WaPo (“Cory Booker breaks modern record for longest speech from Senate floor“):
Sen. Cory Booker (D-New Jersey) broke a record Tuesday night for the longest U.S. Senate floor speech of the modern era, surpassing Sen. Strom Thurmond’s 1957 remarks inside the chamber that lasted 24 hours.
Booker began delivering remarks Monday evening, vowing to use his time to disrupt “the normal business of the United States Senate for as long as I am physically able” to protest President Donald Trump.
In his concluding remarks, Booker characterized the situation facing the country as “a moral moment.”
“It’s not left or right. It’s right or wrong. It’s getting into ‘good trouble,’” he added, referencing the inspiration for his marathon speech — John Lewis, the late Democratic congressman and civil rights leader.
Booker received loud applause when he yielded the floor after being at the lectern for 25 hours and 5 minutes.
The record-breaking speech by Booker, the first African American to serve as a U.S. senator for New Jersey, stands in stark contrast with Thurmond — who held the floor for more than a day in 1957 to stop the passage of the Civil Rights Act.
As he neared surpassing Thurmond’s record Tuesday night, Booker said, “I’m not here … because of [Thurmond’s] speech. I’m here despite his speech. I’m here because as powerful as he was, the people were more powerful.”
[…]
Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (New York) and more than two dozen other Democratic senators — along with Sen. Angus King of Maine, an independent who caucuses with Democrats — came to the floor to support Booker and ask him questions throughout Monday evening and into Tuesday, allowing him to rest his voice for a few moments.
“The enthusiasm of Democrats, the desire to fight back, couldn’t have been better exemplified than Cory Booker’s tour de force on the floor of the Senate,” Schumer told reporters Tuesday evening.
Booker’s speech came after Schumer, eight other Democratic senators and King voted with nearly all Republicans last month to advance a Trump-backed spending bill.
Schumer defended his decision as necessary to prevent a government shutdown, which he argued would have been worse than backing a bill that included spending cuts that Democrats detested. But his decision infuriated House Democrats — who voted nearly unanimously to reject the bill — and liberal voters who have called for their representatives to do more to stand up to Trump.
“I’ve been hearing from people all over my state, and indeed all over the nation, calling upon folks in Congress to do more, to do things that recognize the urgency, the crisis of the moment,” Booker said in a video posted on social media Monday evening.
Some Democrats pointed to Booker as proof that they had heard voters’ message.
“Democrats are on the offense,” Sen. Amy Klobuchar (Minnesota), the No. 3 Senate Democrat, told reporters Tuesday afternoon. “Ask Cory Booker.”
The thing is, the speech is getting more attention for its length than its content. That Democrats oppose Trump’s agenda is, after all, not news. Nor is it obvious what delaying a Senate that is doing nothing from doing something was supposed to achieve.
Indeed, the NYT report (“Cory Booker Condemns Trump’s Policies in Longest Senate Speech on Record“) rightly notes that the speech technically wasn’t even a filibuster:
Unlike Mr. Thurmond’s speech, Mr. Booker’s was not a filibuster — a procedural tactic that has been used to block legislation on many issues — because it did not come during a debate over a specific bill or nominee. But it did delay a planned vote on a Democratic-led bill to undo Mr. Trump’s tariffs on Canada.
I’m still dubious that Schumer made the right call in urging his caucus to vote with Republicans for a continuing resolution to keep the government open through the end of the fiscal year, but at least understood his argument for doing so. But that was as much leverage his party was going to have all year.
As to the feat itself, I find this more than slightly odd:
Mr. Booker, who for weeks had contemplated delivering a marathon floor speech, had long been bothered that Mr. Thurmond, a segregationist from South Carolina, held the record, according to Mr. Booker’s office. Mr. Thurmond had sustained himself by sipping orange juice and munching on bits of beef and pumpernickel; it was not clear if Mr. Booker had eaten anything on Tuesday, but two glasses of water rested on a desk in front of his lectern.
He had prepared for the speech by fasting for days, he told reporters on Tuesday night after his speech. Before he began on Monday, he had not had food since Friday or water since Sunday night. The approach took its toll, said Mr. Booker, a vegan and former Stanford football player who has chronicled his efforts to stay fit and eat healthy.
“Instead of figuring out how to go to the bathroom,” he said, “I ended up, I think, really unfortunately dehydrating myself.” During the speech, he recalled, he started to “really cramp up.”
I can only imagine.
