Senator Cory Booker is April’s Fool with a new record for longest speech in US Senate

In the hollowed chamber where echoes of history often fade into procedural routine, a solitary figure stood through the night, his voice rising not to halt the gears of governance but to cast a spotlight on what he decried as an existential crisis.

Senator Cory Booker, the neoliberal establishment Democrat from New Jersey, began his marathon address at 7 p.m. Monday, vowing to speak until his body faltered. Giving new meaning to his reputation of being “all talk and no action” Booker broke the historic record set by segregationist Strom Thurmond, who filibustered the Civil Rights Act of 1957 for 24 hours and 18 minutes.

By dawn, as the Senate’s marble halls remained eerily vacant, his words lingered like a sermon in the void—a blend of moral urgency and theatrical defiance that left even his allies questioning its purpose.

“I rise to cause good trouble,” Booker declared, invoking the late Congressman John Lewis, his tone oscillating between fiery indictment and somber reflection.

For 25 hours and four minutes, he wove tales of seniors trembling over slashed Social Security checks, veterans abandoned by the institutions they served, and families buckling under an economy he accused President Donald Trump and billionaire ally Elon Musk of hijacking for their own gain.

Facing pressure to block Trump’s agenda, Senate Democrats on March 14 balked at forcing Republicans to make concessions, with nine lawmakers in the chamber willing to risk political backlash rather than leaving the GOP unable to avert a government shutdown.

The tight Republican victory in two special Florida House elections might not be the overwhelming victory Trump’s GOP was looking for, but the solid red districts deprived Democrats of a win they desperately needed even though one of their candidates raised ten times as much money as his opponent.

On a bright note, Dane County Judge Susan Crawford won a seat on Wisconsin Supreme Court in the most expensive judicial race in American history, but sadly judges are being picked largely based on dirty money supplied by the ultra-wealthy.

The entire time, a flood of emails and social media messages begged for money to fatten a campaign war chest that already has collected $14,634,913.61.

“These are not normal times,” he thundered, his voice fraying but unbroken. “Silence now would betray the soul of America.”

If one recalls, in normal times, Booker held fundraising events at Trump Tower.

Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump hosted a fundraiser at their Manhattan home that reportedly raised more than $40,000 for the then-Newark mayor’s senatorial campaign during the first quarter of 2013. In 2017, Booker said he doesn’t regret accepting money from the president’s daughter and son-in-law. 

Booker said people who targeted him for being “in league with the Kushners and the Trumps” despite his frequent criticism of the White House. “I’m leading, in the Senate, criticism of those folks,” Booker said. “So that’s what you, that’s what folks don’t seem to understand.”

Booker’s progressive branding masks his deep ties to corporate power, with his campaign coffers generously padded by money from some of America’s most controversial industries.

Beneath the cadence of a revivalist preacher lay an uncomfortable truth: Booker’s soliloquy, while impassioned, lacked the teeth of consequence.

Booker is not leading, he’s losing. He has not called for removing Chuck Schumer from his perch as Senate Minority Leader despite his betrayal on the GOP stopgap spending measure.

Those spineless US Senate Democrats who voted against the GOP stopgap spending bill — legislation granting legitimacy to Trump’s illegal and unconstitutional destruction of the federal government — are just as guilty as Schumer who they have failed to oust as Senate Minority Leader.

Unlike the filibusters of yore—tools to paralyze votes or force compromise—this speech was spectacle, a performative cry into a legislative abyss. Senate rules allowed him pauses, sips of water, and brief exchanges with sympathetic colleagues, all while the machinery of government churned onward.

By sunrise, the chamber’s calendar remained untouched, its votes unthreatened, its power dynamics unmoved.

The 55-year-old senator earned clicks and mentions in various news media and sent out millions of emails soliciting donations for his next campaign, which is a fair accompli because almost nobody in New Jersey has the financial means to mount a primary and Republicans have not won a senate contest since Sen. Clifford Case was reelected in 1972.

Booker’s not outraged but he is opportunistic. In one of the dozens of recent fundraising solicitation deployed by Booker, he recalls his first election to the Newark City Council and says, “I took on the party machine to respond to the needs of our residents.”

Among Booker’s friends and campaign contributors are mob defense lawyer Michael Critchley, slave catcher Joseph DiVincenzo and power broker George Norcross, plus the whole Trump family.

“It was a remarkable show of stamina — among the longest in Senate history — as Democrats try to show their frustrated supporters that they are doing everything possible to contest Trump’s agenda,” according to an Associated Press report, but the entertainment value would have been greater if the 55-year-old senator, a former football tight end, Trump-loving blowhard had done a few things differently.

He might have met with Lisa McCormick in 2018, and at least considered supporting the progressive challenger to his buddy, Gold Bar Bob, rather than embrace and endorse the bribery defendant who came back for a second indictment during a different Democratic administration.

He might have employed fewer people who took bribes, like Former Newark Deputy Mayor Ronald Salahuddin and Newark Watershed Conservation and Development Corporation (NWCDC) executive director Linda Watkins-Brashear.

The spectacle drew inevitable comparisons to the late Senator Frank Lautenberg’s barbed assessment of his successor: a “show horse, not a work horse.”

There is stark contrast between Booker’s lofty rhetoric and his thin record of bipartisan dealmaking, between his appeals to “disrupt” and the reality of a Senate that ultimately confirmed former acting Attorney General Matthew Whitaker in a 52-45 vote as U.S. NATO ambassador without any foreign policy experience amid uncertainty about Trump’s commitment to the alliance.

In what might be a dubious achievement, Booker delayed politics as usual for about eight hours. And he did so in the most obnoxious example of politics as usual: talking, putting a spotlight on himself, and soliciting campaign contributions.

Even the timing raised eyebrows: Why now, after nine Democrats, including Schumer, had already capitulated to a Republican spending bill? Why this grandstand, when the real battles had been quietly lost weeks prior?

Booker voted to approve four of Trump’s selections for cabinet posts, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, CIA Director John Ratcliffe, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins.

For Trump and Musk, the 25-hour period passed without acknowledgment. The former’s Truth Social feed blazed with grievances, none spared for Booker; the latter’s X platform hummed with memes and Martian dreams.

Meanwhile, Booker quoted Lewis, invoked FDR, and recited testimonies from detained immigrants and struggling retirees, his words often ricocheting off rows of empty desks.

Booker lambasted Republicans over proposed cuts to Social Security and Medicaid, emphasizing the lifeline these programs provide for seniors, veterans, and low-income families. 

In a glaring example of ‘all talk and no action,’ Booker’s speech took aim at policies he says show a “complete disregard for the rule of law, the Constitution, and the needs of the American people.”

History, of course, remembers endurance. Strom Thurmond’s 24-hour segregationist rant. Texas Republican Ted Cruz of held the floor for 21 hours and 19 minutes as he unsuccessfully advocated for defunding Obamacare in 2013.

Kentucky Republican Rand Paul filibustered John Brennan’s CIA nomination in 2013, railing for 12 hours and 52 minutes against the danger of drone strikes to U.S. citizens on American soil, pushing a vote to confirm President Barack Obama’s nominee to run the CIA off for a day.

But what matters is not mere stamina—it is consequence. Booker’s marathon, though draped in the cloak of moral necessity, risked being reduced to a footnote, a fleeting April’s Fool staged in an era where political theater often eclipses substance.

As the senator paused near dawn, hoarse yet defiant, one question haunted the silence: When the cameras dim and the C-SPAN archives gather dust, what remains but the echo of a show horse’s cry?

Sunrise did not stop Booker. He did not appear to take a break to pee, but he was definitely full of shit. All this talking will amount to nothing in the civil war that is engulfing our nation. Trump is plotting an unconstitutional third term while closing big parts of the federal government, stepping away from efforts to prevent disease, triggering inflation, and possibly pushing the world toward war.

History will now count Booker atop those three Republicans, without explaining their similarities. A wave of inflation is still going to swamp the economy and thousands of government employees are being fired, as the agencies created by law are shuttered by a man whose duty is to faithfully execute the laws.

Booker received loud applause when he yielded the floor after being at the lectern for 25 hours and 5 minutes. One must wonder whether the well-heeled lawmakers appreciated this record-breaking stunt or if they were glad that he finally decided to shut up.

Regardless of how it was received, Senator Cory Booker now holds a record for the longest and most feckless US Senate floor speech in history.