Cory Booker Is Turning His Record-Setting Senate Speech Into a Book
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Cory Booker is turning his record-setting Senate speech into a book. The New Jersey senator, who spoke for just over 25 hours on March 31 into April 1, railed against the Trump administration's threats to Social Security, Medicare, and Trump's attacks on the judiciary in a speech that set a record for the longest Senate floor speech in history.
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The book, titled Stand, was announced on May 28 by The St. Martin's Publishing Group. It will be published on Nov. 11, 2025, and is available for preorder now. According to the publisher's notes, the book 'expands on' Booker's speech and 'offers a compelling vision for the future to readers who are eager to make a difference.'
$30.99
Buy Now On Amazon
Buy Now at barnes&noble
Notably, Booker's speech surpassed a record previously set by Strom Thurmond, who filibustered the Civil Rights Act of 1957 for just over 24 hours. However, Booker's speech was not a filibuster because it was not intended to stop a specific piece of legislation. Instead, Booker spoke broadly against the Trump administration's policies.
Booker addressed the decision not to target a specific bill in an interview with Rolling Stone in May. 'In the modern Senate, it's very hard to even get control of the floor. I said to my team, 'How did Ted Cruz get control of the floor? How did Rand Paul? Figure out how they got control.' The person in the cloakroom told me, very annoyingly, 'We let [Rand Paul take the floor] because he promised it was only going to be a couple minutes — and he lied through his teeth.… Are you willing to lie to [Senate Majority Leader John] Thune?' I said, 'That's not the way I roll. I'm not going to lie, so let's just let them know that I'm going to take control of the floor and hold it for as long as I possibly can.''
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'I don't know if exit strategy is in the Trump vocabulary,' he said. This conversation has been edited for length and clarity. Attorney General Rayfield, this is a pretty big win — for the moment — for you and the other 11 attorneys general… That's not a lot of optimism there, Joe. You know, a lot can happen, it's a chaotic environment. But it's a big win for you and the other AGs who brought the suit challenging a huge swath of the Trump tariffs. What's the chatter among you and your attorney general colleagues — what's the mood? Well, this broke obviously [Wednesday] evening, and everybody was looking at the decision. That's the first thing you do, right? You sit there and you say, 'Hey, was this panel unanimous?' And it was. People always want to know where were those judges appointed? Two of them were Republican appointed judges. Now, I think that [question of who appointed each judge] plays into this narrative that judges are political, which I absolutely do not like, because I really believe that judges try to avoid that, but it is a reality of our world. People always want to get into those details, because I think conservative folks are looking for those third-party validators in that space. So this creates a little bit of cognitive dissonance for folks that trend right. The one sentiment that really was overwhelming for all of us: Hey, unanimous. You've got this nice talking point to show: that it is a bipartisan panel of judges that ruled in this way. You have judges that are incredibly educated and judges that applied the prior case law in this space. I think it was also very telling in the way that the court hearing went last week, where you had the Trump lawyers coming in basically saying, 'Hey, you can't review anything we do with emergency orders. And you can't review anything we do with respect to IEEPA. Those are all political questions.' And I think that spirit in the decision really came out, [with the court] kind of saying; 'No, that's not right. And frankly, Congress never intended that.' When we spoke earlier this month, you were confident that the facts of the case and the merits of the case — that the tariffs had exceeded the authority granted by Congress — were strong, and obviously the U.S. Court of International Trade agreed. The administration has already appealed the ruling — can you lay out what comes next, and how you're expecting those same arguments to land as you reach the appellate courts, and if you ultimately reach the Supreme Court? The first step will be the federal circuit in D.C., and so we'll move into that space. And this is a very interesting thing: This was a judgment on the merits. A lot of the cases that you've been seeing are these rulings on preliminary injunctions. This was a summary judgment ruling on the merits for this case. I think that what is very helpful is you go from a specialty court — a court that has been really educated in the issues of trade and the laws and the history — into the federal circuit. I think the arguments that we're making are very palpable and convey very nicely into an appellate court in that scenario. What you'll have is the Trump administration coming back and making the same darn arguments, right? And I think they really want to have a ruling in the federal circuit that says, 'Hey, this is a political question issue. You don't get to question the president and you and judges certainly don't get to make factual determinations on this statute. That's not your role.' I think that's a really tough argument to make, because if you agree — and this is what I think sold it — if you agree with President Trump's lawyers' assessment, nothing is reviewable. You could make an emergency on anything. I could say that our export of hockey players into Canada is incredibly alarming, and it's creating an advantage to Canadian hockey teams. And so this is an emergency, okay? That emergency isn't reviewable, then I could say, 'You know what? I am going to put a 1,000 percent tariff on Canadian maple syrup. So I can create leverage and really bring back balance to American hockey teams versus Canadian hockey teams. And none of that is reviewable by a court.' And I think that when you really start looking at the importance of constitutional separation of powers, co-equal branches of government, and no one branch having too much power, this really starts to tilt the scales if you really take the president's arguments at face value. And I think that's what sold it. I think those same arguments have salience. I know they have saliency in every level of court. But it'll be interesting to see, do the Trump administration's arguments continue in this vein, or do they recognize that this is, constitutionally, a really big challenge? The other thing that I think is fascinating: I think that the Trump administration is entirely short-sighted. These democratic principles are meant as a check against Democratic presidents and Republican presidents alike. If you play this out, a Democratic president could get into office, create an emergency on firearms — I think 40 percent of our firearms in the United States are imported, or at least components of them are — and you can really start extrapolating out. Irrespective of party, this is a real problem and really tugs at the fundamental strings of why we have the rule of law in place. The markets rallied in the morning after the ruling — do you think, in more political terms, that this ruling actually could give the president an exit strategy on some of this tariff agenda, which has proven so controversial? It's an interesting question. I believe that if you take the Trump presidency and his administration at face value, they really do believe in tariffs, in using that as leverage in some of these conversations. And I think he could continue to pursue that strategy via Article 19 [trade rules] — he won't be able to do everything under that — but that's what Congress intended. I don't know if exit strategy is in the Trump vocabulary, but it will be interesting to see how they pivot, if they pivot, moving forward. Have you talked to Oregon Gov. Tina Kotek about the ruling? The governor texted me last night. There are a bunch of times in my life when I've gotten a ton of text messages. Every election that you win, you get a ton of text messages from people that you didn't know were your friends, and that are your long-lost friends. And then when I became speaker. And then there were a ton of text messages yesterday from you name it — friends, family, small businesses and elected officials as well.
