Inside Cory Booker’s Plan To Disrupt ‘Business As Usual’ On The Senate Floor

A member of the U.S. Senate took the floor at 7:00 p.m. on Monday evening — and he doesn’t plan on leaving it any time soon. In a text message to TPM, Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ) said he was about to begin speaking for as long as he could stand.

“I am disrupting business as usual,” Booker told TPM. “I am not allowing us to just carry on with the expected order of the Senate.” 

Booker’s decision to break from standard procedure — after an unrelated procedural vote on a Trump nominee — was motivated by the unusual threat to the country President Trump represents. His office provided TPM with an embargoed copy of his opening remarks in which Booker outlined the stakes as he sees them and his reasons for speaking and holding the Senate floor “for as long as I am physically able,” beginning Monday evening.

“These are not normal times in our nation. And they should not be treated as such in the United States Senate,” Booker plans to say, according to the prepared remarks the senator’s office shared with TPM. “The threats to the American people and American democracy are grave and urgent and we all must do more to stand against them. Generations from now will look back at this moment and have a single question — where were you?”

In the prepared version of his opening remarks, Booker goes on to point to Trump’s unprecedented wave of firings across the federal government and his attacks on American institutions including the press and major law firms. 

“I rise tonight because to be silent at this moment of national crisis would be a betrayal, and because at stake in this moment is nothing less than everything that makes us who we are,” Booker said. 

After delivering those opening remarks, Booker plans to deliver a multi-part presentation on the ways he thinks Trump is harming the country. The senator plans to start with letters from his constituents. 

Booker apparently has a lot of material. His office said Booker’s move to commandeer the Senate floor is modeled after a filibuster on gun control Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT) held in 2016. Murphy’s filibuster lasted for just shy of 15 hours. Booker stood with Murphy for hours during that filibuster. This time around, Murphy plans to be there supporting Booker.

The current record for the longest speech in the history of the Senate is held by the late segregationist Strom Thurmond of South Carolina who spent 24 hours and 18 minutes filibustering against the Civil Rights Act of 1957. Rules for marathon speeches require members to continuously speak and to remain on the floor, which raises difficult logistical questions, including about bathroom breaks. 

In his texts to TPM, Booker said Murphy and other supporters may help him save his voice by asking questions during his extensive presentation.

“Senators can come in and ask me questions. For other senators, including in Strom Thurmond’s speech, this was to give them a break. Some questions would last many minutes,” Booker said. 

However, Booker indicated that he has no plans for anyone to “relieve” him. He also doesn’t expect another senator to follow once he can no longer continue.

“I doubt someone will then pick up and keep going — hard given rules of procedure to do that,” Booker said. 

Booker has a history of this kind of disruptive activism. He began his career in Newark, New Jersey, a city about an hour west of Manhattan. As a councilman and, later, as mayor there he drew national attention with a blend of early social media savvy and hands-on politics that included hunger strikes, moving into a tent outside a public housing project, shoveling snow, and even saving a woman from a burning building. He was elected to the Senate in 2013 and mounted a White House bid in 2020. 

This marathon speech comes amid widespread protests over Trump’s actions during his first two months and change in office. Some of the frustration has been aimed at Democrats, particularly after Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and a handful of other Senate Democrats voted to advance a Republican spending bill earlier this month, helping Republicans pass legislation to avert a government shutdown. Booker referenced the anger from voters in the prepared version of his remarks. 

“Our constituents are asking us to acknowledge that this is not normal, that this is a crisis,” Booker said. “So I am going to stand here until I no longer can. I am going to speak up.”

In a video posted on Instagram hours before his speech began on Monday, Booker framed the current Trump era as an “AMERICAN moment” that calls for protest. He also referenced his past activism including an incident in 2017 where he and the late Civil Rights icon and congressman John Lewis conducted a livestreaming sit-in on the Capitol steps as Republicans were trying to repeal the Affordable Care Act. 

“When you see something that is not right, not fair, not just, you have a moral obligation to stand up, to do something, to say something, and find a little way to get in the way and make a little noise,” Lewis said during their stream. 

Booker and Lewis were eventually joined on the steps by other senators and a crowd of supporters. The GOP push to end Obamacare was ultimately unsuccessful after three of their senators voted with the Democrats.

Years later, in an interview, Booker described the sit-in as “moral suasion” where he and Lewis attempted to physically show allies and other elected officials where they stood. 

While his desire to morally sway and stir is once again apparent in this planned marathon speech against Trump, in his texts to TPM Booker said he did not consider it to be an act of civil disobedience.

“That invokes a history which I revere and am truly humbled by,” Booker wrote. “There is no risk here of my arrest, no chance of a beating or other physical attack. I am not breaking any official rules (at this point).”