Sen. Cory Booker's impassioned oration against the policies of President Trump's administration — with the help of multiple fellow Democrats — didn't just break the record for the longest Senate floor speech in history. It also renewed a spotlight on a time-honored tradition.
The New Jersey Democrat spent a consecutive 25 hours and 5 minutes standing and speaking at the podium Monday night into Tuesday, captivating hundreds of thousands of viewers and sending Google searches skyrocketing for the word "filibuster."
The catch? While no less impressive, Booker's efforts didn't technically constitute a filibuster, since he wasn't seeking to block a specific bill or nomination.
The term refers to action "designed to prolong debate and delay or prevent a vote on a bill, resolution, amendment, or other debatable question," according to the U.S. Senate.
"That can have an effect of just raising attention for the issue that the senator is talking about … or it can be a means to literally give more time for senators to have the backroom conversations to dilute the bill that is for some reason objectionable to the senator," explains Casey Burgat, Legislative Affairs Program Director at George Washington University's Graduate School of Political Management.
The delay tactic is as old as the Senate itself, where the rules permit unlimited debate. It has been used prolifically — and controversially — throughout the decades, including when then-Democrat Strom Thurmond filibustered the Civil Rights Act of 1957 for over 24 hours, setting the record that Booker broke this week.
Booker's speech has, ironically, put the filibuster in focus. And while the act itself may be considered dull, the word's history and use over time are anything but. NPR's first installment of Word of the Week traces its evolution, from swashbuckling to stonewalling.
Where did the word come from?
"Filibuster" was originally used to describe an unauthorized military adventurer, specifically "an American engaged in fomenting insurrections in Latin America in the mid-19th century," according to Merriam-Webster.
It comes directly from the Spanish word "filibustero," which translates to freebooter or pirate.
When the word first arrived in English in the 1840s, it was used to describe Americans who went to foreign countries to fight in their wars without the U.S. government's permission. But before long it moved to the political sphere, where it became shorthand for stalling senators.
The practice of delaying legislation by giving long speeches dates back to the very first session of the Senate in 1789, the chamber says, but it wasn't until the 1850s that it became commonplace enough to earn its colorful name.
It first appeared in Congress as a metaphor, after one debate got so long it seemed to be disrupting government business. The implication was that filibustering lawmakers were pirates, raiding the institution for their own political gain.
The term caught on quickly in the debate-friendly Senate, as NPR has reported. In January 1853, for example, Mississippi Democrat Albert Brown commented, "I saw my friend standing on the other side of the House filibustering."
"A month later, North Carolina senator George Badger complained of 'filibustering speeches,' and the term became a permanent part of our political lexicon," reads the U.S. Senate website.
By the 1870s, the filibuster had become both a fixture of the political process and a noun — though it was initially applied to the person who gave the speeches, rather than the act of speaking itself, Merriam-Webster says.
How has the word been used over time?
The filibuster — a marathon speech by a small group of senators or an enterprising individual — has been immortalized in popular culture, in large part thanks to Frank Capra's 1939 film Mr. Smith Goes to Washington.
In the movie, idealist freshman Sen. Jefferson Smith (played by James Stewart) finds himself at odds with a corrupt political machine, whose leaders try to destroy his reputation when he attempts to expose them. In the climax of the film, he stages a one-man filibuster to proclaim his innocence, which ran over 23 hours and ended only after he collapsed in exhaustion on the Senate floor.
"We have this big conception in our head, at least the public does, of what a filibuster is, of the Mr. Smith Goes to Washington … standing on your principles-type of senatorial behavior," Burgat told NPR. "But that's increasingly rare in the Senate, where the filibuster is not used all that often."
There have been some famous filibusters in the real-life Senate, like a 1917 speech in which Wisconsin Sen. Robert La Follette opposed U.S. entry into World War I and nearly hurled a spittoon at the presiding officer after losing his temper. In 1953, Sen. Wayne Morse of Oregon protested against the Submerged Lands Act for 22 hours and 26 minutes — now the third-longest such speech in history, according to the Senate Historical Office, thanks to Booker's new record.
Thurmond — who held the record for almost seven decades — was one of many southern Democrats who used the filibuster to successfully delay the passage of civil rights legislation by about a decade in the mid-20th century, says Burgat.
"[The Civil Rights Era] seems to be the historical peak," he said. "And then we transitioned into an era of the silent or assumed filibusters, as these margins got closer and closer."
In today's era of partisanship and small majorities, he says, senators who are opposed to pieces of legislation don't necessarily need to actually make a big speech on the floor.
Because 60 votes are required to cut off debate (known as cloture) — and effectively, pass a law — if a group of 41 or more senators simply threatens a filibuster, the Senate majority leader can just refuse to call a vote, the Brennan Center for Justice explains.
"And then that filibuster comes off the Senate floor and is actually silent in that they don't have to hold the floor, stand up and recite Green Eggs and Ham," Burgat explains, nodding to the fact that senators often read books or speeches aloud to pass the time while filibustering.
"It's really just assumed, and the majority doesn't even make them go through that process … because they would rather process other senatorial business."
That's not to say there haven't been filibusters — or Booker-style long, public speeches — on the Senate in recent years. Some standouts include a nearly 15-hour filibuster by Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., for gun control legislation in 2016, and a more than 21-hour effort by Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, to defund the Affordable Care Act in 2013.
Why does the word matter today?
In recent years, talk of reforming the filibuster has been almost as widespread as the practice itself.
The Senate has changed the rules of filibustering several times over the decades, like reducing the number of votes required for cloture in 1975 and allowing a simple majority to end debate on nominations in the 2010s.
Critics of the filibuster point to its racist past — former President Barack Obama called it a "Jim Crow relic" — and impact on productivity. Some politicians have proposed further changes or eliminating it altogether.
"The critiques are often convenient politically, in that: I hate it when I'm in the majority and it's stalling me, I love it when I'm in the minority and I need to do the stalling," Burgat says, though he predicts the filibuster is likely to undergo changes eventually.
Former President Joe Biden said in 2022 that he supported scrapping the filibuster in order to codify abortion and voting rights, for example. While many Democrats were on board then, Burgat says they are likely grateful for the filibuster now, with a Republican-controlled Congress and White House.
Burgat considers Booker's use of the right to unlimited debate, in full public view, as a boon for democracy at a time when trust in institutions is historically low.
"Though it didn't stall any piece of legislation, he got the conversation he was after. And to me, that's the senator's job," he said.
He says part of the reason that we don't see such speeches very often these days is because of how physically taxing it is to stay upright and talking — without leaving for a bathroom break — for so long. A hoarse Booker, by the way, told reporters afterward that he had cut out food and water long before he took the podium.
Still, Burgat is surprised that more senators haven't tried to take advantage of the opportunity to go viral — and says Booker's speech could potentially inspire others to do the same.
"I want them talking to each other, even if they're fundamentally disagreeing with each other. That's how it's supposed to work," he says.
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