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A Future Worth Fighting For [1]

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Date: 2025-04-05

Sen. Cory Booker stood before the Senate for 25 hours (and six minutes*) to oppose the harm Trump has inflicted on Americans’ “safety, financial stability, the foundations of our democracy, and any sense of common decency”.

Speaking nonstop without any creature comfort is a physical endurance test, which Booker acknowledged, yet he added:

“[M]y soul is soaring, and I feel very blessed by the whole experience.”

[Sen. Cory Booker on his marathon, 25-hour speech on the Senate floor by Juana Summers, Tyler Bartlam, Patrick Jarenwattananon on NPR, 2 April 2025…because they’re good people at NPR]

It’s a nice start.

But Now What?

I commented that other Senators should follow suit, and westladem suggested I turn my comment into a diary. My suggestion was that other Democratic Senators hold forth, maybe for a more reasonable 8-10-12 hours.

I suggested a couple topics:

Let’s have a long presentation on the Russian invasion of Ukraine, why it’s wrong and going into details about the rapes, torture, kidnappings, and attacks on civilians. This should conclude with filing a bill that would provide significant military support for Ukraine. Go over all of the cases pending in court where judges have been asked to stop illegal activity by the Trump people. There are over fifty cases pending, many of which have resulted in temporary restraining orders or temporary injunctions to stop illegal activity. This is where a Senator with a legal background could shine.

Ukraine Makes a Great Case

I started with Ukraine because Ukraine is a great point of attack. It exactly counters and undermines what Criminal Trump wants to do, which is something so horrific and destructive that stopping it is in the interest of the entire world.

I’d like to see Democrats put forward a military aid package for Ukraine of something on the order of $50 billion for the rest of the calendar year. Make it a debate point. Go to the public and demand a vote on this.

Putting the facts about Ukraine into the Senate record with a long and disruptive speech is what we need to break through the media blockade on Ukraine. In 2022, the media covered the carnage pretty thoroughly for a couple weeks, but then essentially dropped it. It’s been years (literally) since this war, its illegality and its brutality, have been presented to the American people, giving the fascists time and space to sidle up to Putin and claim that Ukraine should just give up and accept Russian dominance.

This is a betrayal of U.S. national security, but even more fundamentally, it is a betrayal of American values. We (and our erstwhile allies) put Nazis on trial for crimes against humanity. But the fascist wing of the Republican Party has no decency. It has no honor. It is, in its core values, anti-American.

It’s time to stop playing footsie with the fascists. Use the big guns, the speaking privileges of the Senate, to take them out.

It isn’t just the right thing to do, either. It is the politically forceful thing to do. You know who has more popularity than Criminal Trump? Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Ukraine. Much more popular.

You know who has less popularity than Criminal Trump? Vladimir Putin. Russia. Scraping-the-bottom-of-the barrel popularity.

Other Ripe Topics

In my comment, I added, “I’m really excited by what Sen. Booker did. He did something that really broke through the media blockade against Democratic messaging. We need more of that.”

The media is entirely fine inviting radical right-wing spokespersons on their programs to talk endlessly on right-wing talking points. They claim to be fiscally responsible, but reality belies this. They claim to be strong on national security, but reality belies this. They claim to support the working men of the country, but reality belies this.

Given the opportunity, the right wing hoovers up every last dime for their billionaire backers. It’s one scam after the next, completely without conscience or humanity.

They would literally take life-saving nutrition out of the mouths of babies to give dimes to the despicably rich.

And the media, protected constitutionally on the theory that it is for the benefit of the American people virtually never gives a fraction of their time to the people who most care about the people.

It is, in a word, deplorable.

There are other topics ripe for a good, long talk in the Senate. I suggest above a thorough discussion of the ways the Trump people have violated the law and the court cases that resulted.

But there’s also Social Security (see my series that starts here). Republicans have always hated old people, and the elderly have loved them for it. Go figure.

I just don’t think people on Social Security ever believed Republicans would take it away. Yet, here we have Elon Musk claiming (falsely) that it’s a Ponzi scheme. He wants to shut it down.

Criminal Trump uses outrageous claims and acts to dominate the news cycle. Should it really take the Democratic Party a decade to learn what he’s doing and figure out how to use the same tactics? We don’t even have to lie. It should be vastly easier.

I don’t normally post on Saturdays, but I want to keep Sunday night available for the next installment of Protecting America.

I hope I didn’t jar you too badly.

* Some say 5, but I’m giving him the benefit of the doubt because other reporting said he began at 19:00 and went to 20:06 the next day.

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