Greensboro's African American Community Newspaper since 1967
This week in the U.S. Senate Chambers, Democratic New Jersey Senator Cory Booker spoke on the Senate floor, beginning Monday night and going till Tuesday night for a record 25 hours and five minutes, in an effort to thwart the Trump agenda.
In the daily press briefing on Tuesday, April 2, Karoline Leavitt, White House Press Secretary, declared, “April 2 is liberation day.” Leavitt inferred that the liberation was President Trump’s announcement of new tariffs to get U.S. companies to keep all product production in the United States. The presidential spokeswoman said American companies would not be subjected to tariff costs if they produced in the United States.
Democrats criticize the targeted tariffs, claiming they will impact American companies, forcing price hikes that will transfer to the pockets of the American consumer. Also, during the Tuesday afternoon White House Briefing, Leavitt affirmed that auto tariffs would go into effect on Thursday, April 3.
Meanwhile, on the other side of Pennsylvania Ave., liberation had a very different look as Sen. Booker, having spoken since 7 p.m. Eastern Monday, discussed issues of Medicare, healthcare, education, immigration and national security. Booker made history with his protest by surpassing the 24 hours and 18 minutes completed by then-Republican South Carolina Senator Storm Thurmond in 1957. The Thurmond filibuster was against civil rights legislation.
Booker’s protest was not a filibuster as he was not opposing or blocking a vote or legislation. He took this exhaustive action as he said, “I rise tonight because our nation is in crisis.”
The senator spoke, answered questions, and recited famous works like the Negro National Anthem written by James Weldon Johnson and composed by John Rosamond Johnson.
“I rise to disrupt the normal business of the Senate as long as I can,” said the New Jersey Democratic Senator, speaking on the Senate floor.
The 55-year-old senator, a former football tight end at Stanford University, finished speaking and limped off the floor, setting the record for the longest continuous Senate floor speech in the chamber’s history. Booker was assisted by fellow Democrats who gave him a break from speaking by asking him questions on the Senate floor.
It was a remarkable show of stamina as Democrats try to show their frustrated supporters that they are doing everything possible to contest Trump’s agenda. Yet Booker also provided a moment of historical solace for a party searching for its way forward: By standing on the Senate floor for more than a night and day and refusing to leave, he had broken a record set 68 years ago by then Sen. Strom Thurmond of South Carolina, a segregationist and southern Democrat, who filibustered the advance of the Civil Rights Act in 1957.
“I’m here despite his (Thurmond’s) speech,” said Booker, who spoke openly on the Senate floor of his roots as the descendant of both slaves and slave-owners. He added, “I’m here because as powerful as he was, the people are more powerful.”
