Cory Booker’s Speech: Protest or Performance?

Photo via USA Today

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From 7:00 pm on March 31st to 8:05 pm on April 1st, Cory Booker delivered a speech to protest Donald Trump’s second presidency and Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). It ended up being the longest recorded speech in United States Senate history. The speech lasted twenty-five hours and five minutes, beating the previous record-holder for longest recorded speech in Senate history: Strom Thurmond’s twenty-four-hour and eighteen-minute long filibuster of the Civil Rights Act of 1957. As he began to speak, he stated: “I rise with the intention of disrupting the normal business of the United States Senate for as long as I am physically able.” The senator remained on his feet for more than a full day, alternating between impassioned policy critiques, personal stories, and quotations from civil rights leaders. He took advantage of Senate rules that allow unlimited floor time as long as the speaker does not yield. To physically prepare for the feat, Booker used “a lot of tactics,” he said, including fasting and reducing water intake in the days before to make sure that he could stand for so long and wouldn’t have to take a bathroom break.

Booker’s speech, which served as a protest and a plea, covered what he described as the erosion of democratic norms, the assault on public institutions, and the privatization of governance under the mask of efficiency. One of his biggest warnings was against Musk’s appointment as head of DOGE, a new federal agency created to slash bureaucratic spending. He spoke to the concerns of many Americans about giving an unelected billionaire such outsized influence on government spending.

Supporters of the speech have hailed it as a powerful moment of resistance, a throwback to an era when strong speeches could shake the nation’s conscience. Clips of Booker speaking passionately about climate change, education, and wealth inequality went viral across social media, trending for much of April 1st. To many centrists and liberals, the speech was a much-needed stand against Trump and the creeping influence of tech billionaires in public policy. Democratic leaders praised Booker for leading with courage and reminding the country what the Senate floor is for.

But not everyone was impressed.

On the left, many activists and commentators dismissed the marathon speech as yet another example of symbolic liberalism—rhetoric-heavy, action-light. People pointed to the lack of a clear legislative plan to counter DOGE or resist Trump’s agenda, labeling the speech a “liberal performance piece” aimed more at building Booker’s personal brand than effecting real change. The criticism taps into a broader frustration on the left with the Democratic establishment’s tendency to prioritize speeches, gestures, and social media optics over concrete, systemic change. For some, Booker’s speech, despite its historic length, symbolizes the very stagnation it was supposed to challenge—a kind of pageantry in the face of an autocrat.

Still, there’s no denying the symbolic power of the moment. In an era when attention spans are short and outrage cycles even shorter, Booker’s willingness to speak nonstop for over a day earned him both admiration and anger. Whether the speech will ultimately mark a turning point in resistance to Trump’s second term, or be remembered as another dramatic gesture with little follow-through, remains to be seen.

For now, Cory Booker has written his name into the Senate’s history books. But the question in the air is whether history will remember the speech as an act of defiance or performative delay.

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This article was edited by Herman Singh, Cameron Ma, and Chapin Fish.