Democratic U.S. Senator Booker takes on Trump in record-breaking speech

Senator Cory Booker breaks Senate record in marathon speech criticizing Trump's attacks on democratic institutions.

Democratic U.S. Senator Cory Booker accused President Donald Trump of "recklessly" challenging the nation's democratic institutions in a marathon speech that broke a nearly seven-decade record on Tuesday (April 1, 2025) for length.

The 55-year-old New Jersey lawmaker, in a speech that began at 7 p.m. ET on Monday and went on for more than 24 hours, criticised the Republican president and his billionaire top adviser Elon Musk’s decision to slash large swaths of the federal government.

"Our institutions are being recklessly and unconstitutionally attacked and even shattered," said Booker, who was first elected to the Senate in 2013.

Mr. Booker, who is Black, broke the record for the longest continuous speech previously held by segregationist Senator Strom Thurmond of South Carolina.

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.

Mr. Booker, whose speech was not a filibuster -- which is a tactic to delay or kill action on specific legislation -- passed Thurmond's record and continued to speak.

He repeatedly referred to activists getting into "good trouble" by speaking out against Trump's actions, using a term that the late Democratic Representative John Lewis, a civil rights leader, had often employed.