Democratic U.S. Senator Cory Booker accused President Donald Trump of “recklessly” challenging the nation’s democratic institutions in a marathon speech that broke a nearly seven-decade record on Tuesday for length.
The 55-year-old New Jersey lawmaker, in a speech that began at 7 p.m. ET on Monday and went on for 25 hours and five minutes, criticized the crusade by the Republican president and his billionaire top adviser, Elon Musk, to slash large swaths of the federal government.
“Our institutions are being recklessly and unconstitutionally attacked and even shattered,” said Booker, who was first elected to the Senate in 2013.
Booker, who is Black, broke the record for the longest continuous speech previously held by segregationist Senator Strom Thurmond of South Carolina.
In the summer of 1957 Thurmond launched a filibuster against civil rights legislation that lasted 24 hours and 18 minutes. In the end, Thurmond failed in his mission to block a bill that expanded federal protections of voting rights for Black people.
Booker, whose speech was not a filibuster — which is a tactic to delay or kill action on specific legislation — passed Thurmond’s record and continued to speak.
He repeatedly referred to activists getting into “good trouble” by speaking out against Trump’s actions, using a term that the late Democratic Representative John Lewis, a civil rights leader, had often employed.
Trump in his first weeks in office has moved to outright shutter government arms including the Department of Education and withhold congressionally approved spending. His administration has also questioned the authority of the federal courts to constrain its policies.
Democratic voters have become restive in recent weeks as Trump, backed by a Republican-controlled Congress, has shaken up long-established U.S. alliances and cut more than 100,000 federal workers.
Their anger has been aimed both at Republican lawmakers and the party’s own leaders, including top Senate Democrat Chuck Schumer and top House of Representatives Democrat Hakeem Jeffries, for not being aggressive enough in challenging Trump.
Schumer paused Booker late in his speech to ask, “Do you know you have broken the record?”
“I know now,” Booker responded, dabbing his eyes with a tissue before continuing.
‘TAKE RISKS’
Booker acknowledged the Democratic voter anger about 24 hours into his speech, saying, “I was challenged by my own constituents to do something different, challenged by my own constituents to do something, challenged by my own constituents to take risks.”
A White House spokesman dismissed Booker’s criticism.
“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.
Booker, a former mayor of Newark, New Jersey, had made a run for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2020, the year that Trump ultimately lost his bid for re-election to Joe Biden.
The only breaks Booker took were when a stream of fellow Democrats, one-by-one, came to the floor to ask him a question, allowing him to keep control of his speaking time.
Booker was spirited throughout, but showed some signs of strain by Tuesday afternoon. When he dropped a piece of paper from his desk he looked down, very slowly and carefully began bending to pick it up, only to be rescued as fellow Democratic Senator Michael Bennet of Colorado sprang to his aid.
A unifying theme of Booker’s wrath was Musk’s campaign to slash the size and scope of the U.S. government.
“The Trump-Vance administration continues to plunge us into chaos,” Booker said. “Trump’s trade war on our allies will only increase costs and fears for American families.”
As Booker entered the final hours of his speech, most of his fellow Democrats took seats in the chamber, while Republican seats on the opposite side of the chamber sat empty.
Booker used that time to urge Congress to be the check on the president as outlined in the U.S. Constitution and to heed “the voices of our constituents.”
“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. Then, finally, he yielded his time.
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