Sen. Jeff Merkley, D-Oregon, delivered a 22-hour marathon speech on the Senate floor beginning on Tuesday evening, holding the floor overnight and into the day Wednesday in protest of President Trump’s policies. The senator’s remarks also came amid a prolonged budget standoff between Democrats and Republicans that has kept the government partially shut down for four weeks.
Merkley, 68, began speaking at 6:21 p.m. on Tuesday and continued until 4:58 p.m. Wednesday, standing in front of a lectern at his desk for the entirety of the time. He said his filibuster, as the procedural tactic is known, was an effort to sound the alarm on both the government shutdown and Trump, in his view, dragging the country “further into authoritarianism.” Merkley said: “Trump’s plan is to replace government by and for the people with government by and for the powerful .. This is an incredible threat to our nation, to the entire vision of our Constitution, I don’t believe there’s a single senator here in the United States Senate who wants to see freedom crushed and authoritarian rule established here in the United States of America … Our founders did not want the president to be a king.”
The Senator from Oregon focused his remarks on what he described as a grave threat to American democracy — citing deportation efforts, terminated federal programs, the politicization of the Justice Department, and the deployment of the National Guard in U.S. cities. He said: “I’ve come to the Senate floor tonight to ring the alarm bells. We’re in the most perilous moment, the biggest threat to our republic since the Civil War. President Trump is shredding our Constitution.”
Merkley’s home city of Portland has long been a focal point of tension between Trump and Democratic officials. The dispute reignited recently when Trump ordered the Defense Department to coordinate the deployment of National Guard troops to Portland. A federal appeals court on Monday cleared the way for that move to proceed while legal challenges play out, allowing members of the Oregon National Guard to be federalized and sent to the city. Merkley said during his speech that “President Trump wants us to believe that Portland, Oregon, in my home state, is full of chaos and riots because if he can say to the American people that there are riots, he can say there’s a rebellion. And if there’s a rebellion, he can use that to strengthen his authoritarian grip on our nation. Pretend there are riots, or even try to provoke violence, and tighten his authoritarian grip.” He went on to describe Portland residents as peaceful in their demonstrations, and said they are not “taking the bait” but are instead “demonstrating with joy and whimsy. They want to make it clear to the world that what Trump is saying about there being violent protests or a rebellion in Portland is just not true.”
Over the course of the night, several of Merkley’s Democratic colleagues joined him on the floor, offering extended questions that allowed him short pauses while keeping the speech continuous. His address, one of the longest seen in the Senate in recent years, reflected his deep frustration with the current political climate and the direction of the Trump administration.
Merkley’s overnight address followed a string of marathon speeches by Democrats protesting Trump-era policies. Earlier this year, Sen. Cory Booker set a Senate record with a speech lasting over 25 hours, also aimed at calling out the administration’s actions. Merkley himself is no stranger to such efforts; in 2017, he spoke for more than 15 hours in an unsuccessful attempt to block the confirmation of Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch.
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