Cory Booker’s Senate Protest Joins Legacy of Black Political Resistance – Capital B News

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It took Sen. Cory Booker 25 hours and 5 minutes to make his point: The Trump administration’s actions are harmful to everyday Americans and a disruption was necessary.
“I rise with the intention of disrupting the normal business of the United States Senate for as long as I am physically able. I rise tonight because I believe, sincerely, that our nation is in crisis,” Booker said toward the start of his marathon speech that began Monday night and ended Tuesday night.
“In just 71 days, the president of the United States has inflicted so much harm on Americans’ safety, financial stability, the core foundations of our democracy, and even our aspirations as a people for — from our highest offices — a sense of common decency,” he continued. “These are not normal times in America, and they should not be treated as such.”
His protest continued the long and ongoing history of Black political opposition to injustice and inequality. The Democrat’s defiance brings to mind not only the legacy of U.S. Rep. John Lewis — but also the actions of U.S. Rep. Al Green of Texas, who in March interrupted a Trump address, and former U.S. Sen. Hiram Revels of Mississippi, who in 1870 used the Senate floor to attack efforts to deny Black political representation in Georgia.
“We got civil rights because people marched for it, sweated for it, and John Lewis bled for it,” the U.S. senator from New Jersey said on Tuesday.
The overwhelming focus of Booker’s marathon speech was protecting access to health services. He condemned Trump over the “recklessness” of the administration’s actions, which will have a major impact on Black Americans.
“They are trying to gut Medicaid and Medicare, programs on which nearly a third of our country rely — all to pay for tax cuts to billionaires and corporations,” he said on Monday.
The administration has begun firing 10,000 federal health workers, raising concerns among managers across health agencies about how these cuts might affect entitlement programs such as Medicaid and Medicare — government health-insurance programs for lower-income Americans and for Americans who are age 65 or older and younger Americans with disabilities, respectively.
While Black Americans make up 14% of the U.S. population, roughly 20% of Medicaid enrollees are Black; about 10% of Medicare enrollees are Black.
Over the course of 24 hours, his colleagues in Congress publicly supported him.
He mentioned that, before he began his speaking marathon, Sen. Lisa Blunt Rochester of Delaware prayed with him.
“My sister came over and prayed with me that I could stand for a long time, because she knew what we were trying to do, which was to try to create with who we serve, with John Lewis-type good trouble in this institution, to not do things normal,” Booker recalled.
Sen. Raphael Warnock of Georgia, who has been an advocate of expanding Medicaid in the Peach State, said on Tuesday that he’s “very proud” of Booker for sticking up for ordinary Americans.
“The administration is working for billionaires,” said Warnock, who in 2021 became the first Black American to represent Georgia in the Senate. “They’re working for people like Elon Musk.”
Warnock also is the senior pastor of Atlanta’s Ebenezer Baptist Church, where Martin Luther King Jr. was a pastor until he was gunned down in 1968.
Meanwhile, on X, the Congressional Black Caucus, long seen as the “conscience of the Congress,” declared shortly after midnight on Tuesday, “He’s still going. We’re with you the whole way, @SenBooker.”
A Democrat, Booker has represented New Jersey in the Senate since 2013; he was the first Black person to hold that seat. Prior to joining the upper chamber of Congress, he was the 38th mayor of Newark from 2006 to 2013.
While Booker was born in Washington, D.C., he was raised in Harrington Park, New Jersey. He’s a graduate of Stanford University and Yale Law School. He also attended the University of Oxford’s Queen’s College on a Rhodes Scholarship.
In the Senate, Booker has championed a variety of causes, including affirmative action, marriage equality, and economic reforms to reduce the racial wealth gap. He captured national attention in 2022 when he offered passionate support to Ketanji Brown Jackson during her U.S. Supreme Court confirmation hearings.
Because Booker isn’t attempting to “prolong debate and delay or prevent a vote on a bill, resolution, amendment, or other debatable question,” his speech isn’t technically a filibuster, according to the Senate website.
His actions are permitted under Senate rules.
“Unless any special limits on debate are in effect, senators who have been recognized may speak for as long as they wish,” according to the Congressional Research Service. “They usually cannot be forced to cede the floor, or even be interrupted, without their consent.”
However, one requirement is that the senator “must remain standing and must speak more or less continuously.” One way Booker is finding partial relief is by permitting his colleagues to ask questions, though he still can’t sit while they’re talking.
The longest filibuster in U.S. history occurred when U.S. Sen. Strom Thurmond of South Carolina, a segregationist, spoke for 24 hours and 18 minutes in opposition to the Civil Rights Act of 1957. His efforts ultimately failed: Congress passed the bill, and President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed it into law.
Historically, the filibuster has often been used by opponents of civil rights legislation, and some see it as a “relic” of the Jim Crow era.
Booker mentioned Thurmond on Tuesday, asking, “You think we got civil rights one day because Strom Thurmond — after filibustering for 24 hours — you think we got civil rights because he came to the floor one day and said, ‘I’ve seen the light?’”
Booker’s speech comes just weeks after Green of Texas, also a Democrat, protested during Trump’s address to a joint session of Congress.
Toward the start of Trump’s speech on March 4, when the president claimed that the 2024 election offered him “a mandate like has not been seen in many decades,” Green interrupted. The Democrat insisted that Trump has “no mandate” to cut Medicaid.
Green, who’s represented a district in Houston since 2005, was kicked out of the chamber and eventually censured by the House. But he had no regrets, arguing that incivility is the only path forward for Democrats under the current administration.
“This is about the people who are being punished by virtue of losing their health care,” Green told reporters. “This is the richest country in the world, and we have people who don’t have good health care. We’ve got to do better, and now we’re about to cut Medicaid, which is for the poor.”
Brandon Tensley is Capital B's national politics reporter. More by Brandon Tensley
Capital B is a Black-led, nonprofit local and national news organization reporting for Black communities across the country.