We unleashed a manufacturing renaissance here in Coastal Georgia and statewide.
None of that would have happened without you, Georgia.

Now that they’re in power, in the same bill that defunded hospitals to cut taxes for the rich, they made the budget for mass deportations larger than the FBI, ATF, DEA, and the Bureau of Prisons combined.

It’ll be the largest domestic police force in American history. The ones with masks.

They say it’s about crime, and drugs, and gangs, and human trafficking, and cartels.

And those are serious threats that need to be confronted.

The cartels should be crushed. The border should be secure. The human traffickers should be brought to justice, and their victims liberated. If someone in this country illegally commits a crime, they have to leave.

But they're snatching people with no records. Even folks with work permits. They’re tearing families apart. A lot of them have kids or spouses who are American citizens. Some of them are American citizens.

They sent 11-year-old and 4-year-old little girls, both American citizens, both in the middle of cancer treatment, to Mexico and Honduras because their parents were undocumented.

They sent a mother, who was still breastfeeding her one-year-old U.S. citizen baby, to Cuba, without her child, and the little baby wound up in the hospital after being ripped from her mother’s breast.

There was a man in California, a father of three sons,
all three sons United States Marines.
The guy had no criminal record – and they didn’t just take him, they punched him in the head over and over again as he lay on the ground... in broad daylight, on camera. Did you see that?

If that’s what they’re doing in public, what do you think is happening in these detention centers?

Now, when you’ve got a government like this, it always comes with personal corruption.

And the Trumps are using the office of the Presidency to enrich themselves in a way we have never, ever seen in American history.

You guys are following Trump’s crypto thing, right? The meme coin?

There’s a guy named Justin Sun. He’s a Chinese oligarch. Billionaire.

A couple of years ago, the SEC starts investigating this guy for securities fraud.
Maybe he’s guilty, maybe he’s not. I don’t know. That’s not the point.
Because last year, Mr. Justin Sun, the Chinese billionaire under investigation by the U.S. government, starts investing tens of millions of dollars in Donald Trump’s crypto business.

To the point where he says he’s become the number-one holder in the world of the Trump coin.

Are you surprised to hear his federal case has gone away?

And then a few weeks ago he’s having dinner with the President. Because if you give the President cash, you get to have dinner with him. That’s a thing we’re doing in America now.

The President’s personal wealth is skyrocketing.

And the whole royal family is cashing in.
Jared Kushner’s firm got $2 billion from the Saudi royal family. Don Jr. and Eric are closing real estate deals all over the world.

Hunter Biden should have been more ambitious!

Remember how that was their number-one thing?

Now Trump’s getting money from foreign businessmen under federal investigation, and his boys are all over the world closing deals right before he touches down on state visits.

Eric said the other day, “We’re the hottest brand in the world right now.”

It’s amazing the opportunities that open up when your daddy is President and the whole world thinks he takes bribes.

But the truth is, corruption in America runs a lot deeper than Donald Trump.

See, I get why people voted for Trump.

Because even before he came on the scene, America had the most corrupt political system in the Western world.

It’s all been running on corporate money, secret money, billionaire money. Both sides!
And it’s worse than ever now.

Citizens United was the worst court decision in modern American history.

When members of Congress aren’t begging for money from lobbyists, they’re trying to dodge getting carpet-bombed by these super PACs. Senators get threatened every day with millions and millions of dollars of attack ads over the votes we take.

And see, this is why nothing works for ordinary people.

It's not because of woke college students...
or trans kids...
or because there are interracial couples in cereal commercials.

It’s because the people’s elected representatives don’t represent the people, they represent the donors.

And that corruption is why they just defunded nursing homes to cut taxes for the rich.

Corruption is why you pay a fortune for prescriptions.

Corruption is why your insurance claim keeps getting denied.

Corruption is why hedge funds get to buy up all the houses in your neighborhood, driving you out of the market, and then your corporate landlord ignores your calls during a gas leak.

Corruption is why that ambulance costs $3,000 after you just had to gett your choking toddler to the hospital.

Trump promised to attack a broken system. I get it. Ripe target.
But here’s the thing. He’s a crook and a con man and he wants to be a king.

Yes, the system really is rigged. But Trump’s not unrigging it. He’s re-rigging it for himself!

Savannah, trust me when I tell you — if we live up to our obligations as citizens, we will overcome this.

And once again, the country is counting on Georgia to lead the way.

Five years ago, when Raphael and I were running, they said there was no way.
They wanted us to give in to doubt and fear and despair.
But out of no way, we made a way.

And the State of Georgia, the heart of the old Confederacy and the Cradle of the Civil Rights Movement, sent a black pastor who holds Dr. King’s pulpit at Ebeneezer Baptist Church and the young Jewish son of an immigrant to the United States Senate.

When they told us there was no way, we knew better.
We knew we were on the right side of history.
We knew we could win. We could feel it.

And I’m telling you, Savannah, I can feel it again.

Can you feel it, Savannah?

That’s what you feel when your cause is just.
That’s how it feels when you push on the arc of history, and it starts bending toward justice.

In my Senate office, just over my desk, there’s a portrait of Congressman Lewis.

If the Congressman were here he might remind us what happened in Savannah, in 1960, when sit-ins at segregated lunch counters led to boycotts that led to voter registration drives that led to a new city government.

He might remind us that, within a year, that new city government desegregated those lunch counters; and by 1963, the businesses and public spaces; so that by 1964, Dr. King told the world Savannah was the most desegregated city in the south.

Savannah, you’ve led the way before. Are you ready to lead again?

The fight against Jim Crow was a struggle for universal civil and human rights.

Even after the great victories of that movement, that is still our struggle. Congressman Lewis always reminded us of that, too.

Today, our fight is against deeply entrenched corruption and greed.
Corruption and greed that have so deeply rotted our system that it gave rise to this depraved man who has now plagued our public life for nearly a decade.

But five years ago, here in Georgia, we lit a beacon of hope and possibility for the whole nation – and the whole world. It’s still shining.
And come next November, we will raise it higher.
Come next November, we will do our part to end this spiral into chaos and corruption.

And then there will again be so much work to do. Our possibilities are limitless.

Even once we have ended this President’s reign, we have to learn its lessons.

It’s the grip of money on our politics that led us to this moment of crisis. And so even when this fight is won, and we will win it, the fight against corruption – not of one man, but of our system, will define whether America becomes what America can be... for all its people.

We know here in Georgia that the measure of our success is not how many of the poorest and most vulnerable families we hunt down and shackle and imprison and deport; the measure of our success is whether each generation achieves greater freedom and health and prosperity than the last; and whether we live up to the promise of equal justice for all.

Savannah, are you ready to fight?

Savannah, are you ready to win?

Georgia will bow to no king.

Thank you all! Thank you, Savannah! Thank you!



👋 Wait! Before you go... 👋

Jon Ossoff’s the ONLY Democratic Senator running for re-election in a state Trump won––making him MAGA’s #1 target in the 2026 midterms.

If you can afford it, please rush $5 to Jon’s re-election campaign today.

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