Summary:
Sen. Cory Booker is holding the Senate floor into Tuesday afternoon, as the New Jersey Democrat continues his marathon speech protesting actions taken by President Donald Trump’s administration.
The Democratic senator vowed Monday evening that he would keep going as long as he was “physically able,” continuing his remarks through the night. As of noon Tuesday, he had spoken for more than 17 hours, having begun at 7 p.m. ET Monday.
Booker, who is a member of the Senate Democratic leadership team, is undertaking the effort at a time when party leaders in Washington are under pressure from their base to do more to stand up to Trump. He has castigated Trump’s efforts with Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency to overhaul the federal government, while speaking on a number of topics, including Social Security, Medicaid and immigration.
“I rise with the intention of disrupting the normal business of the United States Senate for as long as I am physically able,” Booker said at the outset of his remarks. “I rise tonight because I believe sincerely that our country is in crisis.”
“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,” Booker said. “These are not normal times in America. And they should not be treated as such in the United States Senate.”
Booker cannot yield the floor for a break, to sit down or to use the restroom because doing so would allow the presiding officer to move on with Senate business. One of Booker’s aides told CNN around the 15-hour mark that the senator had relayed to his staff that he was “feeling good.”
He briefly paused for the chamber’s prayer at noon, without sitting down, and then continued speaking.
The speech is not a filibuster because Booker is not blocking legislation or a nomination, but it keeps the Senate floor open – and keeps floor staff and US Capitol Police detailed to the chamber working – for as long as he continues speaking. Lawmakers had concluded voting on Monday before he began his remarks.
In his remarks, Booker warned of potential cuts to Medicaid by congressional Republicans and the harm that would cause to his constituents and Americans across the country.
That’s great. So… what exactly was accomplished?
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As a person of color it means a hell of a fucking lot. Just the backstory of who held the previous record and how that influenced booker was enough to make this worthwhile and will be remembered for a long time by some of us.
Yes he broke the record, but also yes, he accomplished absolutely nothing other than breaking the record…… both can be true
Strom Thurmond held the previous record for attempting to block civil rights legislation
Cory Booker broke his record for no reason other than to break the record, commendable I suppose but he accomplished nothing…. I don’t even think he was trying to accomplish anything other than to break the record
So congress did nothing except talk for 25 hours straight for absolutely no reason just like last week
I’m no political expert, but how can this happen? Aren’t there rules / customs how long a speech can be? Or can they not have those because of 1st amendment rights?
According to the linked Wikipedia article:
The United States Senate does not limit debate unless limits have been imposed; in most circumstances, a senator who has been granted permission to speak by the presiding officer of the Senate may speak indefinitely so long as they “remain standing” and “speak more or less continuously”.
Stunning and brave.
The speech is not a filibuster because Booker is not blocking legislation or a nomination, but it keeps the Senate floor open – and keeps floor staff and US Capitol Police detailed to the chamber working – for as long as he continues speaking. Lawmakers had concluded voting on Monday before he began his remarks.
So is there any reason why the others Senators shouldn’t just leave?
If you want to get stuff through, no, but it you want to help him, then yes
Various Dems senators have been helping him by asking super long questions to give him a few minutes break from speaking
In any case, Republican senators leaving without being able to voting on nominees and other stuff is helpful
This event is already being used for fundraising campaigns.
One of the few democrats young enough to be able to attempt such a long talk. Excluding Bernie, that man seems limitless.
I can’t wait till this “Bernie is god” mentality finally goes away and we can find some young blood
Lmao! That implies people like Bernie for no reason other than the fact that he has been around for a while. Which makes zero fucking sense. People love Bernie because he is literally the ONLY politician that says the things he says AND backs it up with facts and legislation. Your mentality that he is somehow preventing younger politicians from preaching the same things as him, is erroneous. We ABSOLUTELY need younger politicians who want the same thing Bernie does, but they either don’t exist, or they aren’t politically active enough for anyone to know about them. How many dumb fucking Republicans are there? Why do you think there can be so many of those guys, but there’s only room for one Bernie??? Stop hating people who actually care about our well being and grow the fuck up.
amen.
Fact is Bernie is a loser. Great ideas mean nothing if you’re unelectable. Which he is. He can’t even win the support of the left, let alone the whole country. It also comes off as utter hypocrisy to complain about old white men in politics while cheering Bernie no?
He’s got good ideas, now put them into a young candidate. I don’t want 80+ year olds in office and I’m at least consistent with that across parties
Bro, are you part of some kind of psyop? Because if you aren’t I feel really bad for your brain cells. The ONLY way we will get OTHER politicians that will come even remotely close to Bernie, is if… Wait for it… WE SUPPORT BERNIE. Why the fuck would another politician want to follow in Bernie’s footsteps if people are thinking like you? You are arguing to keep the status quo. We need change, and Bernie has been the only one with the balls to fight for us. We need more Bernie’s, not less of them you fucking dimwit
People who slightly disagree with you are either paid or are brain damaged right?
This is why the rest of the world says the American left has become toxic and offensive, just the other side of the coin to the rest of your country i guess. This is why you guys let trump win and fuck the rest of us
At the time of posting, he is ~5 hours out from the record.
He beat it.
It’s not a filibuster…
The pointless talking record? I’m pretty sure someone else must have babbled pointlessly for longer.
Technocrit doing their best to emulate Booker and keep this thread alive for as long as possible.
A neat fact: the longest filibuster in history was the against the Civil Rights Act in 1957. 24 hours and 18 minutes. Civil Rights Legislation passed two hours later.
Booker has done a 10-day hunger strike, so I imagine he sees that as child’s play.
5 minutes from beating the record
… if this were a filibuster…
Every Democrat senator should be doing this for as long as their physically capable at every single opportunity.
I’ve never been a fan of Booker but hot damn am I excited watching him close in on Klansman Thurmond’s record.
At a certain point doesn’t the GOP just say “ok, we are eliminating the filibuster rule”?
This technically isn’t a filibuster, apparently.
But yes, they could suspend the filibuster rule, potentially. I’m not sure of the specifics. It might require 60 votes?
This is not a filibuster… No record broken.
Who cares what it’s called? That doesn’t matter.
Neither does talking for 25 hours, blocking legislation does.
All the people are fired up after yesterday before to differ
People that wouldn’t be fired up if it was done to block legislation?
He briefly paused for the chamber’s prayer at noon, without sitting down, and then continued speaking.
Can an American explain this to me? This is wild. Government should be 100% secular.
Government should be 100% secular.
Too bad the state is 0% secular.
Government should be 100% secular.
Wouldn’t that be nice.
The explanation is that it isn’t.
Should be. But isn’t.
American Values TM©®
I feel like we’ve run this meme further than is useful; there’s absolutely criticisms to be had about how the separation of church in state operates within American government but it’s hardly the only “developed” (hate that word but you know what I mean) country to have a government that takes for granted Christianity as default; Britain, after all, has a state church – for (pun slightly intended) Christ’s sake – that definitely bleeds into the way its government thinks about what a religion is and how much “religion” gets support.
I’m not saying I wouldn’t prefer (and hope we move towards) a more strict and complete separation but let’s not pretend America is astonishingly unique…
My comment was more about the hypocrisy of the term “American values”. The people who most loudly espouse “American Values” rarely do more than pay lip service to ideals they think are good in a vacuum, but never actually support in practice when those values are tested even a little bit (democracy, equality, free speech, the right to protest, etc etc).
That may not be a uniquely American trait, either, but it is still annoyingly present enough it warrants complaining about.
The prayer is to capitalism
- Supply Side Jesus who died on the candlestick symbol for your profits.
I don’t think that’s a bad thing. I see it like adding a wheelchair ramp so handicapped congress people can enter the building on their own.
If someone wasn’t able to become a congress person because it isn’t “accessible” to their religion, that would be pretty bad for democracy (although tbh I wouldn’t mind banning religious people from positions of power in general)
Churches enjoy tax exemptions. Wheelchair users do not. I firmly believe that religion should be completely separate from government.
I think it’s ok if someone who is religious is in government, provided they do their job. Stopping for prayer isn’t doing their job.
Consider a devout Muslim person elected to congress who is not able to pray because they don’t get time throughout the day to do it. As a result, they step down because their faith is important to them.
The “usual suspects” don’t want Muslims in congress, so they claim that prayer breaks are unconstitutional, effectively blocking Muslims from any position in Congress, and weakening our democracy further.
It’s another thing entirely if the “prayer breaks” were something they tried to force onto the rest of the country. That’d be the government trying to use its power to spread a particular religion, which is unconstitutional. But prayer breaks inside Congress are just an accessibility thing.
The fact that filibusters are a thing tells me a lot about US democracy.
This technically isn’t a filibuster. He’s not blocking any legislation or appointments. He’s just talking, and we know how far talking gets us.
“Democracy” in USA was literally created by slavers in an attempt to violently enforce their disgusting privilege.
That’s should tell you even more about USA “democracy”. It’s just some gross pact between slavers.
It really is pretty weird. … and interesting. I don’t necessarily think the existence of filibusters is a bad thing, but it definitely a very weird thing.
