Latest news with #SubmergedLandsAct
Yahoo
01-04-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Where does Booker's marathon floor speech rank among longest in Senate history?
Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) pulled an all-nighter and has delivered a marathon speech on the Senate floor looking to combat the Trump administration and its policies. He's well on his way to breaking the record for longest speech, if he continues to deliver his remarks through the rest of the day. Booker, a Democratic leader, rose to speak at about 7 p.m. EDT Monday and was still going as of about 2 p.m. EDT Tuesday. He will break the record if he continues until at least 7:19 p.m. EDT Tuesday. 'These are not normal times in our nation,' he said. 'And they should not be treated as such in the United States Senate.' Despite the length of Booker's remarks, it is not considered a filibuster, though it did disrupt Senate business since it ran past 12 p.m., when the upper chamber was set to gavel in. Thurmond's 1957 civil rights debate on the Senate floor holds the record at 24 hours and 18 minutes long. He began speaking on the civil rights debate at 8:54 p.m. and spoke until 9:12 p.m. the following day. Thurmond broke the previously held record Sen. Wayne Morse set just four years prior. D'Amato has the second-longest filibuster speech, from 1986. He was speaking about the Defense Authorization Act and spoke for 23 hours and 30 minutes. Morse's 22-hour, 26-minute speech about the 1953 Submerged Lands Act was the longest in history when he delivered it. The five-term Oregon senator spent just a handful years of his life as an independent; he left the Republican Party a year prior to the speech and joined the Democrats two years after it, remaining a Democrat until his 1974 death at the age of 73. At 18 hours and counting, Booker has delivered the fifth-longest floor speech in Senate history. He must remain on the floor until 7:19 p.m. EDT Tuesday to break the previously held record. So far, he's spoken at length about what Democrats say are threats from the GOP to cut Medicaid and Social Security. Booker's Democratic colleagues have come to the floor and ask questions. He asked a staffer to take away his chair so he wouldn't be tempted to sit down. At times, he's read letters from constituents affected by the Trump administration's cuts since taking office. Booker said he was going to speak with 'the intention of disrupting the normal business' of the Senate 'for as long as I am physically able.' Cruz spoke about the Continuing Appropriations Act in 2013. He held the floor for 21 hours and 18 minutes. During the speech, Cruz argued about defunding the Affordable Care Act. His remarks turned playful when he read his daughters a bedtime story through C-SPAN, reading aloud the lines of Dr. Seuss's 'Green Eggs and Ham.' Updated at 4:23 p.m. EDT Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Yahoo
06-03-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Bid to protect lobstering by extending Maine's maritime jurisdiction could be unconstitutional
Cliff House Beach in Cape Elizabeth, Maine. (AnnMarie Hilton/Maine Morning Star) Previous attempts to extend Maine's jurisdiction over coastal waters faced legal hurdles, but one lawmaker is trying again. Two bills from Sen. Joseph Martin (R-Oxford) that seek to assert state sovereignty and ownership up to 12 and 24 nautical miles off the state's coast are scheduled to have a public hearing Thursday before the Legislature's Marine Resources Committee. Just two years ago, similar legislation was brought forward and failed. At the time, both the Maine Department of Marine Resources and the Maine Lobstermen's Association raised concern that such a change is legally fraught and wouldn't result in the desired outcome of protecting lobster fisheries, leading both entities to oppose the bill. The new proposal to extend state sovereignty to 12 nautical miles off the coast, LD 553, includes an emergency preamble that would allow the legislation to take effect immediately upon passage, rather than waiting the typical 90 days after adjournment. The emergency language in the bill cites recent decisions from the National Marine Fisheries Service and New England Fishery Management Council to restrict herring fishing in the Gulf of Maine. Herring are commonly used as bait for commercial lobster fishing, so those decisions could have devastating consequences for Maine's lobster industry, the bill states. The 2025 herring fishing quota for the region is a fraction of what it was expected to be in an effort to reduce the risk of overfishing and help rebuild the population, explained Jamie Cournane, a senior fishery analyst with the New England Fishery Management Council. The decision to lower the limit was motivated by a stock assessment conducted last year that showed the herring population was not doing as well as a 2022 assessment predicted. However, Cournane said the council is continuing to assess new information about the herring population and could update its recommendations to the federal government. Prior legislation made similar arguments that state authority should be extended to protect Maine's lobster industry. The proposal to go as far as 24 miles, LD 687, was submitted as a concept draft and the complete language was not available as of Wednesday afternoon. As with the 2023 legislation, neither proposal seems to 'have legs' because federal laws and previous court decisions don't permit state authority that far off the coast, said Charles Norchi, director of the Center for Oceans and Coastal Law at the University of Maine School of Law. A 1975 U.S. Supreme Court case found that states on the Atlantic Coast only have jurisdiction up to three nautical miles from the low-water mark. Therefore, it would be unconstitutional for a state to assert jurisdiction beyond that, Norchi said. That decision was based on two 1953 federal laws, namely the Submerged Lands Act and the Outer Continental Shelf Land Act, that establish the three-mile boundary. In his testimony against the 2023 bill, Maine Department of Marine Resources Commissioner Patrick Keliher said a 1997 analysis from the Marine Law Institute of the University of Maine found that the state could not assert its sovereignty beyond the three-mile boundary because of the Submerged Lands Act. Nothing in the current proposals makes Norchi believe this attempt would garner different results than the previous attempt. SUPPORT: YOU MAKE OUR WORK POSSIBLE
