Mr. Booker Goes to Washington

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/01/us/politics/booker-senate-trump.html

(“Cory Booker Slams Trump's Policies in Marathon Senate Floor Speech”)

Mr. Booker Goes to Washington.

The most famous filibuster in the history of the Senate? After reading from the Declaration of Independence, Jimmy Stewart as Senator Jefferson Smith in "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington" states: "Now, you're not gonna have a country that can make these kind of rules work, if you haven't got men that have learned to tell human rights from a punch in the nose.... I wouldn't give you two cents for all your fancy rules if, behind them, they didn't have a little bit of plain, ordinary, everyday kindness and little looking out for the other fella, too."

Senator Cory Booker took to the floor of the Senate last evening, to hold it for as long as he was physically able. And through the long night and just before dawn's first light, after 10 hours, he was still going strong.

So what to make of this? Mr. Booker was not disrupting the normal business of the Senate, at least not yet. He was not there to debate the merits of a particular piece of legislation before this body. He was there for a singular purpose. To bring America to its senses. To ask it to stop moving for a moment. To stand in place and listen. To see the devastation that 71 days of the second term of the presidency of Donald Trump had created. To grab hold of those who pay no heed, no mind to the magnitude of the suffering, the insanity of following Mr. Trump blindly into the abyss. To recognize the difference between human rights and a punch in the face.

I fear that the time spent by Mr. Booker asking America to take an unvarnished look at the reality of the moment will be lost in the cacophony that is Donald Trump. That the nation will little notice his words. That unlike Jefferson Smith, who captured the attention of those before him in that chamber and those across the nation, the pleas of Cory Booker will be as dust in the wind. A long night's journey into dawn, full of sound and fury signifying.....

Kindness and a little looking out for the other fella not in the vocabulary or the heart of those who, with malice aforethought, lead this nation astray and asunder.