Why has Cory Booker been talking for 19 straight hours (and counting)?

If you check in on any of New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker’s social media pages today, you’ll probably notice that he’s been talking for a while. He’s standing on the Senate floor (occasionally resting against his desk) to criticize the Trump administration’s agenda and the work of Elon Musk’s “Department of Government Efficiency.” He’s also showing his fellow Democrats what it looks like to “do something” when you’re locked out of power in Washington DC. Into his second day of a marathon address on the Senate floor, Booker is engaging in almost, but not quite, a filibuster — an old congressional tradition. Filibusters are marathon addresses used as a procedural tool. They take advantage of the Senate’s rules that allow for unlimited debate or speaking by a senator unless there have been special limits put in place. Senators recognized by the presiding officer can speak indefinitely, “usually cannot be forced to cede the floor, or even be interrupted”…but “must remain standing and must speak more or less continuously,” according to the Congressional Research Service. But Booker’s address isn’t a filibuster — there’s no legislation that he’s trying to hold up. Instead, it’s a form of political theater and protest against the Trump administration. And it comes at a time when overwhelming shares of his party’s membership think their elected leaders aren’t putting up a tough enough fight to resist Donald Trump’s agenda. About two-thirds of Democratic voters would prefer their leaders “stick to their positions even if this means not getting things done in Washington” a March NBC News poll found. They would prefer congressional leadership use whatever tools they have available to slow down the administration’s work: One recent poll, for example, even found that about three-quarters of Democratic and Democratic-leaning independent voters support the idea of “using procedural tactics like the filibuster to prevent Republican bills from passing.” Still, attention-grabbing moments like these aren’t guaranteed to have staying power. It’s far too early to tell whether Booker is galvanizing a lasting opposition as he might have hoped, or whether this will be drowned out by another Trump story. Still, it’s feeding the Democratic base’s hunger for (any kind of) Trump resistance — as he overruns traditional checks on his power. That’s not easy to do when you’re locked out of power, so Booker’s gamble is yet the latest attempt of Democrats trying to figure out how to fight back. Booker’s speech started on Monday evening, when he announced he would be “speaking as long as he is physically able to lift the voices of Americans who are being harmed and not being heard in this moment of crisis.” “These are not normal times in our nation,” he said. “And they should not be treated as such in the United States Senate.” Since then, he’s only stopped to allow the Senate chaplain to deliver a traditional prayer at noon, and to allow fellow Democratic senators to ask him questions and give him a bit of a rest. Yet he has remained standing, and only taken a couple drinks of water. He’s already entered the top rankings of the longest Senate speeches delivered. (Only one other sitting senator, Republican Ted Cruz of Texas, has delivered a longer address, when trying unsuccessfully to defund the Affordable Care Act.) This kind of show of political force, at least, has been what top Democrats were saying when warning about Trump on the campaign trail last year. Yet many in the Democratic base have felt like since Trump entered office, their leaders weren’t acting with that kind of urgency. Poll after poll shows that the Democratic rank and file feel adrift, leaderless, and dissatisfied. That fury intensified last month, when Democrats voted for a GOP-brokered spending bill to keep the government open. The thinking at the time was that a shutdown would do more harm than good, but many in the party’s base saw it as an unforgivable cave. Booker’s speech is an attempt to try something else. And whether or not it works, it’s something different. Update, April 1, 2025, 7:45 pm: This story was originally published earlier in the day and has been updated to reflect that Booker has been speaking for 24 straight hours.