Cory Booker stood in the U.S. Senate for 25 hours without sitting, eating, or leaving the floor. That choice didn’t come from ego or ambition. It came from a responsibility to people whose voices don’t echo through Capitol Hill. The single mother trying to hold on to Medicaid. The veteran whose mental health depends on Medicare. The elder in Detroit who built this country and now can’t get through to Social Security. Booker didn’t come to perform. He came to bear witness.
“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.
He brought with him 1,164 pages of real stories. Names. Lives. People who will lose care, access, and stability under Donald Trump’s second-term agenda. These weren’t hypotheticals. They were warnings. And Booker made sure every letter was read into the Congressional record.
One came from a woman whose life depends on Medicaid. “Medicaid has saved my life many, many times. Without it, many people in America will die. Please help us.”
Another came from a Navy veteran. “Dear Senator Booker, when I got out of the Navy, I had mental illness. 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.”
These weren’t pulled for effect. They reflected what millions already know—this government is balancing its future on the backs of the vulnerable.
Republicans in Congress are pushing for hundreds of billions in Medicaid cuts. Over 70 million Americans rely on it—many of them children, seniors, and women of color. Medicaid isn’t a cushion. It’s a foundation. When it’s removed, people don’t struggle. They fall.
Trump claims cuts would only target waste. But the Congressional Budget Office has shown otherwise. The budget math doesn’t allow for vague intentions. The numbers make clear that massive reductions to Medicaid, Medicare, and the Children’s Health Insurance Program are necessary to fund the tax breaks already proposed. Those breaks benefit the wealthiest. The burden falls on everyone else.
Booker kept reading. His voice stayed steady. His body stayed upright. He moved to the gutting of Social Security—not as a headline, but as a lived crisis.
The Department of Government Efficiency, known as DOGE and led by Elon Musk, has already cut thousands of Social Security staff. The agency’s website failed four times last month. Seniors and people with disabilities couldn’t access their accounts. Booker named the breach of trust.
“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.”
That promise has been broken. Four out of every ten seniors in America rely on Social Security as their only income. They don’t have second streams. They don’t have savings buffers. They have a monthly check and the hope it will arrive on time.
“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,” Booker 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.”
He stood five more hours and turned his focus to education. The Department of Education is targeted for elimination. The plan? Strip its authority by executive order and spread its responsibilities across underfunded federal agencies.
“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,” Booker said.
That move won’t impact elite schools. It won’t disrupt private education. It will collapse supports for low-income students, students with disabilities, and working-class families who depend on federal protections.
Booker didn’t speak to preserve a department. He spoke to protect a right. The right for every child—regardless of zip code—to receive an education with dignity and support. He named what many know: when education gets dismantled, Black and brown students lose the most.
As the hours pressed on, so did Booker. He never shifted tone. He stayed with the letters. He stayed with the people. Then came the reflection on the moment itself.
The last man to hold the record for the longest Senate speech was Strom Thurmond. His 24-hour stand in 1957 tried to block the first civil rights bill since Reconstruction. That history never left the room.
“I’m getting close to a record, folks,” Booker said. “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.”
That truth hung heavy. The record Booker broke had been held by a segregationist. Booker claimed it with purpose. Not to erase the past—but to confront it.
He remembered Congressman John Lewis before closing. Lewis walked into danger without flinching. He gave more than speeches. He gave his body.
“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. “He said he had to do something.”
Booker ended with Lewis’s call: “This is a moral moment. It’s not left or right, it’s right or wrong. Let’s get in good trouble.”
This wasn’t a record-breaking speech. It was a record-setting one. Booker stood because millions of Americans are being pushed down while corporations are lifted up. He stood because silence would have confirmed consent. He stood because sitting would have meant surrendering.
From Newark to Detroit, these policies are not abstract. They are felt in missing paychecks. Missed appointments. Missed chances. The community already knows what it means to stretch. What it means to survive. But survival should not be the ceiling.
Booker made the floor his stage, but not for spotlight. For the stories that never get heard, the names that never get said, and the futures that still depend on someone choosing to stand.
He didn’t sit. Because too many of us still can’t afford to.
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