Summary
Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) broke the record for longest Senate floor speech at 25 hours and 5 minutes, surpassing the 24-hour, 18-minute filibuster by former Sen. Strom Thurmond, who opposed the 1957 Civil Rights Act.
Booker said it “irked” him that Thurmond’s record symbolized efforts to block civil rights.
He used the speech to protest potential GOP spending cuts and Trump-era policies.
Supported by fellow Democrats, Booker remained standing and speaking for over a day, calling his action a symbolic reclaiming of the Senate’s legacy.
As an Australian living in Canada, I’m far from an expert on this stuff, but it seems to me the main benefit of something like this is visibility - he had (I believe) 10s of millions of views over the various platforms it was streaming on. Hopefully some of those people were not previously engaged and now are. It’s a start.