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Cory Booker lives the phrase "You can sleep when you're dead" - but with live updates [1]
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Date: 2025-04-01
You can watch Cory on cable CSPAN2.
Senate.gov online.
CSPAN2 online. And you can get closed captioning realtime.
Cory has a live feed on his X account pinned.
Here's what Cory said on Bluesky, just before he started in the Senate.
Updating on a regular basis
It's April 1st. I got up early. It's 5:30 Pacific time. Cory Booker is still talking.
Cory is swaying back and forth to stay awake and exercise while he's talking.
Raphael Warnock and Cory are going through Bible verses relating to charity, I think.
Amy Klobuchar is helping out with talk about Social Security benefits and the cuts shutting down field offices and how people have to drive long distances when there is no one to field the phone calls and emails go unanswered. Then the $2 trillion tax cut for people earning over $400,000 a year who don't need it like Elon Musk.
Amy Klobuchar just nailed Trump and Musk as king and court jester.
Cory just brought up Strom Thurmond's 24 hour filibuster trying to keep civil rights legislation from passing.
Now it's 6:30 am PT.
Cory is now highlighting the right to think, to criticize without being attacked from the Oval Office.
Cory says about giving tax breaks to the rich, "Not on my watch!"
7am Sen.Coons and Cory are going back and forth about allies and NATO and Denmark, Greenland and Canada.
Do want to have a reputation of compassion or one of unreliability? asks Coons.
Cory goes onto USAID and how had led in fighting Infectious diseases but no more.
Cory is now onto the withdrawl we've made from the world and how China will waltz right in.
Cory on the US and Russia. Reagan is remember for telling Gorbachev to tear down the Berlin wall. Trump will be remembered for "I love Putin."
Sen. Markey takes over to give Cory a break on goes over the stupidity of dissolving the Department of Education, then back to Medicaid.
"Why do we have a President that plays so small?" - Cory.
Trump's infrastructure act that was always coming in two weeks and all that was passed under Biden like the CHIPS act Trump is gutting.
Sen. Warner steps up to bat and paraphrases Robert Frost with "hours to go before you sleep" instead of "hours miles to go before I sleep."
Being on the Senate intelligence committee, Warner brings up Signalgate. Especially how American lives were put in jeopardy. Also how he doesn't believe it's a one-off. Signal gate is just one of many security breaches.
Booker turned the floor over to Schumer, who praises Cory's superhuman stamina. And then starts rattling off all the incredible mistakes being made by Trump, and then circling back to the topic that got this all going, which is Medicaid.
Schumer describes how senior citizens in Assisted Living and nursing homes will be kicked out on the street, and then turns it back over to Cory with the question of what he knows from his constituents. Last night Cory read letters from his voters that asked him why is this happening?
The Republicans are stealing from your grandchildren in order to pay the billionaires. That's what their tax breaks do.
7:41am Cory won't stop for a question until he says that the Buffalo Bills are the best team in football. Then he lets Schumer ask his question which is preceded by a couple of minutes of background, as always.
Humor rips apart Trump's business acumen for the damage he's causing to the economy and basically calls Peter Navarro an idiot.
Corey goes on at length about how the 72 days of Trump's time in office that he's destroying the economy, ruining consumer confidence, but the billionaires are still okay. He's caused rising prices and destroyed lifetime savings and people's 401k retirement accounts.
Then Elizabeth Warren steps up to bat. Her topic is so Social Security and how musk and Trump are trying to do an end run around Congress to find ways to make people not be able to qualify for Social Security. Things like cutting down the Social Security amount of employees so there's nobody there to answer questions. There's nobody there to process forms. Come up with reasons to deny benefits, like an employer who forgot something in their filings. Take the money away by making mistakes and not fixing them.
Warren then goes into a Litany of things that will happen when people don't get their Social Security benefits on time. It's not pretty.
Back to Cory. He brings up the vote the Democrats lost in the Senate where the Republicans took the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau's rule that was going to limit overdraft fees to $5 and voided it, going right back to the $35 it was before. The only benefit here of course is to the big banks. I think I saw one estimate that it was $5 billion dollars a year it was costing people.
Cory goes over how he was on a hill in New Jersey when the planes hit the Twin Towers on 9/11 and he could see the smoke from where he stood. He lost one of his best friends in the tragedy. Trump claims he lost people he knew in the towers, but that was all a lie along with his claim that Muslims were cheering in New Jersey. Corey didn't hear them.
Then he reads a letter from someone in USAID and how they were inspired to work for the agency. Then it gets ugly with how heartbroken the employee was when everything started going south on March 14th for USAID.
He's continuing reading letters from his constituents in New Jersey. He's only swaying a little bit back and forth while he's reading. He's doing much more when he's speaking extemporaneously.
Now he's reading one from a USAID worker who was laid off and what it is done to his life because he couldn't get a job after being fired at USAID. Catherine Baker from Neptune, New Jersey.
Senator Chris Van Hollen is up talking about the housing crisis in America and how all the cuts to Federal programs helping it are just exacerbating the problem. I'd like to see Trump helping build a Habitat for Humanity house like Jimmy Carter used to.
Van Hollen goes over how the tax break being given to billionaires is going overseas into tax havens. This money is never going to be invested in the United States. Even the trickle down economy theory by which tax breaks are given to the rich doesn't work when the money never comes back here.
Van Hallen reads a quote from, I think it was Musk, that veterans were doing poorly because they didn't deserve a job.
Van Halen compared the efficiency of the Social Security Administration, which operates at a 5% overhead, to big insurance companies. Allstate has a 11% overhead and State Farm has a 23%.
Social Security already had a low staff situation before Musk started working against their being able to operate.
Van Holland followed up with Trump's continued stupidity and always criticizing NATO and how Trump was betraying the alliance.
Corey talked about betrayal to America.
Corey turned the floor over to Rear Admiral Barry Black, retired, the Senate chaplain to give a prayer. For the operation of the Senate, the pages, all those who work through the night and praying for them to help the Senators continue the fight. "Let no weapon formed against them prosper."
Senator Tammy Duckworth got the next chance to talk before turning back to Booker. She goes over all the United States organizations, companies and people who were hurt by USAID not going overseas because they provided the food and services that were used by USAID. Especially the farmers. Especially the farmers in Iowa. So Trump has not lived up to his promise to the farmers once again. The food is just going to rot and waste. She's going on about how the steel tariffs will hurt farmers because their equipment will cost more, the fertilizer will cost more that we get from Canada. And that's if they're just able to farm at all.
It's Corey's turn it bad again. He picks up where Tammy left off. Because the government wasn't following through on contracts you've got farmers Farms failing. Canceling contracts that farmers had, so they've got no place for their food to go.
Back to Tammy Duckworth and she explains how the contracts will eventually have to be paid, and then there's interest on it that has to be added. That's a waste of taxpayers money. She doesn't mention the lawsuits for the broken contracts that will happen.
She brings up Audie Murphy who couldn't pass the first exam to get into the army. But he became a Medal of Honor winner as well as a movie star later. He grew up in a sharecroppers Farm in Texas. That's what can come out of farms besides just the food. If we don't keep our farms alive, we're also losing that source of humanity.
9:18 am PT Karoline Leavitt is doing a White House press conference, but she is a walking talking April Fool's Day joke. Watched for a couple of seconds and couldn't stand it.
Now Maggie Hassan, senator from New Hampshire, is talking about Medicaid. She lists the litany of people who would suffer from cuts. As one example one in five seniors with lose their nursing home care.
Cory is back on. "We're not talking about who's left or right, we're talking about right and wrong."
Taking $180 billion dollars out of Medicaid would crush healthcare nationwide. He quotes Thomas Massie in the house saying that the budget just passed is going to explode the debt. Donald Trump aiding and abetting the Republicans in the House is so wrong.
Cory then quotes from the Preamble of the Constitution about forming a more perfect union, and how Trump is ripping it apart.
An observation. I think the closed captioning on the online C-SPAN feed is better than the cable. At least the online seems to paraphrase better especially when people are talking fast.
Cory says that everyone on Social Security is now insecure because of Trump. Social insecurity.
Senator Ben Ray Lujan from New Mexico is up. He's from New Mexico. He's got a really cool silver and turquoise lanyard holder instead of a tie. He's gone back to the 2017 Trump's tax scam. It's interesting when you see senators that you've never seen before, maybe even never heard of before, speaking. Why are America's farmers and ranchers paying for billionaire's tax cuts?
Cory answers the question at length. He talks about the head of Health and Human Services, we know as RFK Jr, talks about kids needing to have healthy food, food is good medicine. So what do you do? You cut the very programs that provide that food.
Senator Sheldon Whitehouse steps up to bat after Cory calls him a YouTube Star. The United States has been turned over to the looters and the polluters. And the looting goes across the full face of the government scarred and disfigured by Musk and his muskrats. Instead of stealing through the government, they're dumping pollution into our common air into our common climate future, into our waters,into our lands, and defending through political influence and clout and power and dark money, in this building, their privilege to pollute for free. In the end point of both of those is regular Americans who are getting put bluntly pretty hosed. The manner in which they are accomplishing their purpose it's pretty awesome in and of itself. Because in the manner in which they are accomplishing their purposes is to corrupt a degree the great American democracy that we are all here to defend. And they do it by taking billions and running it through their groups to get money in elections, the beneficiary of the dark money, the candidate, figures out exactly who's behind the dark money contribution that ends up in the superpac. He knows who gave the money. So the deal between the creepy billionaire is no one else is in on the joke.
Cory just quoted John F Kennedy. "Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country."
That he gives Sheldon Whitehouse a plug for his YouTube channel because that's where there are so many issues that Whitehouse comments on, that everyone should go take a look.
Senator Patty Murray wants to ask him a question. First he has to give her an intro.
Murray says that people are angry and scared. Why? She is also complimenting Booker on what he is doing, as every other senator who has gotten up to ask a question has done. She was the first woman ever to ask to be on the Senate Veterans Committee. She worked with young men and women when she was in college when she worked at the Seattle VA during the Vietnam War. People came back from the war with severe mental problems that we now called PTSD. She asked about the 80,000 that just got fired at the Veterans Administration and Cory picked up thread.
How is the VA going to keep up with maintaining care and benefits When 80,000 people are gone? He posits that 20,000 of them could be veterans themselves. He brings up the burn pits in a Iraq. The agent orange used in vietnam. We caused the sickness, how can we not take care of them? How are they going to continue research on traumatic brain injuries and PTSD?
[END]
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