Cory Booker Makes History with Longest Senate Floor Speech Against Trump Policies: What Did He Say

US Senator Cory Booker held the Senate floor with a marathon speech that lasted all night, setting a historic mark to show Democrats’ resistance to President Donald Trump ’s policies. The 55-year-old New Jersey lawmaker criticized the crusade by the Republican president and his billionaire top adviser Elon Musk to slash large swaths of the federal government.

Booker took to the Senate floor on Monday evening, saying he would remain there as long as he was “physically able.” It wasn’t until 25 hours and 5 minutes later that the 55-year-old senator, a former football tight end, finished speaking and limped off the floor. It set the record for the longest continuous Senate floor speech in the chamber’s history. Booker was assisted by fellow Democrats who gave him a break from speaking by asking him questions on the Senate floor.

Booker dedicated much of his speech to criticising Trump's policies, but to pass the time he also recited poetry, discussed sports and entertained questions from colleagues.

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 Sen. Strom Thurmond of South Carolina, a segregationist and southern Democrat, to filibuster the advance of the Civil Rights Act in 1957.

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“These are not normal times in our nation,” Booker said as he began the speech Monday evening. “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.”

Booker railed for hours against cuts to Social Security offices led by Trump adviser Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency. 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. One writer was alarmed by the Republican president’s talk of annexing Greenland and Canada and a “looming constitutional crisis.”

“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.”

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

The longest Senate speech on record before Tuesday was delivered by South Carolina's Strom Thurmond, who filibustered for 24 hours and 18 minutes against the Civil Rights Act of 1957.

In the summer of 1957 Thurmond launched a filibuster against civil rights legislation that lasted 24 hours and 18 minutes. In the end, Thurmond failed in his mission to block a bill that expanded federal protections of voting rights for Black people.