A United States Senator spoke for more than 25 hours without a bathroom break in an extraordinary attack on President Donald Trump, smashing a 67-year-old record for the longest speech ever made on the Senate floor. Cory Booker, a New Jersey Democrat who had been an aspirant for the White House in 2020, began speaking at 7 pm on Monday and continued until 8.05 pm on Tuesday, eclipsing by 46 minutes Strom Thurmond’s filibuster of a civil rights bill in 1957. Booker took the floor with the intent of “disrupting the normal business” of the Senate for as long as he was “physically able”. He ended his speech by recalling the late Representative John Lewis, an American civil rights icon who spoke of causing “good trouble, necessary trouble, to redeem the soul of our nation”. A White House spokesperson mocked Booker’s effort as grasping for an “I am Spartacus moment”, referring to the leader of a major slave uprising against the Roman Republic in the first century BCE, and dismissed the Senator as a “Spartacus spoof”. ‘Grave and urgent threat’ Booker began by saying that under the Trump administration, the most basic of American principles were at threat, and the nation faced a crisis. He framed his speech as a call to action, exhorting a broad coalition of Americans to stand up at this “moral moment” because, he said, “my voice is inadequate” but “we the people are powerful”. Booker divided his speech into sections, focusing on the key aspects of the Trump administration’s policy agenda – healthcare, education, immigration and national security. He attacked Trump and his close aide Elon Musk for attempting to cut Medicare and Medicaid, and for the mass dismissal of employees of the Social Security Administration. The President and his allies have described Medicaid, Medicare, and social security as “waste, fraud and abuse”. Booker compared the struggle against the Trump administration to the civil rights movement and the fight for women’s suffrage. He quoted at length from speeches by Lewis and the late John McCain, who lost the 2008 presidential race to Barack Obama but who broke with his party to defend Obamacare in 2017. He criticised the Trump administration’s crackdown on immigrants and the dismantling of the US Agency for International Development (USAID), which offered foreign aid programs that “save lives and benefit American businesses”. Surpassing Thurmond Thurmond was a South Carolina Democrat and segregationist who spoke for 24 hours and 18 minutes in a filibuster, which is an extended speech intended to delay or block a vote on a bill or confirmation. Thurmond was attempting to prevent the passage of the Civil Rights Act in 1957, which barred officials from preventing Black people from voting. “I’m here despite his (Thurmond’s) speech. I’m here because as powerful as he was, the people are more powerful,” Booker, who is African-American, said. Booker’s speech was not a filibuster; it did not come during a debate on a bill for consideration. However, it delayed voting on a Democrat-led bill to eliminate tariffs on Canadian imports originally scheduled for Tuesday. Such speeches require the speaker to remain standing and take no bathroom breaks. Booker told reporters later that he had fasted for days preparing, and had not eaten since Friday nor had any water since Sunday night. Texas Senator Ted Cruz, who gave a 21-hour filibuster in 2013 against Obamacare, told CBS that to avoid going to the bathroom, he had tried to drink very little water – “nothing in, nothing out”. Booker did pause from time to time though, to take questions from other Democratic Senators, and for a prayer by the Senate chaplain at noon on Tuesday. The bigger picture This is a crucial time for the Democratic Party, which currently has no say in the lawmaking process, and which has struggled to rally its voter base since losing the presidential election last November. The party has appeared at a loss for ideas and direction, and has been unable to present a united front against some Trump policies such as those relating to illegal immigration, as well as on backing some of the President’s cabinet nominees. Booker’s speech, although only symbolic in its import, showed a defiance, endurance, and determination to fight that Democratic leaders will be hoping can energise and encourage party workers. “I was challenged by my own constituents to do something different, challenged by my own constituents to do something, challenged by my own constituents to take risks,” Booker said. A press release from the Senator’s office claimed that a TikTok livestream of the speech garnered more than 350 million likes, and that it had got over 28,000 voicemails of encouragement.
