‘This is a moral moment’: Booker breaks record in 25-hour Senate speech denouncing Trump, Musk

Washington: New Jersey Democrat Cory Booker held the Senate floor with a marathon speech that lasted all night and into the afternoon in a feat of endurance to show Democrats’ resistance to US President Donald Trump’s sweeping actions.

Booker took to the floor on Monday evening (US time), saying he would remain there as long as he was “physically able”. More than 25 hours later, the 55-year-old senator, a former football tight end, finished speaking and walked off the floor. It set the record for the longest continuous Senate floor speech in the chamber’s history, though Booker was assisted by fellow Democrats who gave him a break from speaking by asking him questions on the Senate floor.

Marathon speech: Senator Cory Booker, a Democrat from New Jersey, speaks on the Senate floor.Credit: AP

It was a remarkable show of stamina as Democrats try to show their frustrated supporters that they are doing everything possible to contest Trump’s agenda. Yet Booker also provided a moment of historical solace for a party searching for its way forward: By standing on the Senate floor for more than a night and day and refusing to leave, he had broken a record set 68 years ago by then senator Strom Thurmond of South Carolina, a segregationist, to filibuster the advance of the Civil Rights Act in 1957.

“I’m here because as powerful as he was, the people are more powerful,” said Booker, who spoke openly on the Senate floor of his roots as the descendant of both slaves and slave-owners. He said he drew upon the entirety of his ancestry because “they speak to the complicated history of America.”

House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries, the first black party leader in Congress who had slipped into the Senate chamber to watch Booker on Tuesday afternoon, called it “an incredibly powerful moment” because he had broken the record of a segregationist and was “fighting to preserve the American way of life and our democracy.”

Still, Booker centred his speech on a call for his party to find its resolve, saying, “We all must look in the mirror and say, ‘We will do better’.”

“These are not normal times in our nation,” Booker said as he launched into his speech. “And they should not be treated as such in the United States Senate. The threats to the American people and American democracy are grave and urgent, and we all must do more to stand against them.”

At the end he reiterated this was a moment to be bolder. “This is a moral moment. It’s not left or right, it’s right or wrong.”

Booker warns of a ‘looming constitutional crisis’

Pacing, then at times leaning on his podium, Booker railed for hours against cuts to Social Security offices led by Trump adviser Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). He listed the impacts of Trump’s early orders and spoke to concerns that broader cuts to the social safety net could be coming, though Republican lawmakers say the program won’t be touched.

Booker also read what he said were letters from constituents, donning and doffing his reading glasses. One writer was alarmed by the Republican president’s talk of annexing Greenland and Canada and a “looming constitutional crisis”.

Throughout the next day, Booker got help from Democratic colleagues, who gave him a break from speaking to ask him a question and praise his performance. Booker yielded for questions but made sure to say he would not give up the floor. He read that line from a piece of paper to ensure he did not slip and inadvertently end his speech. He stayed standing to comply with Senate rules.

“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,” Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer said as he asked Booker a question on the Senate floor. “All of America needs to know there’s so many problems, the disastrous actions of this administration.”

As Booker stood for hour after hour, he appeared to have nothing more than a couple of glasses of water to sustain him. Yet his voice grew strong with emotion as his speech stretched into the afternoon (Wednesday morning AEDT), and House members from the Congressional Black Caucus, including House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries, stood on the edge of the Senate floor to support him.

“This is a very powerful and principled moment led” by Booker, Jeffries said.

Elon Musk and Donald Trump were the target of much of Cory Booker’s speech. Credit: AP

For his part, Booker called on his Democratic colleagues to look to their core values to find the resolve to counter the Republican president.

“Moments like this require us to be more creative or more imaginative, or just more persistent and dogged and determined,” Booker said.

Booker’s cousin and brother, as well as Democratic aides, watched from the chamber’s gallery. Senator Chris Murphy accompanied Booker on the Senate floor throughout the day and night. Murphy was returning the comradeship that Booker had given to him in 2016 when the Connecticut Democrat held the floor for almost 15 hours to argue for gun control legislation.

His Senate floor speech is now the longest

As Booker neared Thurmond’s record, he remarked, “I don’t have that much gas in the tank.”

Yet anticipation in the Capitol was growing that he could supplant Thurmond, who died in 2003, as the record holder for the longest Senate floor speech. Democratic senators sat at their desks to listen and the Senate gallery filled with onlookers.

He had surpassed the longest speech time for a sitting senator – the 21 hours and 19 minutes that senator Ted Cruz, a Texas Republican, had held the floor to contest the Affordable Care Act in 2013. Responding to his record being broken, Cruz posted a meme of Homer Simpson crying on social media.

Throughout his determined performance, Booker repeatedly invoked the civil rights leader John Lewis of Georgia, arguing that overcoming opponents like Thurmond would require more than just talking.

“You think we got civil rights one day because Strom Thurmond – after filibustering for 24 hours – you think we got civil rights because he came to the floor one day and said, ‘I’ve seen the light,’” Booker said. “No, we got civil rights because people marched for it, sweat for it and John Lewis bled for it.”

Booker’s speech was not a filibuster, which is a speech meant to halt the advance of a specific piece of legislation. Instead, Booker’s performance was a broader critique of Trump’s agenda, meant to hold up the Senate’s business and draw attention to what Democrats are doing to contest the president. Without a majority in either congressional chamber, Democrats have been almost completely locked out of legislative power but are turning to procedural manoeuvres to try to thwart Republicans.

Can his speech rally the anti-Trump resistance?

Booker is serving his second term in the Senate. He was an unsuccessful presidential candidate in 2020, when he launched his campaign from the steps of his home in Newark. He dropped out after struggling to gain a foothold in a packed field, falling short of the threshold to meet in a January 2020 debate.

But as Democrats search for a next generation of leadership, frustrated with the old-timers at the top, Booker’s speech could cement his status as a leading figure in the party’s opposition to Trump.

Tens of thousands of people at any one time watched on Booker’s Senate YouTube page, as well as on other live streams.

Even before taking to the national political stage, Booker was considered a rising star in the Democratic Party in New Jersey, serving as mayor of Newark, the state’s largest city, from 2006 to 2013.

During college, he played tight end for Stanford University’s football team. He became a Rhodes scholar and graduated from Yale Law before starting his career as an attorney for nonprofits.

He was first elected to the US Senate in 2013 during a special election held after the death of incumbent Democrat Frank Lautenberg, and won his first full term in 2014 and reelection in 2020.

As Democratic colleagues made their way to the Senate chamber to help Booker by asking him questions, he also made heartfelt tributes to his fellow senators, recalling their personal backgrounds and shared experiences in the Senate. Booker also called on Americans to respond not just with resistance to Trump’s actions but with kindness and generosity for those in their communities.

Booker said, “I may be afraid – my voice may shake – but I’m going to speak up more.”

AP