Whatever your opinion of New Jersey senator Cory Booker—I confess I’ve often dismissed him in the past as histrionic, a little too thirsty for attention—it’s hard to deny that his marathon speech on the Senate floor was impressive. Sen. Booker’s “vigil,” which lasted for more than twenty-five hours, set a new record for the longest speech ever recorded in the chamber. Having fasted for days leading up to the speech, Booker did not once sit, eat, or use the restroom, taking small sips of water periodically as aides refreshed thick binders of material at his lectern and fellow Democratic senators asked him lengthy questions. Unlike Strom Thurmond, the previous record-holder, who spouted racist falsehoods, rambled, and even read from the encyclopedia in an attempt to block the passage of the Civil Rights Act in 1957, Booker’s remarks—at least whenever I tuned in—were clear, cogent, and earnest, soberly focused on the victims of the Trump administration’s policies: recipients of Medicaid and Social Security, Alzheimer’s patients and the elderly, schoolchildren, migrants and asylum seekers, American workers and consumers. Invoking the example of his mentor John L. Lewis, Booker said the time had come to make “good trouble.”
If the symbolism of Booker’s act—a Black senator outlasting and rhetorically outclassing the efforts of a segregationist—was intentional, it was not the focus of his attention. Nor was his tone in any way self-congratulatory; he admitted that he and other Democrats had made mistakes that “gave a lane to this demagogue.” But now, Booker warned, Trump and the Republican Party have brought the nation to the point of crisis, and this required Democrats to adopt extraordinary tactics. Congressionally created agencies are being destroyed; money earmarked for specific programs is being impounded; court orders are routinely flouted; law-abiding permanent residents, many relatives of American citizens, are being abducted by ICE, held without charges, and secretly deported. Then there’s the widespread corruption—perhaps most visible in the self-dealing of the ubiquitous Elon Musk—and the egregious lapses in national security, on shocking display in the Signalgate episode. It is, as Booker characterized it, a “moral moment,” less about “left and right” than “right and wrong.”
Two months into Trump’s second term, too many Americans—politicians, the judiciary, members of civil society and civic institutions alike—have failed to rise to the occasion. Pleading powerlessness and fearing risk, too many Democrats in Congress are following James Carville’s misguided strategy of “playing dead,” betting that the economic and environmental carnage sure to be unleashed during the first two years of Trump’s second term will drive voters back to them in 2026. Risk aversion—or is it cynicism?—has also defined the response of administrators at elite universities and leaders of several of the country’s most prestigious law firms. Afraid of losing government grants and contracts, they have settled on a strategy of appeasement, swiftly capitulating to Trump’s legally dubious executive orders in a bid to preserve the status quo and protect their positions.
It won’t stop there, as Connecticut senator Chris Murphy has been arguing for months in numerous interviews and media appearances, including with The New Yorker’s David Remnick. It’s no longer enough to speak of Trump’s “autocratic tendencies.” The transition to full-blown authoritarianism is unfolding rapidly in full public view. Republicans have made no secret of their desire to hold power permanently, and unless enough Americans mobilize—not just tens, but hundreds of thousands of people are needed, Murphy says—the MAGA GOP may succeed in effectively barring its opponents, if not from competing in, then from winning an election ever again. “We have months—not a year—before our democracy is rendered so damaged that it can’t be repaired,” Murphy said. “Every single day, I think the chances are growing that we will not have a free and fair election in 2026.”
That fate can still be averted if enough Americans—not just politicians, not just leaders of institutions and others in positions of power, but ordinary citizens—say that enough is enough and decide to do something about it. Signs of authoritarianism are impossible to ignore, whether it’s the cameras I see outside a still-gated Columbia University on my way to work or the ICE vehicles gathering before dawn in Brooklyn’s Prospect Park, near where I live. I have friends and colleagues in academia who have canceled travel plans because they fear not being allowed back into the country. Commonweal editors, myself included, are being trained to protect ourselves from libel suits designed to shut us down. For now, as a citizen and a journalist, I’m safe: I can say and write what I want. But who can be fully confident that what’s now happening to immigrants who are here legally—people like Mahmoud Khalil and Rumeysa Ozturk, whose only crime was criticizing the United States and Israel for atrocities in Gaza—will not eventually happen to U.S. citizens who dare to denounce the Trump regime?
Booker is right that neither he nor his party has done enough to prevent the current crisis. And while symbolic gestures like Booker’s speech can be powerful, they would be much more powerful if Democratic lawmakers were also using every procedural tool available to disrupt Trump’s agenda. The announcements of holds on Trump nominations by Hawaii’s Brian Schatz, Arizona’s Ruben Gallego, and California’s Adam Schiff are encouraging, but Democrats could still be doing more. Immediately after Booker’s historic speech ended, a vote to confirm Matthew Whitaker as the Trump administration’s U.S. ambassador to NATO went forward with unanimous consent. Democratic senators could not even be bothered to make the minimal effort required to slow it down.
Of course, it will take more than congressional tactics—or court decisions—to save the country from sliding into autocracy. But if the overwhelming turnout at rallies organized by Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez are any indication, there is ample appetite in the country for action. Mass mobilization can’t wait until the perfect message has been chosen or the perfect messenger identified. It can’t wait until the summer, when the weather is nicer for mass demonstrations. It must begin now.
