Democrat holds US Senate floor for more than 25 hours, breaking Strom Thurmond’s record for the longest speech.
United States Senator Cory Booker has broken the record for the longest speech in US Senate history with a marathon address railing against President Donald Trump.
Booker, a Democratic senator for New Jersey, entered the annals of history on Tuesday after holding the Senate floor for more than 25 hours, shattering the previous record set by the late segregationist Senator Strom Thurmond.
With only occasional pauses to take questions from fellow senators, Booker held forth for 25 and 4 minutes, 46 minutes longer than Thurmond’s 1957 filibuster against the Civil Rights Act.
Booker, who unsuccessfully ran for the Democratic Party presidential nomination in 2020, began his speech on Monday evening by invoking late civil rights activist and Congressman John Lewis’s call for Americans to get in “good trouble, necessary trouble”.
“What has happened in the last 71 days is a patent demonstration of a time where John Lewis’s call to everyone has, I think, become more urgent and more pressing,” said Booker, a former mayor of Newark who was first elected to the Senate in 2013.
“And if I think it is a call for our country. I have to ask myself how am I living these words. So, tonight, I rise with the intention of getting in some ‘good trouble.’ I rise with the intention of disrupting the normal business of the United States Senate for as long as I am physically able. I rise tonight because I believe sincerely that our country is in crisis.”
During his speech, Booker accused the Trump administration of “recklessly” attacking institutions and railed against Trump aid Elon Musk’s cuts to the federal bureaucracy, including reductions in staffing at the Social Security Administration.
“You don’t insinuate fear among vulnerable communities, you don’t insinuate fear among our elders who deserve our respect and deserve to retire with dignity,” Booker said.
A White House spokesperson dismissed Booker’s speech as another attempt to generate an “‘I am Spartacus’ moment”, referring to Booker’s invocation of the 1960 film “Spartacus” during the 2018 confirmation hearings for then-Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh.
“When will he realize he’s not Spartacus — he’s a spoof?” Harrison Fields said in a statement.
As he wrapped up his speech on Tuesday evening, Booker returned to Lewis’s history of civil rights activism.
“He said he had to do something, he would not normalise a moment like this. He would not just go along with business as usual,” Booker said.
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