Last week New Jersey Senator, Cory Booker, spoke for over 25 hours in the US Senate, surpassing the record for the longest speech – previously a racist effort to maintain white supremacy – in that chamber. Lauren C. Bell writes that while Booker’s speech criticizing the second Trump Administration’s policies was not technically a filibuster, it has gained widespread attention and offered a glimmer of hope for Democrats for the first time since their defeat in the 2024 presidential election.

At 7:00 p.m., on Monday, March 31, New Jersey Senator Cory Booker rose from his desk on the floor of the US Senate and began speaking: “Tonight, I rise with the intention of getting in some good trouble,” he said, linking his actions to the late US Representative and civil rights icon John Lewis’s call to action. “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 country is in crisis.” The crisis, according to Booker, is the second Trump presidency: “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,” Booker declared.

This was just the beginning of what would in the end be a 25-hour, five-minute speech. Booker broke the record for the longest speech ever delivered on the Senate floor. The previous record holder, South Carolina Senator Strom Thurmond had held the record for 68 years, when he filibustered the Civil Rights Act of 1957. Thurmond’s ultimately unsuccessful effort was designed to keep Congress from expanding civil rights for African Americans. The significance of the moment was not lost on Senator Booker, who noted that he served in the Senate despite the efforts of people like Thurmond to prevent him from gaining the right to do so.

Not technically a Filibuster

Although some accounts of Booker’s speech have called it a filibuster, it actually wasn’t one. Most scholars who study the filibuster define a filibuster as the use of the Senate’s unlimited debate rules for the purpose of preventing the Senate from making progress on a specific agenda item. Filibusters result from the lack of Senate rules to force a matter to a vote or to limit the amount of time a senator can speak. Unlike the House of Representatives and most national legislatures, which use majoritarian rules to structure—and end—debate, the US Senate requires a supermajority of 60 senators to agree to close debate. Otherwise, it is up to the senator who has been recognized to speak to decide when to stop talking. Moreover, under the Senate’s Standing Rule XIX, “[n]o Senator shall interrupt another Senator in debate without his consent.” This is why those who tuned in to watch Booker’s marathon speech might have seen him yield to colleagues for questions, while making it clear that he intended to retain the floor.

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Thus, because the Senate wasn’t debating anything when Booker went to the floor to begin his speech, it wasn’t a filibuster. Booker’s decision to speak during a lull in Senate business was likely a strategic move on his part, since had he obstructed an item of pending business, it might have appeared that he was objecting solely to that agenda item and not more broadly to the threats to American values, economic stability, and democracy that he aimed to draw attention to.

Still, while it was not technically a filibuster, Booker’s feat of rhetorical stamina harkened back to the kind of old-school filibuster romanticized in the 1939 Jimmy Stewart film Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. But today’s Senate filibusters rarely resemble the filibuster of Stewart’s fictionalized Senator Smith’s in the 1930s or Strom Thurmond’s in the 1950s. Contemporary filibusters are often invisible, more typically consisting of threats to derail legislative progress rather than actual efforts to do so. As a former Senate staffer explains, senators no longer even have to go to the floor or even offer an explanation for why they object to a matter of pending business. Simply notifying the leadership of their objection is sufficient to trigger cloture proceedings, which allow the Senate to bring debate to a close—even before a single word has been uttered in favor or against the pending matter. Filibustering via lengthy speechmaking has always been rare; today, it is diminishingly so.

The consequences of Booker’s speech 

The fact that contemporary filibusters are so often invisible helps to explain why Booker’s speech garnered so much attention—as many as three million likes on his TikTok page and 110,000 viewers on the YouTube live stream. It is rare to see any senator attempt to do what Booker did, for any reason. That Booker took to the Senate floor as a form of protest against the current president was itself enough to draw tens of thousands of viewers over the duration of his speech. When Booker finally yielded the floor, he was applauded by his Democratic colleagues, but was also lauded by a handful of Republican senators, including Utah’s John Curtis, Wyoming’s Cynthia Lummis, and Alaska’s Lisa Murkowski. That these senators publicly celebrated Booker was extraordinary, given the hyperpartisan politics of the current era.

After weeks of frustration with the Democratic party leadership in Congress for what many rank-and-file Democrats perceived as capitulation to an out-of-control executive branch, Booker’s speech offered a glimmer of hope. It also appeared to catalyze other Democrats in the Senate: within a few days, Virginia Senator Tim Kaine had secured bipartisan passage in the chamber of a bill to repeal the tariffs imposed on Canada by the Trump Administration, Arizona Senator Ruben Gallego announced holds on Trump administration nominees to the Veterans Administration, and Hawaii Senator Brian Schatz announced that he was placing a hold on 300 executive branch nominations. Former Biden press secretary Jen Psaki called last week the “best week for Democrats since election day.” 

In the end, Booker accomplished what he set out to do—and more. He certainly drew attention to the significant concerns that he, his constituents, and many Americans have expressed about the Trump Administration’s early actions. But he also succeeded in elevating his own political prospects while buoying the spirits of rank-and-file Democratic Party partisans. Whether his speech marks a turning point for Democrats in their efforts to push back against the Trump Administration remains to be seen. But one thing is certain: Booker relegated the previous record for the longest speech in Senate history—a racist effort to maintain white supremacy—to the proverbial dustbin of history. John Lewis would be proud.

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• Note: This article gives the views of the author, and not the position of USAPP – American Politics and Policy, nor the London School of Economics.