New Jersey Democrat Cory Booker has given a marathon speech against the president’s policies on Capitol Hill
US Democratic Senator Cory Booker has broken the record for the longest speech in US Senate history, delivering a 25-hour, five-minute address denouncing Republican President Donald Trump’s policies. The speech began late Monday this week and ended on Tuesday night.
Booker took the floor saying he intended “to disrupt the normal business of the US Senate for as long as I am physically able” in protest of the Trump administration.
During the speech, he warned of a “grave and urgent” moment for America amid the “threats” coming from the president and the numerous executive orders he signed since taking office in January.
The senator condemned Trump’s government spending cuts, reduction of the federal workforce, trade tariffs, shifting foreign policy, proposals to annex Greenland and Canada, criticism of NATO, and his evolving stance on Russia.
“The Trump-Vance administration continues to plunge us into chaos,” Booker claimed.
His speech was reportedly seen as something like a call to arms for Democrats. The party does not hold a majority in either congressional chamber, and has been almost completely locked out of legislative power. Booker repeatedly called on both the Senate and ordinary Americans to resist Trump’s actions.
“These are not normal times in our nation. And they should not be treated as such in the United States Senate,” he said. “The threats to the American people and American democracy are grave and urgent, and we all must do more to stand against them.”
Booker, 55, is a former mayor of Newark, New Jersey and unsuccessful Democratic presidential candidate in 2020, currently serving his second term in the Senate. After the speech, he told reporters he had fasted for days and stopped drinking fluids the night before to prepare for the address.
The previous record for the longest Senate speech was set in 1957 by Strom Thurmond, who spoke for 24 hours and 18 minutes in an effort to block an early version of the US Civil Rights Act which outlawed segregation and racial discrimination.
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Booker, one of five black senators currently serving, said he didn’t know if he could break the record, but “once we got closer, [it] became more and more important to me” – as it “really irked” him that the record was held by “someone who was trying to stop people like me from being in the Senate.”
