Senator Cory Booker’s staff members described a nagging fear as they worked for a week to fill 15 binders with enough material to cover what would soon become a history-making, 25-hour speech.
What if no one listened?
Their worry was short-lived. By 11 a.m. on Tuesday, 16 hours after Mr. Booker, Democrat of New Jersey, had begun railing against President Trump’s policies on the floor of the U.S. Senate, roughly 14,000 callers had left messages on his office hotline, aides said. Before he finally stopped speaking, the office had fielded 14,000 more.
For 25 hours and five minutes, Mr. Booker, who will turn 56 this month, did not sit or exit the Senate chambers to eat or use a bathroom. His speech broke, by nearly an hour, a record set 68 years ago by Senator Strom Thurmond of South Carolina, a segregationist who at the time was trying to block civil rights legislation.
Americans noticed. The social-media-savvy senator streamed the speech live on his TikTok account, where it garnered more than 350 million “likes.” And more than 110,000 people were watching on YouTube when Mr. Booker ended his soliloquy in much the same way he began: with a homage to a mentor, the civil rights pioneer John Lewis, a Georgia Democrat who spent three decades in Congress. “Let’s get in good trouble,” he said, borrowing Mr. Lewis’s famous call to action.
Many of those watching appeared to revel in Mr. Booker’s stamina and moxie.
“New respect for New Jersey,” a YouTube viewer wrote in a live chat message two hours before the senator stopped talking.
Democrats have been mainly relegated to the sidelines since Mr. Trump was inaugurated in January and began signing a barrage of executive orders meant to reshape government, rushing to try to shut down federal agencies, fire federal employees, defang law firms he opposes and deport international students who have spoken out against Israel’s war in Gaza.
Without a majority in either the House or the Senate, congressional Democrats have few legislative options to block or implement change. Still, in polls and on social media, many frustrated Democratic voters have been agitating for them to try to do more.
“The Democrats have been acting like it’s OK what Trump is doing, and it’s not OK,” said Angel Leston, 38, who owns the Casa d’Paco restaurant in Newark, New Jersey’s largest city, where Mr. Booker was mayor before being elected to the Senate.
“Now,” he added, “there’s finally some fire.”
Vivian Cox Fraser, president of the Urban League of Essex County, based in Newark, said she found herself tuning in to Mr. Booker’s speech at several points on Monday and Tuesday, encouraged by his passion.
“Somehow you have to demonstrate opposition,” she said.
“The one thing I hope is, it will be the impetus for a lot more — for us to stand up,” said Ms. Cox Fraser, who expressed concern that any cuts to education funding, social services or Medicaid would hurt the families her organization serves.
Ryan Haygood, a New Jersey civil rights lawyer, said he found Mr. Booker’s willingness to put “his full self into it” inspirational. “We need voices everywhere, on every level, fighting for the foundation and soul of this country,” said Mr. Haygood, who leads the New Jersey Institute for Social Justice.
“Thank you, Cory, for your commitment to protecting the values our country was built on,” Gov. Philip D. Murphy of New Jersey wrote on social media.
But even some who supported Mr. Booker’s approach said they recognized that it risked angering a president who controls the federal purse strings and has shown an appetite for revenge.
“Trump is going to retaliate — 100 percent,” said Mr. Leston, whose restaurant is on a working-class, residential block in the Ironbound, a heavily Latino neighborhood where Mr. Trump drew significant support in November.
“He retaliates against anybody that says anything bad about him — what makes you think New Jersey is any different?” he said. “But that shouldn’t deter people from speaking out against his policies.”
Praise for Mr. Booker was hardly universal. At Krug’s Tavern, a Newark institution for nearly a century, most patrons Tuesday night were focused on the Yankees game, not Mr. Booker, when he officially broke Mr. Thurmond’s record at 7:19 p.m.
“The Democrats can’t come to grips with the fact that they lost,” one customer, Paul Wiener, 69, said as the grill sizzled nearby. “The work should have been done before the election, not after the election.”
“Booker is just one more mosquito in the swamp,” he added.
A spokesman for Mr. Trump, Harrison Fields, dismissed the speech with a mocking reference to a comment Mr. Booker made during the Senate confirmation hearings for Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh, who now sits on the Supreme Court: “When will he realize he’s not Spartacus — he’s a spoof?”
Still, some other political opponents offered Mr. Booker ungrudging props.
“Regardless of politics, Cory is an impressive man with a good heart, lots of energy and a high-octane intellect,” said Mike DuHaime, a Republican strategist who ran former Gov. Chris Christie’s campaigns.
“You don’t have to agree with him on every policy to be proud that so many people in the country were watching the former mayor of Newark make history.”
Mr. Booker’s oratorical marathon covered plenty of turf, serious and less so. He detailed his concerns about cutting funding for education, health care and medical research and recounted moving stories about the effects the administration’s policies were having on his constituents. “This is a moral moment,” he said repeatedly.
But he also filled some of the time in other ways. He waxed poetic about M&M candies — first produced, he noted, in Newark. He resurfaced jocular grudges from his days playing football at Stanford University. And he tackled an abiding New York sports riddle.
“The Giants and the Jets play in New Jersey,” he said. “There’s only one football team in New York, and that’s the Bills.”
Mark Bonamo contributed reporting.
Tracey Tully is a reporter for The Times who covers New Jersey, where she has lived for more than 20 years. More about Tracey Tully
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