WASHINGTON — Democratic Sen. Cory Booker ended his record-setting speech the same way he began it, more than 25 hours earlier: by invoking the words of his mentor, the late congressman and civil rights icon John Lewis.
“He endured beatings savagely on the Edmund Pettus Bridge, at lunch counters, on freedom rides. He said he had to do something. He would not normalize a moment like this,” Booker said of Lewis’ work as a young activist during the Civil Rights movement. “He would not just go along with business as usual.”
“He said for us to go out and cause some good trouble, necessary trouble, to redeem the soul of our nation,” Booker said.
A break from “business as usual” was what Booker had in mind as he performed a feat of political endurance, holding the Senate floor for 25 hours and 5 minutes while delivering a wide-ranging critique of President Donald Trump and his policies.
In doing so, Booker of New Jersey broke the record for longest Senate floor speech, a mark that had belonged for decades to Strom Thurmond, the avowed segregationist from South Carolina who filibustered the Civil Rights Act of 1957. Booker said he’d been aware of Thurmond’s record since first coming to the Senate in 2013 — a room near the Senate chamber is still named for him — and it bothered him.
“It seemed wrong to me,” Booker said. “It always seemed wrong.”
Booker, a Black progressive, spoke about his roots as a descendant of both slaves and slave-owners as he invoked the Civil Rights movement, implicitly linking Lewis’ steadfast resistance to Jim Crow to the modern-day opponents of Trump’s reshaping of government and society.
Throughout his speech he read letters from Americans about the impact that Trump’s agenda is having on their lives, drawing historical parallels and warning that the country faces a “looming constitutional crisis.”
“This is a moral moment,” Booker said. “It’s not left or right; it’s right or wrong.”
As Booker held the floor, dozens of members of the Congressional Black Caucus flanked the back of the Senate chamber in support, including House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries and Rep. Maxine Waters. Other CBC members kept close to the floor, including Sens. Angela Alsobrooks, Lisa Blunt Rochester and Raphael Warnock.
Before Booker surpassed Thurmond’s 68-year-old record, Jeffries said Booker’s speech was “an incredibly powerful moment … because he is fighting to preserve the American way of life and our democracy. And the record was held by Strom Thurmond who was actually defending Jim Crow segregation.”
Rep. Hank Johnson, D-Ga., a close friend of Lewis who represented the neighboring district in metropolitan Atlanta, said Booker’s speech was “an act of resistance.”
“The American people want to see us as their representatives do everything we can to resist the encroachment on our liberties and the taking away of benefits,” Johnson said.
Booker’s speech captured attention at a time when Democrats have grown frustrated and despondent at their inability to stop Trump’s plans. Locked out of power in Congress and the executive branch, Democrats have struggled with how to take on Trump and the slashing of government being carried out by Elon Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency.
Grassroots liberal organizers have been urging major Democratic figures to take a more combative approach. Some hoped that Booker’s speech would offer the party lessons going forward.
Booker “is reminding all of America and his own party, not simply to stand for what we’re against, but to stand up for what we believe in,” said Brittany Packnett Cunningham, an activist who helped lead the 2014 protests against police brutality in Ferguson, Mo.
“I think he recognized that people are looking for our leaders to have the moral clarity to declare that what’s happening is wrong, and to determine, to do something about it,” she said.
As Booker’s marathon speech drew to a close, he recalled the last conversation he ever had with Lewis, who was known for his acts of civil disobedience in Congress throughout his career until his passing in 2020.
Booker recalled telling Lewis, “we’ll do everything possible to make you proud.” And he said he had no doubt what Lewis’ message would be if he were alive today.
“John Lewis would say, do something,” Booker said.
“He wouldn’t treat this moral moment like it was normal.”