Merkley Holds Marathon Speech but Falls Short of Cory Booker’s Record

Merkley began speaking at 6:21 p.m. Tuesday evening, and finished just after 5 p.m. Wednesday.

Jeff Merkley

Mariam Zuhaib/AP

Close, but no cigar.

Sen. Jeff Merkley on Wednesday approached Sen. Cory Booker’s record for the longest floor speech in Senate history, but stopped just two hours short of the milestone.

“I came to the Senate floor tonight to ring the alarm bells,” Merkley said as he began the speech, which focused on what he said were President Donald Trump’s threats to American democracy. “We’re in the most perilous moment, the biggest threat to our republic since the Civil War. President Trump is shredding our Constitution.”

Merkley began speaking at 6:21 p.m. Tuesday evening, and finished just after 5 p.m. Wednesday.

The previous record for a Senate floor speech was set by Booker earlier this year when he spoke for 25 hours and five minutes in protest of the Trump administration.

Merkley’s talkathon, which halts Senate proceedings from continuing until he concludes, forced Senate leaders to postpone a scheduled vote on the House-passed continuing resolution that would end the federal government shutdown.

Lawmakers are not allowed to take bathroom breaks or sit down for the duration of their speeches per Senate rules, which the soon-to-be 69-year-old lawmaker said was taking a toll on his body.

NOTUS reported that during Booker’s speech, the New Jersey senator burned nearly 7,500 calories across the two days he held the floor.

“I’m starting to feel a little dazed after all of these hours on the floor,” Merkley said around the 18-hour mark. “I don’t recommend standing through the night and talking … Not a healthy pursuit. But I am standing here to ring the alarm bells.”

Throughout his close-to-23-hour speech, Merkley condemned the tactics federal law enforcement has used against protesters, spoke out against the deployment of National Guard troops in Oregon and doubled down on his warnings that Trump is a threat to democracy.

Merkley was joined by other Senate Democrats on the House floor Wednesday, including Sens. Chris Murphy, Maggie Hassan and Elizabeth Warren.

“President Trump is following a playbook that other would-be autocrats have used successfully to transform democracies into either autocracies or deeply illegal democracies in which the opposition party never wins,” Murphy said during his remarks. “You can see this very detailed plan to constrict the space that the opposition, which is from an organizational standpoint the Democratic Party, has to operate.”

Merkley previously held the Senate floor for 15 hours in 2017, protesting against Trump’s nomination of Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court.

Republicans spoke out this week against Merkley’s prolonged speech, criticizing Democrats for wasting time they said should be spent negotiating the terms of reopening the government.

“The Democrats are going to make Capitol Police and Capitol support staff — who they refuse to pay — work all night so they can give speeches patting themselves on the back for shutting down the government and hurting the American people,” Sen. John Barrasso of Wyoming posted Tuesday night on X. “How ridiculous is that?”

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries also protested the Trump administration with a prolonged speech. In early July, he broke the record for the longest House floor speech with one that spanned eight hours and 44 minutes.

The federal government is in its fourth week of a government shutdown with little signs of a resolution in sight. The chair of the House Appropriations Committee, Rep. Tom Cole, told NOTUS this week that there “clearly” needs to be another continuing resolution, given that funding in the current bill expires Nov. 21.

“If it were up to me, we’d come back right away,” Cole said in an interview in his Capitol Hill office.