What The Hell America!

For 25 hours, Sen. Cory Booker from New Jersey launched a one-man protest against the Trump administration on the Senate floor. This marathon effort, where the 55-year-old Democrat held his speaking time by refusing to sit, eat, or use the bathroom, served as a way to spotlight the voices of Americans who are fearful for their futures under a second Trump presidency. Those Americans want Democrats to do more, Booker said — and this was his answer. 

“For almost 20 hours, we have laid out what they’re trying to do. Twenty hours. I want to stand more, and I will, but I’m begging people: Don’t let this be another normal day in America,” Booker said Tuesday evening. As he approached breaking the Senate record for the longest floor speech in recorded history, Booker asked Americans to respond in kind. 

“What is more needed now is less people sitting on the sidelines. Less people being witnesses of American history and more people being determined to make it. To make history, to call to the conscience of this nation,” he said. 

A senator well known for using passion and emotion to fuel his speeches, Booker did not break his stride on the Senate floor. And as he read through 1,164 pages of prepared material, he kept his focus on the harms befalling everyday people caused by what he described as the Trump administration’s “reckless actions.” Those actions include gutting hundreds of millions of dollars from the Department of Education, laying off thousands of Social Security employees, causing instability for farmers, and using immigration policies to undermine Americans’ constitutional rights. But a key focus of his speech was Americans being in danger of losing their health care. 

Health care

Throughout his speech, Booker read letters from constituents begging him to protect their access to Social Security and Medicaid. They described the programs as lifelines for themselves and for their family members living with disabilities. As Booker read their stories, he frequently became choked up. Those letters came from the parents of disabled children and women who rely on Medicaid for their frequent hospitalizations, to care for their children, for their wheelchair transportation and their rehabilitation at senior citizen centers. 

“Medicaid has saved my life many, many times,” Booker read from one constituent’s letter. “Without it, many people in America will die. Please help us.” 

“Dear Senator Booker, when I got out of the Navy, I had mental illness,” another letter read. “I needed psychiatric medicine to stop going in and out of the hospital. Because of Medicare I have medicine that has kept me out of the hospital for 18 years.” 

Republicans in Congress are pursuing hundreds of billions of dollars in cuts to the Medicaid program, which insures more than 70 million Americans and disproportionately serves women and children, to help offset tax breaks pushed for by President Donald Trump, many of which go to wealthy Americans. Trump has said that his administration won’t cut Medicaid, except to “find some abuse or waste.” However, in order for Republicans to fulfill his spending plan, cuts will have to come from Medicare, Medicaid or the Children’s Health Insurance program, according to the independent Congressional Budget Office. 

Medicaid serves about 1 in 5 people in the country, and cuts to the program will disproportionately hurt people of color and children, according to the Economic Policy Institute. 

Social Security

On Monday, five hours into his speech on the Senate floor, Booker accused the Trump administration and the so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), spearheaded by billionaire Elon Musk, of sowing chaos into the country’s Social Security services. 

And the agency has been thrown into chaos amid cost-cutting efforts led by DOGE: thousands of Social Security staffers have been fired, recipients are confused about what benefits they can still access, and the Social Security Administration website crashed four times last month as retirees and disabled Americans tried to access their accounts, per the Washington Post. Despite President Trump’s pledge to not touch Social Security, Musk’s DOGE has hindered its ability to function. 

“Ninety years. Our country has made a promise to people that if you pay into the Social Security program your whole life, that money will be there for you when you retire,” Booker said on the Senate floor. He stressed that for 40 percent of older Americans, Social Security is their sole source of income — and denounced cuts to the agency made without the input of Congress as essentially cuts to the American Dream. 

“There are so many hard-working families that believe in this idea, if I work hard all my life in America, I can make ends meet, I can raise my kids, and I can retire with dignity,” he said. “Social Security is not the government’s money to spend. It’s the hard-earned savings of working Americans … The president and Elon Musk need to keep their hands off of it.”

Education

Eight hours into his speech, Booker turned to the Trump administration’s efforts to dismantle the Department of Education. Critics say that closing the department will hurt economically disadvantaged youth, children with disabilities and students who need financial aid for college. In his speech, Booker focused on the threat that education cuts bring to a functioning democracy — and said that without robust education, the United States will fall behind other countries while letting its students down. 

“By executive fiat, undermining the separation of powers, the administration wants to dismantle, defund, destroy the Department of Education and scatter its responsibilities across agencies that themselves are going through massive personnel cuts and are not equipped to handle them. This is ultimately about whether or not we as a nation believe that every child deserves an education,” he said. 

Making history

In bringing the voices of the vulnerable and the marginalized to the Senate floor, Booker did more than break a record — he changed the significance of that record. 

The previous record for the longest Senate floor speech was held by Sen. Strom Thurmond of South Carolina. In 1957, Thurmond launched a 24-hour filibuster to rail against the first civil rights bill since Reconstruction. His efforts ultimately failed: That bill passed and paved the way for greater civil rights advancements for Black Americans in 1964. Now, Thurmond’s record is held by a Black senator who admonished a presidential administration for restricting civil rights. 

As Booker stood on the Senate floor, beseeching his colleagues to pay attention to what he described as “a nation in crisis,” he was aware of that shadow on this historic moment; that the last man to stand in his place was a segregationist. 

“I’m getting close to a record, folks,” Booker said Tuesday. He was met with applause, but he looked troubled. “There’s a room here in the Senate named after Strom Thurmond. To hate him is wrong. Maybe my ego got too caught up that if I stood here, maybe, maybe, just maybe, I could break this record of the man who tried to stop the rights upon which I stand. I’m not here, though, because of his speech — I’m here despite his speech.” 

As Booker neared the end of his speech, he turned to the legacy of the late civil rights leader and longtime Rep. John Lewis of Georgia. He wanted to hold the floor in the spirit of Lewis, he said; and he remembered Lewis as a man who offered forgiveness even to the men that attacked him as an act of hate. 

“I beg folks to take his example of his early days, where he made himself determined to show his love for his country, at a time the country didn’t love him,” Booker said in his closing remarks. “He said he had to do something.” 

Booker brought that call to action to all Americans as he ended his speech with an oft-repeated phrase from the late John Lewis: “This is a moral moment. It’s not left or right, it’s right or wrong. Let’s get in good trouble,” he said, before yielding the floor.