Democratic U.S. Senator Booker set a nearly seven-decade record for the length of his Tuesday, accusing President Donald Trump of “recklessly” undermining the country’s democratic institutions.
In a 25-hour, five-minute address that started at 7 p.m. ET on Monday, the 55-year-old senator from New Jersey attacked the Republican president and his billionaire top adviser, Elon Musk’s campaign to cut huge portions of the federal government.
Segregationist Senator Strom Thurmond of South Carolina held the record for the longest continuous speech, which Booker, a Black man, shattered.
Thurmond began a 24-hour, 18-minute filibuster against civil rights legislation in the summer of 1957. Thurmond ultimately failed in his attempt to thwart a bill that would have increased Black people’s federal voting rights safeguards.
Booker overcame Thurmond’s record and went on to speak, avoiding a filibuster, a strategy used to stall or halt progress on particular legislation.
He frequently used a phrase that the late Democratic Representative John Lewis, a civil rights icon, had frequently used: activists getting into “good trouble” for speaking out against Trump’s policies.
As Trump, supported by a Republican-controlled Congress, has shattered long-standing U.S. relationships and laid off over 100,000 government employees, Democratic voters have grown restless in recent weeks.
Both Republican members and the party’s leaders, such as leading Senate Democrat Chuck Schumer and leading House of Representatives Democrat Hakeem Jeffries, have come under fire from them for not standing up to Trump with enough vigour.
Booker recognised the ire of the Democratic voters, stating, “My constituents challenged me to do something different, challenged by my constituents to do something, challenged by my constituents to take risks.” Booker’s complaint was rebuffed by a White House spokesperson.
“Cory Booker is looking for another ‘I am Spartacus’ moment, but that didn’t work for his failed presidential campaign, and it didn’t work to block President Trump’s Supreme Court nominee, Brett Kavanaugh,” said deputy White House press secretary Harrison Fields.
In 2020, when Trump lost his reelection effort to Joe Biden, Booker, a former mayor of Newark, New Jersey, had competed for the Democratic presidential nomination.
Booker was able to maintain control of his speaking time only when a series of other Democrats approached him one by one to ask him a question.
Throughout, Booker was lively, but by Tuesday afternoon, he was beginning to exhibit some indications of stress. He looked down as he dropped a piece of paper from his desk and bent very slowly and carefully to pick it up, but Colorado Senator Michael Bennet, a fellow Democrat, jumped to his rescue.
Musk’s drive to reduce the size and reach of the US government was a common element in Booker’s outrage.
“The Trump-Vance administration continues to plunge us into chaos,” Booker stated. “Trump’s trade war on our allies will only increase costs and fears for American families.”
While Republican chairs on the other side of the floor were unoccupied, the majority of Booker’s fellow Democrats took seats in the chamber as he approached the last hours of his address. During that period, Booker urged Congress to listen to “the voices of our constituents” and to act as the check on the president as specified in the U.S. Constitution.
“For all Americans, it’s a moral moment. It’s not left or right. It’s right or wrong,” Booker said as his voice broke.