It was fitting that Cory Booker was recounting a story about the late civil rights leader John Lewis, and forgiveness, as he entered the 19th minute and 24th hour of a historic speech to the Senate on Tuesday evening.
In that moment, the first Black Senator for New Jersey broke a record for the longest speech ever made in Congress, set 67 years ago by South Carolina segregationist Strom Thurmond, who spoke for a day and a night in opposition to the Civil Rights Act.
Overcome with emotion, Booker looked up to the ceiling and touched his heart as the chamber applauded his effort.
“All right, I want to go a little bit past this and then I’m going to deal with some of the biological emergencies I’m feeling,” he said.
Booker, an avuncular 55-year-old who ran for president in 2020, invoked civil rights leaders throughout his marathon speech in protest against the policies of Donald Trump, calling for greater resistance to his unprecedented second term.
“I don’t know what John Lewis would say right now… but John Lewis would say something, he would do something. He wouldn’t treat this moral moment like it was normal,” Booker said.
Booker had begun his speech in the Senate chamber at 7 pm the night before, promising to talk “for as long as I am physically able” to protest the policies of Donald Trump’s unprecedented second term.
In what he described as “America’s moral moment,” Booker criticized the Trump administration for its “complete disregard for the rule of law, the Constitution, and the needs of the American people.”
“I rise tonight because I believe sincerely that our country is in crisis,” he said. “I believe that not in a partisan sense, because so many of the people that have been reaching out to my office in pain, in fear, having their lives upended — so many of them identify themselves as Republicans.”
Booker was still there Tuesday morning, looking tired and wired but still engaged in his suit and black tie, pacing around the podium with his glasses in his hand.
“I’ve got fuel in the tank man,” he insisted at 10 a.m., some 15 hours in.
In his wide-ranging but targeted speech, the senator painted a picture of an administration that was corrupt, venal and chaotic. Pulling facts and figures from binders prepared by his staff, separated by issue, he laid into Trump’s close advisor and tech billionaire Elon Musk, and the “oligarchy” that surrounded Trump, warning of looming cuts to Social Security and Medicaid that would hit the country’s poorest.
“This is the people’s house. It’s Article One of the Constitution, and it’s under assault!” he said in the 14th hour, with a raised voice, explaining what had motivated him to take his extraordinary action.
“Our spending powers, our budgetary powers, the power to establish agencies like the Department of Education and USAID, it’s under assault by a president that doesn’t respect this document,” he continued.
He read poetry, Bible verses, quoted song lyrics and senators and generals to keep control of the floor. He drew from speeches by iconic American figures such as Harriet Tubman, John McCain and John Lewis. The longer he continued, the more alliterative he became.
Booker read personal stories of people impacted by Trump’s policies — among them a long account by a Canadian woman who was detained by immigration authorities for 12 days. His voice broke occasionally as he read those stories of hardship.
“These are not normal times in America, and they should not be treated as such,” he said.
Booker, who mounted a short-lived run for president in 2020, did not leave the chamber the entire time, even for a bathroom break. His only respite from speaking was to hear questions from fellow Democrats, who lined up to show support for Booker’s protest and join the condemnation of Trump.
Chuck Schumer, the top Senate Democrat, was among them.
“Your strength, your fortitude, your clarity, has just been nothing short of amazing, and all of America is paying attention to what you’re saying,” he told Booker.
While not technically a filibuster — a form of protest in which a lawmaker holds the floor of the legislative chamber in order to delay a vote — Booker’s speech did disrupt the work of the Senate, which was due to convene at midday.
His protest was both a sign of desperation and a call to arms.
Seventy-one days into Trump’s second term, the Democratic Party has struggled to find a common or coherent response to his agenda. The party has been overwhelmed by the sweeping Executive Orders to dismantle government agencies and deport immigrants – still fighting over how they lost the last election.
The Democratic base has been screaming for its leaders to do something, anything, to put the brakes on the Trump administration’s policies, while growing increasingly frustrated with the disconnectedness of its aging leadership.
Some of that energy has been directed towards Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who have made their party’s leaders look impotent as they have held huge rallies across the country in protest against Trump.
At the same time, Trump has faced little to no opposition from his own party as he has tested the limits of presidential power, which has made Congress seem more irrelevant and powerless than it has in decades.
It was perhaps with all of that in mind that Booker, a known admirer of the Senate process, chose the chamber to make his stand. But he did so with an acknowledgment of its limits.
“How do we stop them? I’m sorry to say we hold powerful positions. We are elected by great states, but we’re in the minority right now,” he said. “It will take three people of conscience on that side,” he added, pointing to the Republican side of the chamber to highlight the GOP’s control.
Booker repeatedly invoked the Constitution as he railed against Trump, occasionally appealing to the president’s own supporters.
“He promised to lower your grocery prices — they’re higher. He promised to be a better steward of the economy — it’s worse than what he inherited. Over and over, he’s breaking promises and doing outrageous things like disappearing people off of American streets, violating fundamental principles of this document,” he said.
As he approached 20 hours, Booker became emotional but spirited as he invoked protest movements of America’s past and called for action.
“What do I want from my fellow Americans? Do better than me, do better than we, in this body. We are flawed and failed people,” he said.
“My voice is inadequate. My efforts today are inadequate to stop what they’re trying to do. But we, the people, are powerful. We are strong. We have changed history. We have bent the arc of the moral universe. And now is that moral moment again.”
