Senator Cory Booker, a Democrat from New Jersey, delivered a lengthy speech on Capitol Hill opposing the president’s policies.
Democratic Senator Cory Booker has surpassed the record for the longest speech in Senate history. He spoke for 25 hours and five minutes, criticizing President Donald Trump’s policies. The address commenced late Monday and concluded on Tuesday night.
Booker stated his intention to “to disrupt the normal business of the US Senate for as long as I am physically able” to protest the Trump administration.
During his speech, he cautioned about a “grave and urgent” situation for America due to “threats” from the president and the executive orders signed since he took office in January.
The senator denounced Trump’s administration’s spending cuts, the reduction of the federal workforce, trade tariffs, changes in foreign policy, the proposals regarding Greenland and Canada, criticisms of NATO, and his evolving position on Russia.
“The Trump-Vance administration continues to plunge us into chaos,” Booker asserted.
The speech was reportedly viewed as a call to action for Democrats, who lack a majority in either chamber of Congress and have been largely excluded from legislative power. Booker urged both the Senate and the public 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 stated. “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, a former mayor of Newark, New Jersey, and a former Democratic presidential candidate in 2020, is currently serving his second term in the Senate. Following the speech, he informed reporters that he had fasted for days and refrained from drinking fluids the night before to prepare.
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 attempt to block an early version of the US Civil Rights Act, which prohibited segregation and racial discrimination.
Booker, one of five black senators, said he was uncertain if he could break the record, but “once we got closer, [it] became more and more important to me” because it “really irked” him that the record was held by “someone who was trying to stop people like me from being in the Senate.”
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