Booker embarks on marathon Senate speech to protest Trump – how long can he go?

Senator Cory Booker just started talking on the Senate floor – and if all goes well, he won’t be stopping anytime soon.

Booker aims to hold the Senate floor for as long as he possibly can in protest of President Donald Trump and his administration’s early efforts to gut federal agencies, ramp up deportation efforts, and more. While no one, including Booker himself, knows how long the speech will go or what it might entail, the mission is to put Trump’s actions – and Democrats’ many efforts to combat them – into the spotlight.

“What’s happened in the last 71 days is a patent demonstration of a time where [the late Congressman] John Lewis’s call to everyone has become more urgent and more pressing,” Booker said in his opening for what are likely to be very, very long remarks. “And if I think it’s a call for my country, I have to ask myself how I’m living these words. So tonight, I rise with the intention of getting in some good trouble.”

“I rise with the intention of disrupting the normal business of the United States Senate for as long as I am physically able,” he added.

It isn’t the first time that Booker has taken over the Senate floor for an extended period to make a point. Back in 2016, Booker aided Senator Chris Murphy (D-Connecticut)’s 14-hour-and-50-minute filibuster to support gun control legislation in the wake of the Pulse nightclub shooting; Republicans ultimately agreed to allow two votes on gun control amendments, though both failed to pass.

While Booker doesn’t have as specific of a legislative goal this time around, he does hope to beat his past record – something that is entirely dependent on his own willpower and stamina, since Republicans won’t be able to wrest control of the Senate back until he’s done speaking.

And the longer he goes, the more disruption he’ll be able to actually cause for Republicans. Final votes for today concluded shortly before Booker began his speech, and the Senate wouldn’t have been conducting business through the night anyways, but if Booker is still going by the time the Senate workday begins tomorrow, that could start to cause genuine headaches.

The tradition of long Senate speeches and filibusters is a long and storied one, though the causes behind them were not always good ones. The longest Senate filibuster in history remains segregationist Senator Strom Thurmond (D-South Carolina)’s 24-hour-and-18-minute speech in 1957, which he used to fight against passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1957.

Booker may not beat that record, but he’s certainly hoping to go long enough to become a part of the national conversation.

“These are not normal times in America, and they should not be treated as such,” he said.