Cory Booker has criticized Trump on Senate floor for more than 24 hours, nearing record – live
Booker’s anti-Trump speech surpasses 24 hours on Senate floor
Cory Booker, the Democratic senator from New Jersey, has surpassed 24 hours of speaking on the Senate floor.
Booker took to the floor at 7pm ET on Monday in an attempt to disrupt the normal business of the Senate to protest the “grave and urgent” danger of Donald Trump’s presidential administration.
As he approached a full day of speaking, Booker had begun to stumble slightly in his speech, but was still on his feet, making sweeping gestures as he spoke.
Over the past hour, Booker has evoked the Founding Fathers, Civil Rights leaders and lawmakers who stood up against McCarthyism in his calls for congressmembers to more assertively hold the Trump administration accountable.
Yielding to a question from Connecticut senator Chris Murphy, while retaining the floor, Booker rested a moment while Murphy recounted the longest speech in Senate history, given in 1957 by Republican senator Strom Thurmond to filibuster the Civil Rights Act.
“What you have done here today Senator Booker couldn’t be more different than what occurred on this floor in 1957,” he said. “Strom Thurmond was standing in the way of inevitable progress.” He added, “Today, you are standing in the way not of progress but of retreat.”
Key events
As he approaches 24 hours of speaking on the Senate floor, the New Jersey senator Cory Booker has invoked nation’s founders.
“If men were angels, no government would be necessary,” Booker said, reading from Federalist No 51. He added: “But our president is no angel.”
Emphasizing the roll Congress should play to hold the executive branch accountable, Booker decried his fellow congressmembers for failing to vote against the president’s cabinet nominees and other policies.
“The most powerful man in the world and the richest man in the world have taken a battle axe to the Veterans’ Association, a battle axe to the Department of Education, a battle axe to the only agency solely focused on protecting consumers against big banks and other factors that might abuse them,” he said. “What will we do in this body? What will we do in the House of Represenatitves? Right now the answer is nothing.”
Hours after the health secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr wrote on social media: “The revolution begins today!” thousands of employees of the Department of Health and Human Services received layoff notices.
Those layoffs forced nearly half of the regional offices for Head Start to close Tuesday, according to the National Head Start Association. Five of the preschool program’s 12 regional offices closed due to workforce reductions.
The Canadian prime minister, Mark Carney, spoke on the phone with the Mexican president, Claudia Sheinbaum, today to discuss the “importance of building upon the strong trading and investment relationship between the two countries”.
The North American leaders spoke about “the challenging times ahead” and promised to stay in “close contact”, according to the Canadian government, as they navigate efforts to secure their sovereignty and economic competitiveness amid tariffs and other threats from the United States.
Booker’s speech criticizing Trump becomes second-longest in Senate history
Cory Booker, the Democratic senator from New Jersey, has been speaking on the Senate floor for more than 23 hours.
“This is wrong in every way you look at it,” he said, speaking about the Trump administrations’ proposed budget cuts, as he approached the 23-hour mark of his speech.
Booker began his speech yesterday at 7pm ET in protest of what he called the “grave and urgent” danger that Donald Trump’s presidential administration poses to democracy and the American people.
Booker is closing in on the longest speech ever given in Senate history. In 1957, Strom Thurmond, a Republican from South Carolina, gave an anti-civil rights speech that lasted 24 hours and 18 minutes.
In 1986, Alfonse D’Amato, a Republican from New York, spoke about the Defense Authorization Act for 23 hours and 30 minutes. But earlier today, the Senate Historical Office corrected its list to omit D’Amato’s speech because the Senate adjourned for several hours during his remarks.
During a Fox News interview this afternoon, Elon Musk made a last-minute appeal to Wisconsin voters in support of the state supreme court candidate Brad Schimel.
“A judge race, election in Wisconsin will decide whether or not the Democrats can gerrymander Wisconsin in order to remove two House seats from Republican to Democrat,” Musk said. “If you know people in Wisconsin, call them right now.”
Republicans including Musk and Donald Trump have backed Schimel, a former state attorney general, in hopes of turning the 4-3 supreme court conservative. Musk traveled to Wisconsin over the weekend, where he handed out $1m checks to two voters.
Gabrielle Canon
A Pennsylvania man has filed a lawsuit against Elon Musk claiming the billionaire reneged on payments promised to canvassers during the 2024 election, the New York Times reports.
Filed as a class action against Musk and his Super Pac, the suit alleges Musk failed to pay the claimant $20,000 he was owed for collecting signatures.
Musk told Pennsylvanians he’d pay $100 to those willing to sign petitions supporting free speech and gun ownership rights, and $47 for each signatory recruited, an amount raised to $100 in the final days of the election.
Gabrielle Canon
Thousands of people are tuning in to watch Cory Booker hold the Senate floor as his marathon speech against the “grave and urgent” danger posed by the Trump administration closes in on the 22-hour mark.
Just before 5pm ET, more than 71,500 people were watching along from Booker’s live feed on YouTube. Meanwhile, several news organizations, including AP, PBS, CBS – and of course the Guardian – had feeds of their own. Others tuned in through C-SPAN.
Booker began speaking on Monday evening, vowing to remain on the Senate floor as long as he was “physically able”. His speech has already become one of the longest in Senate history.
“These are not normal times in our nation,” Booker said as he launched into his speech. “And they should not be treated as such in the United States Senate. The threats to the American people and American democracy are grave and urgent, and we all must do more to stand against them.”
Mike Waltz and other national security officials using Gmail for government business – report
National security leaders, including the White House national security adviser Mike Waltz, conducted government business over personal Gmail accounts, the Washington Post reports.
The Post cites documents it reviewed and interviews with three US officials that showed members of Donald Trump’s National Security Council had used the commercial email service, which is less secure than Signal, the service Waltz and other Trump administration officials used to coordinate a bombing attack on Yemen last week.
“A senior Waltz aide used the commercial email service for highly technical conversations with colleagues at other government agencies involving sensitive military positions and powerful weapons systems relating to an ongoing conflict,” the Post reports. “While the NSC official used his Gmail account, his interagency colleagues used government-issued accounts, headers from the email correspondence show.”
It continues: “Waltz has had less sensitive, but potentially exploitable information sent to his Gmail, such as his schedule and other work documents, said officials, who, like others, spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe what they viewed as problematic handling of information. The officials said Waltz would sometimes copy and paste from his schedule into Signal to coordinate meetings and discussions.”
Today so far
We’ve been watching today as New Jersey senator Cory Booker enters his 21st hour of speaking during a marathon address designed to “disrupt” the “normal business of the United States Senate for as long as” he is physically able. Here’s what else is going on across the country.
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Voters are casting their ballots in Wisconsin and Florida in elections that may prove a symbol of Donald Trump’s popularity and Elon Musk’s clout.
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Elon Musk’s so-called “department of government efficiency” is finalizing its shuttering of the US Agency for International Development, ordering the firings of thousands of local workers and US diplomats and civil servants assigned to the agency overseas.
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Thousands of Health and Human Services (HHS) employees across the country are being dismissed as the Trump administration began implementing its controversial workforce reduction plan. The plan could see 10,000 staff removed from the department.
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The firings at HHS have included staff who were working on the Food and Drug Administration’s bird flu response, Reuters reports.
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Congressman Jerry Nadler, a New York Democrat, has issued a statement strongly condemning the Trump administration for cancelling $400m in federal grants and contracts to Columbia University because of what it alleged was the college’s repeated failure to protect students from antisemitic harassment.
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US attorney general Pam Bondi announced that she has directed federal prosecutors to seek the death penalty for Luigi Mangione, the man accused of murdering UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson outside a Manhattan hotel in December.
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Republican House speaker Mike Johnson failed to block a bipartisan effort to change House rules to allow new parents in Congress to vote remotely after the birth of a child. The proxy vote resolution has been led by Anna Paulina Luna of Florida and Democratic congresswoman Brittany Pettersen of Colorado.
Cory Booker’s Senate floor speech enters 21st hour
Cory Booker, the Democratic senator from New Jersey, has now spoken for 21 hours on the Senate floor in opposition to the Trump administration.
Booker has used his speaking slot to decry the Trump administration’s spending cuts, its attempt to abolish the Department of Education, the president’s attempts to bypass the judicial system and the removal of people from the US who speak out against the administration.
He began his speech at 7pm ET on Monday night and will pass the 21-hour mark at 4pm on Tuesday. Booker has had help from Democratic colleagues, who have been asking him questions that have allowed him to have a break without yielding the floor.
Booker is getting close to the all-time Senate record. In 1957, Strom Thurmond spoke for 24 hours and 18 minutes to filibuster the Civil Rights Act of the same year.
First lady Melania Trump spoke at the International Women of Courage Award ceremony on Tuesday where she spoke about courage as “a strength that is based in love”.
Trump, during a rare public appearance at the state department, recognized eight women from around the world for bravery, including an Israeli woman who was held hostage by Hamas. She said:
I have harnessed the power of love as a source of strength during challenging times. Love has inspired me to embrace forgiveness, nurture empathy and exhibit bravery in the face of unforeseen obstacles.
Congressman Jerry Nadler condemns Trump’s ‘authoritarian tactics’ amid ‘attacks’ on higher education
Congressman Jerry Nadler, a New York Democrat, has issued a statement strongly condemning the Trump administration for cancelling $400m in federal grants and contracts to Columbia University because of what it alleged was the college’s repeated failure to protect students from antisemitic harassment.
The administration announced on Monday that a federal antisemitism taskforce is also reviewing more than $255m in contracts between Harvard University and the federal government, as well as $8.7bn in grant commitments to Harvard and its affiliates.
“I strongly condemn former President Trump’s latest attacks on higher education cloaked under the guise of fighting antisemitism,” Nadler said in his statement on Tuesday.
Withholding funding from Columbia and, potentially, Harvard will not make Jewish students safer … Make no mistake. Trump’s actions are not rooted in genuine concern for combatting hate.
Nadler noted that the president’s record “is stained by praise for neo-Nazis, Holocaust deniers, and white nationalists”, adding:
I call on our nation’s universities to reject President Trump’s demands and to fight back against these hostile acts. If necessary, these issues must be litigated in federal court to put an end to the illegal and unconstitutional actions taken by the Trump Administration.
