Cory Booker’s mammoth, 22-hour and counting, nearly-record breaking Senate speech to protest Trump
As he reached the 14th hour of his historic speech on Tuesday morning, Senator Cory Booker found a second wind.
“This is the people’s house. It’s Article One of the Constitution, and it’s under assault!” he said with a raised voice, explaining what had motivated him to take his extraordinary action.
“Our spending powers, our budgetary powers, the power to establish agencies like the Department of Education and USAID, it’s under assault by a president that doesn’t respect this document,” he continued.
Booker, an avuncular 55-year-old senator from New Jersey, began speaking from his desk in the Senate chamber at 7 p.m. on Monday evening, promising to talk “for as long as I am physically able” to protest the policies of Donald Trump’s unprecedented second term.
In what he described as “America’s moral moment,” Booker criticized the Trump administration for its “complete disregard for the rule of law, the Constitution, and the needs of the American people.”
“I rise tonight because I believe sincerely that our country is in crisis,” he said. “I believe that not in a partisan sense, because so many of the people that have been reaching out to my office in pain, in fear, having their lives upended — so many of them identify themselves as Republicans.”
Booker was still there Tuesday morning, looking tired and wired but still engaged in his suit and black tie, pacing around the podium with his glasses in his hand.
“I’ve got fuel in the tank man,” he insisted at 10 a.m., some 15 hours in.
At the time of writing, he had just passed 22 hours of speaking, and was hours away from making history.
The record for the longest speech in Congress is held by Strom Thurmond, a segregationist Democrat who filibustered for more than 24 hours in 1957 in an effort to block the Civil Rights Act.
Booker, the first Black senator for New Jersey, may soon break it.
In his wide-ranging but targeted speech, the senator painted a picture of an administration that was corrupt, venal and chaotic. Pulling facts and figures from binders prepared by his staff, separated by issue, he laid into Trump’s close advisor and tech billionaire Elon Musk, and the “oligarchy” that surrounded Trump, warning of looming cuts to Social Security and Medicaid that would hit the country’s poorest.
He read poetry, Bible verses, quoted song lyrics and senators and generals to keep control of the floor. He drew from speeches by iconic American figures such as Harriet Tubman, John McCain and John Lewis. The longer he continued, the more alliterative he became.
Booker read personal stories of people impacted by Trump’s policies — among them a long account by a Canadian woman who was detained by immigration authorities for 12 days. His voice broke occasionally as he read those stories of hardship.
