(KGTV) — Both Democratic Senators from California, Alex Padilla and Adam Schiff, joined Sen. Cory Booker (D–NJ) on Tuesday in his marathon protest speech on the Senate floor that began Monday night and has lasted for more than 22 hours.
Sen. Booker took the floor Monday night, “because Donald Trump and Elon Musk have shown a complete disregard for the rule of law, the Constitution, and the needs of the American people.”
Sen. Booker said he intends to disrupt the “normal business of the United States Senate” for as long as he is “physically able,” and his speech is now among the longest in Senate history.
The longest Senate speech on record came from Strom Thurmond, who filibustered for more than 24 hours against the Civil Rights Act of 1957.
Sen. Booker has been joined in this speech by several other Democratic senators, including Sen. Padilla and Sen. Schiff.
On Tuesday, Sen. Padilla rose to speak on the Trump administration’s cuts to environmental programs, saying that his constituents in California have “lived through the real cost of climate inaction.”
He pointed to the devastating wildfires in Los Angeles earlier this year, saying that the Trump administration is making it harder for states to respond to natural disasters.
“California, for decades, has worked so hard against pollution and against the impacts of climate change,” Sen. Padilla said. “We’ve seen nothing but attacks on this progress of environmental protection.”
He said that the administration is illegally freezing funds that Congress appropriated, it’s placed a federal freeze on hiring firefighters, the EPA is rolling back more than 30 environmental rules and the army flooded portions of the Central Valley to "pretend Presdient Trump was helping" with the wildfires.
“By doing so, they’re not just going to make Americans less healthy, they’re also going to hurt our economy,” Sen. Padilla said. “And it’s going to clear the way for China to become the world leader in green technology. So much for America first!”
Sen. Adam Schiff also spoke on Tuesday, saying that the Trump administration's actions are an attack on American democracy.
“We look at institution after institution, and we see the guardrails of our democracy coming down,” Sen. Schiff said. “We see an assault on the rule of law unlike anything we have seen in modern history, maybe in the entire history of the United States of America, and why? Because they can. Because they feel that they can.”
Sen. Schiff called efforts to deny funding for universities unlawful and illegal; he said the administration is threatening law firms that don’t “kiss the ring." He also referenced attacks on judges who have ruled against the administration.
Trump publicly called for a judge's impeachment, “In a case involving the administration grabbing a bunch of people, designating them as part of a Venezuelan gang, and without any due process, without any process at all, taking them to some maximum-security prison in El Salvador,” Sen. Schiff said.
But “It is not a high crime or misdemeanor to disagree… with the flawed reasoning of the government,” Sen. Schiff pointed out.
Sen. Schiff also noted attacks on the press from the administration, including punishing the Associated Press for refusing to call the Gulf of Mexico the “Gulf of America” to comply with Trump’s wishes.
“This party that claims to be against censorship, why are they doing this to the press?” Sen. Schiff asked. “Because they can, and they will continue to do so, as long as they believe that they can. Until we, and not just we in this body, but we in this country, stand up to them and tell them, ‘No you can’t.’”
“If the slogan years ago was, ‘Yes we can,'” Sen. Schiff remarked, “Today it has to be, ‘No you can’t.' No, you can’t trample the rights of the American people; no, you can’t censor our speech; no, you can’t bring the weight of the justice department down on the American people… Because we’re going to stand together.”
As of 3 p.m. PT on Tuesday, Sen. Booker’s speech has been going on for more than 22 hours, with tens of thousands of concurrent viewers across platforms.
You can watch live on YouTube or the Senator’s Instagram page.
