1 day Ago By Politico
Cory Booker wrote himself into the Senate annals Tuesday, setting a new record for the chamber’s longest speech when he held the floor for more than 24 hours and surpassed the late Sen. Strom Thurmond’s 1957 filibuster against civil rights. The New Jersey Democrat took the floor at 6:59 p.
m. on Monday, saying he was doing so with the “intention of disrupting the normal business of the United States Senate for as long as I am physically able” in order to protest the actions of President Donald Trump and his administration. “Our constituents are asking us to acknowledge that this is a crisis.
So I am going to stand here until I no longer can,” Booker said. As of 7:18 p.m.
Tuesday, he surpassed Thurmond’s 1957 speech, which lasted 24 hours and 18 minutes, according to the Senate historian. Booker is still speaking from the Senate floor. Booker did not indicate before beginning his marathon speech that he intended to set a new record.
He suggested he hoped to be able to last as long as he did in 2016, when he and Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) held the floor for roughly 15 hours to discuss gun violence.
But as Tuesday crept on and Booker showed no sign of losing momentum, his colleagues began to openly discuss whether Thurmond’s 67-year-old record could fall. “We hope and believe he will break the record. He's close to it now,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer told reporters Tuesday afternoon.
Booker, who was sworn into the Senate in 2013, was joined on the floor at various points during his speech by more than two dozen of his Democratic colleagues, who engaged in extended colloquies with Booker — a tactic that allowed Booker to rest his voice while still maintaining control of the floor. He did not leave the Senate chamber. Murphy joined Booker on the floor as he closed in on Thurmond’s record Tuesday evening and highlighted the contrast in the circumstances between Booker’s speech and the South Carolina segregationist’s.
“What you have done here today, Sen. Booker, couldn’t be more different than what occurred on this floor in 1957,” Murphy said, referring to Thurmond’s unsuccessful attempt to block an early piece of U.S.
civil rights law . Booker is one of five Black senators currently in office. Schumer also praised Booker when he briefly joined him on the Senate floor Tuesday: “Your strength, your fortitude, your clarity has been nothing short of amazing.
” At various points, tens of thousands of viewers watched Booker on social media platforms, suggesting that Booker had managed to harness some of the frustration Democrats have felt in the aftermath of the GOP’s electoral victories last year — and in the wake of the tumultuous first months of Trump’s second term. “All of America is paying attention to what you're saying,” added Schumer, who came under fierce criticism inside his party after moving forward with a GOP funding bill last month. “The disastrous actions of this administration — in terms of how they're helping only the billionaires and hurting average families — you have brought that forth with such clarity.
” In addition to Schumer and Murphy, Sens. Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, Mazie Hirono of Hawaii and Dick Durbin of Illinois, among others, joined Booker on the floor. House Democrats were also spotted going into the Senate chamber to watch parts of Booker’s speech, including House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries and members of the Congressional Black Caucus.
Booker started the speech with two glasses of water at his desk that he occasionally sipped from and a thick binder of notes that he consulted intermittently. Over the course of his speech, Booker has touched on a range of Trump administration policies and GOP legislative plans, including Trump’s plans for tariffs, the Elon Musk-led effort to slash the federal bureaucracy and the potential cuts to Medicaid embedded in a House GOP budget plan. “The vote to pass this dangerous blueprint did not come easily and we will make sure that lawmakers know that enacting these cuts would be to abandon older Americans,” he said, addressing Medicaid.
Booker also talked about Trump’s foreign policy moves, including his warmer tone toward Russian President Vladimir Putin and criticism of NATO, and cited support from GOP senators for the trans-Atlantic alliance. Once Booker yields the floor, the Senate is slated to vote on the confirmation of Matthew Whitaker as U.S.
ambassador to NATO. Booker's speech delayed that vote, as well as an expected vote on a Democratic effort to thwart some of Trump's planned tariffs..
