Around 7 pm Monday night, New Jersey Senator Cory Booker took his place behind a lectern on the Senate floor and announced his intention to disrupt business as usual “for as long as I am physically able.”
As of 11:30 am Tuesday morning, he was still going.
Over nearly 17 hours (and counting) Booker cast President Donald Trump’s actions since the start of his presidency as a crisis demanding a different response than the one Congress has been offering—which is to say, any response at all.
“This is the time to get in some good trouble, to get into necessary trouble,” Booker said. “I can’t allow this body to continue without doing something different, speaking out. The threats to American people and American democracy are grave and urgent, and we all must do more.”
Booker spoke in soaring terms about how future generations will look back at Congress’s paralysis in the face of a tanking economy, threats to pediatric cancer research and public education, and the abandonment of allies and countries struggling to fight off disease and other catastrophes. “I believe generations from now will look back at this moment and have a single question: Where were you?” Booker said.
The speech wasn’t technically a filibuster; Booker wasn’t preventing any particular bill from getting a vote. But it did sound eerily similar to Republican Senator Ted Cruz’s 21-hour filibuster in 2013, during which he vowed to keep speaking in opposition to Obamacare until he was “no longer able to stand.” The difference is, unlike Cruz who resorted to reading Dr. Seuss’s Green Eggs and Ham, Booker has yet to run out of material.
Throughout the night and early hours of the morning, Booker has accepted questions from his colleagues without, importantly, formally relinquishing the floor. Connecticut Senator Chris Murphy talked about the potential for the GOP budget to slash nearly $900 billion in Medicaid funding to pay for tax cuts, while fellow New Jersey Senator Andy Kim discussed Elon Musk’s attempts to gut the federal workforce.
“The world’s richest man has been handed the keys to our government,” Kim said. “He’s now working to fire veterans from their jobs, making Social Security less responsive to seniors, and making it harder for your government to work for you.”
They were speaking, of course, to a mostly empty chamber. The true test will be what happens when the Senate reconvenes. But Booker’s intended audience wasn’t really other members of Congress. It was their constituents who have charged Democrats with being asleep at the wheel. Booker’s goal with his all-night bender was to demonstrate—both literally and figuratively—that he is wide awake.
