Cory Booker Hijacks Senate Floor With Marathon All-Nighter Speech Protesting Trump — and He’s Still Going
Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ) launched into a blistering all-night speech late Monday, taking aim at President Donald Trump, Elon Musk, and the GOP-led agenda for their “recklessness” toward American democracy in a marathon protest that is still going on, 12-hours later.
Beginning at 7 p.m. (ET) on Monday and rolling on all night into Tuesday, Booker took the Senate floor not to block legislation, he said, but to send one message: “Our nation is in crisis!”
At around midnight, Booker said he would continue to speak “as long as [he is] physically able” using the chamber’s open floor time to command attention and spotlight Democratic concerns about the direction of the country.
“In just 71 days, the president of the United States has inflicted so much harm on Americans’ safety, financial stability, the core foundations of our democracy and even our aspirations as a people for — from our highest offices — a sense of common decency,” Booker said. “These are not normal times in America. And they should not be treated as such in the United States Senate.”
He continued to blast Trump and Musk for “complete disregard for the rule of law, the Constitution and the needs of the American people.”
The speech, broadcast live on Booker’s YouTube channel and clipped at various points across social platforms, comes amid growing calls from progressives for Democratic lawmakers to mount visible pushback to Trump’s administration.
Among the key issues Booker hammered: proposed GOP cuts to Medicaid.
“It is maddening… to create greater and greater health care crisis,” he said, accusing Republicans of tearing down systems “with no plan to make it better.”
Throughout, the Democratic senator quoted civil rights giants like John Lewis and the late Republican senator John McCain, read aloud from newspapers, and took questions from fellow Democrats without ceding the floor.
While technically not a filibuster — since it hasn’t been tied to any active legislation — Booker’s speech threatens to delay Senate business, which is set to begin at noon.
The move echoed past Senate floor marathons on gun control and health care. Sen. Ted Cruz’s (R-TX) speech against President Barack Obama’s Affordable Care Act in 2013 lasted over 21 hours but the record is held by Sen. Strom Thurmond (D-SC) for his 1957 filibuster of the Civil Rights Act – lasting more than 24 hours.
Watch above via YouTube.
