Cory Booker broke a record with his 25-hour Senate floor speech. How did he prepare to do it?
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(WASHINGTON) — After creating history by smashing the record for the longest Senate speech in history, Sen. Cory Booker told reporters as he walked off the floor that he was achy and tired, but grateful for his time.
“I didn’t know how long I could go. I’m so grateful I lasted for 25 hours,” Booker said.
Without taking a seat for the entirety of his speech, dehydration, the New Jersey senator said, had its pros and cons.
Booker sidestepped a question of whether he had any sort of device or diaper on to help him with bathroom demands.
However, he did say he didn’t need to use the restroom for the entirety of the 25 hours because of an incredibly rigorous fasting routine.
“My strategy was to stop eating. I think I stopped eating on Friday, and then to stop drinking the night before I started on Monday. And that had its benefits and it had its really downsides,” he said.
“The biggest thing I was fighting was that different muscles were starting to really cramp up, and every once a while, spasm or something.”
Booker’s speech, which began Monday evening, continued for a total of 25 hours and 4 minutes, surpassing the previous record set by Sen. Strom Thurmond, who filibustered the Civil Rights Act of 1957 for 24 hours and 18 minutes.
Booker was “very aware” of Thurmond’s record going into the speech.
“I was very aware of Strom Thurmond’s records since I got to the Senate. I always felt that it was a strange shadow to hang over this institution,” Booker told reporters.
“The mission was really to elevate voices of Americans to tell some of their really meaningful stories, very emotional stories, and to let go and let god.” To prepare, Booker said he tried to make himself as light as possible, and took everything out of his pockets except for a notecard with a handwritten Bible verse on it: Isaiah 40:31. “But they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles, they shall run and not be weary, and they shall walk and not faint,” Booker read.
He relied on his faith, he said, at one point praying with Reverend Sen. Raphael Warnock ahead of the speech.
For the entirety of his marathon talk-a-thon, Booker occupied the small square of space surrounding his desk.
Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes was released early from prison after President Trump commuted his 18-year sentence. (ABC News)
(WASHINGTON) — Protesters endured freezing temperatures to attend a vigil outside the Washington, D.C., jail this week as the moment they waited years for arrived: alleged Jan. 6 rioters walking free after President Donald Trump issued sweeping pardons on his first day back in office on Monday.
Those demonstrators gathered each night in support of the incarcerated Jan. 6 defendants, talking on speakerphone and joining in song with people jailed just steps away.
On Jan. 6, 2021, the U.S. Capitol was attacked by a mob of Trump supporters two months after his defeat in the 2020 presidential election. At the time, a joint session of Congress was counting the Electoral College votes to formalize Joe Biden’s victory. Trump pardoned around 1,500 people charged or convicted in crimes tied to the day’s events.
One of those pardoned was Pennsylvania resident Robert Morss, who was convicted of assaulting police officers on Jan. 6. Morss drove to the D.C. vigil after he was officially released early from his halfway house.
He was pressed by ABC News about whether there was any justification for hurting a police officer.
“I would say that the justification for defending yourself would have to be predicated on the threat level,” he said. “I would never say that there’s any justification for hurting a cop, I would never say there’s any justification for hurting anybody and we’re not the party that condones violence.”
Multiple accused rioters have put forward defenses that they were incited to violence by police, but none were successful in court. Approximately 140 police officers were injured that day, according to the Department of Justice.
The Washington, D.C., Police Union, which represents officers from the Metropolitan Police Department, expressed “dismay” over the pardons in a statement.
“As an organization that represents the interests of the 3,000 brave men and women who put their lives on the line every day to protect our communities, our stance is clear — anyone who assaults a law enforcement officer should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law, without exception,” it said.
In an internal memo obtained by ABC News, Capitol Police Chief Thomas Manger praised officers in the wake of the pardons. Manger said that “when there is no price to pay for violence against law enforcement, it sends a message that politics matter more than our first responders.”
In addition to mentioning Trump’s pardons for Jan. 6 rioters, he also cited former President Joe Biden’s decision to commute the sentence of Leonard Peltier, who was convicted of killing two FBI agents in 1975.
“Police willingly put themselves in harm’s way to protect our communities. When people attack law enforcement officers, the criminals should be met with consequences, condemnation and accountability,” Manger said in the memo.
While most Jan. 6 rioters were charged with nonviolent offenses, more than 250 were convicted of violent crimes, including assaulting police officers, according to an ABC News review of court records.
In the aftermath of the attack, both Republicans and Democrats condemned people responsible.
“The thugs who stormed the Capitol today and incited violence should be arrested and prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. Every single one of them,” Sen. Rick Scott, a Florida Republican, wrote on X on Jan. 6, 2021.
However, after the pardons, Republican lawmakers largely defended Trump’s pardon powers and Scott sidestepped ABC News’ questions about whether the pardons should have applied to violent offenders.
“I haven’t gone into the detail,” he said.
Not every Jan. 6 defendant received a pardon — 14 had their sentences commuted instead.
All were members of militant groups the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers who were charged with sedition. Prosecutors said they tried to use the Capitol attack to stop the peaceful transfer of power.
Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes was released early from his 18-year prison sentence. He did not enter the Capitol on Jan. 6 and maintained that his group only intended to provide security and medical aid to those attending multiple pro-Trump demonstrations in the area, prosecutors said.
After his release, he came back to Washington, D.C., and told ABC News that people who committed acts of violence deserve a pardon and claimed that none of the Jan. 6 defendants received fair trials.
“They still have a right to a fair trial,” he said. “And if the jury pool is drawn up of the victims, the judges themselves said that all people who live in D.C. were victims of Jan. 6.”
Heather Shaner, a public defender who represented more than 40 nonviolent Jan. 6 defendants, had a different take.
“As an attorney, I think they have been handled with excruciating fairness. And my clients feel the same way, by the way,” she told ABC News. “They got a public defender. They were given all the evidence against them. And they got what they considered fair pleas and fair sentences.”
Jason Riddle, who was sentenced to 90 days in prison after pleading guilty to illegally protesting in the Capitol and raiding a liquor cabinet, echoed that sentiment. He wants nothing to do with a Trump pardon, even though he got one.
“Because I did it, I’m guilty of the crime,” he told ABC News.
The New Hampshire man called Jan. 6 “the biggest display of disrespect you ever saw in your life,” acknowledging that he raided a liquor cabinet and noting that people were defacing the walls of the Capitol.
“And like, Trump called that a ‘beautiful day.’ Trump said that was ‘a day of love,'” he told ABC News.
ABC News’ Alex Mallin and Diana Paulson contributed to this report.
(WASHINGTON) — Second lady Usha Vance will be part of a delegation traveling to Greenland this week, after President Donald Trump’s repeated statements that the U.S. should own and control the semiautonomous Danish territory.
Vance’s office announced the trip on Sunday, describing it as one dedicated to learning about Greenlandic culture with stops at historical sties and its national dogsled race.
But White House national security adviser Mike Waltz and Secretary of Energy Chris Wright will be joining her, the National Security Council confirmed to ABC News.
“The U.S. has a vested security interest in the Arctic region and it should not be a surprise the National Security Advisor and Secretary of Energy are visiting a U.S. Space Base to get first-hand briefings from our service members on the ground,” National Security Council spokesperson Brian Hughes said in a statement.
Greenland’s Prime Minister Mute Egede, in a statement to Greenland’s Sermitsiaq newspaper, called the upcoming visit part of a “very aggressive American pressure against the Greenlandic community” and called for the international community to step in to rebuke it.
Trump reintroduced his first-term suggestion for U.S. ownership of Greenland, the world’s largest island and a semiautonomous territory within Denmark, during the presidential transition. It again prompted Greenland officials to emphasize the island territory is not for sale.
His son, Donald Trump Jr., visited Greenland in early January, weeks before the inauguration. Trump Jr. said it was a personal visit and that he was not meeting with officials, though the president still celebrated it and alluded to a “deal” that he said “must happen.”
At one point, he notably declined to rule out military force to acquire Greenland.
Trump officials have pointed to Greenland as a key interest for national security as China and Russia ramp up activity in the Arctic. Greenland is also rich in valuable minerals, including rare earth minerals — the accession of which has become part of Trump’s foreign policy agenda.
In his joint address to Congress earlier this month, Trump said his administration needed it for “international world security.”
“And I think we’re going to get it. One way or the other, we’re going to get it,” Trump said.
Trump’s interest in Greenland comes as he’s pushed similar land grabs of Canada and the Panama Canal. Amid a trade war with Canada, Trump has called for America’s northern ally to become the 51st state, though his nominee to be the U.S. ambassador to Canada has noted that it’s a sovereign state.
Ahead of her visit to Greenland on Thursday, second lady Vance released a video saying she was going to “celebrate the long history of mutual respect and cooperation between our nations and to express hope that our relationship will only grow stronger in the coming years.”
The National Security Council said Waltz and Wright “also look forward to experiencing Greenland’s famous hospitality and are confident that this visit presents an opportunity to build on partnerships that respects Greenland’s self-determination and advances economic cooperation.
“This is a visit to learn about Greenland, its culture, history, and people and to attend a dogsled race the United States is proud to sponsor, plain and simple,” the National Security Council said in its statement.
But Greenland’s prime minister, in a Facebook post, said Vance’s trip “cannot be seen only as a private visit.”
Egede added, “It should also be said in a bold way that our integrity and democracy must be respected, without any external disturbance.”
ABC News’ Hannah Demissie and Fritz Farrow contributed to this report.
(WASHINGTON) — In 2020, as a pandemic raged across the globe, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. took to social media to appeal to his hundreds of thousands of followers on Facebook.
The son of the late U.S. Attorney General and New York Sen. Bobby Kennedy and nephew of President John F. Kennedy, the younger Kennedy said he was looking for parents whose children had been vaccinated against a different virus — human papillomavirus or HPV — and later grew sick.
Public health researchers and doctors said there was no evidence that the vaccine, Gardasil, was linked to the health problems he cited, noting 160 favorable studies on safety. A federal court created to compensate people injured by vaccines also had already rejected a similar claim, citing “insufficient proof” that the vaccine was behind the plaintiff’s health issues.
But in his posts, Kennedy said that he and lawyer Michael Baum – “one of my closest friends” — believed there was still a path forward. The families could sue the manufacturer Merck in civil court claiming marketing fraud – allegations Merck denies.
“If you have been injured by Gardasil, call us,” Kennedy wrote on Facebook, posting a toll-free number invoking his famous initials “RFK.”
According to financial disclosure documents released last week, Kennedy’s primary source of income in the past year were large sums of referral fees from multiple law firms, including Baum’s office, whose civil lawsuit against Merck’s Gardasil vaccine went to trial in Los Angeles County Superior Court last week.
Kennedy’s leading role in building a case against Merck is now raising questions about how he might wield his power as the nation’s next health secretary – a job intended as an impartial overseer in public health – while in line for potential payouts from a major pharmaceutical company.
“This disclosure shows that RFK Jr. made millions off of peddling dangerous anti-vaccine conspiracies,” said Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., a member of the Senate Finance Committee, which will oversee Kennedy’s nomination.
“Even worse, if he is confirmed, his finances will still be tied to the outcomes of anti-vaccine lawsuits — even as he’d be tasked with regulating them as health secretary. These are outrageous conflicts of interest that endanger public health,” Warren said in a statement provided to reporters.
Kennedy, who is expected to testify for the first time Wednesday before the Senate panel, said he has resigned his work with several law firms, including Wisner Baum, and that if confirmed he would not be involved in legal cases.
But in a plan greenlit by federal ethics officials, Kennedy said he plans to retain his right to 10 percent of fees awarded in contingency cases with Wisner Baum so long as the cases don’t involve the U.S. government. The federal government is not a party in the civil lawsuit against Merck.
“I am entitled to receive a portion of future recovery in these cases based upon the set percentage as set forth in the referral agreement,” he wrote.
Kennedy disclosed another $856,559 in income from Wisner Baum referral fees, although the documents do not say which legal cases were tied to those fees. Other income included $8.8 million from his firm Kennedy & Madonna. Kennedy said he was terminating his relationship with the firm, which would no longer use his name.
A spokesperson for Kennedy declined to comment on the record on the Wisner Baum payouts and ongoing lawsuit. Baum did not respond to a request for comment.
In a statement on the civil lawsuit, Merck said “an overwhelming body of scientific evidence, including more than 30 years of research and development along with real world evidence generated by Merck and by independent investigators, continues to support the safety and efficacy of our HPV vaccines. The plaintiff’s allegations have no merit, and we remain committed to vigorously defending against these claims.”
Robert Krakow, a New York lawyer who specializes in vaccine injury cases and has worked with Kennedy in the past, said referral fees are fairly standard when it comes to personal injury claims.
Kennedy has been a “galvanizing force” when it came to questioning vaccine safety, providing a special touch when talking to families because “he was very sincere and listened to people,” Krakow said. Using social media platforms to recruit clients is a natural extension of that work, he said.
“It’s not often you have a celebrity do that,” Krawkow said of Kennedy’s work to find clients who claim vaccine injuries. “But there’s nothing inherently wrong with recruiting people for referral fees.”
Reuters was first to report Kennedy’s extensive role in the Gardasil vaccine lawsuit.
Because Kennedy’s financial arrangement was allowed by ethics officials, it’s not clear whether the issue will be a sticking point for Republicans eager to align with Trump. According to the agreement released last week, Kennedy can keep the fees from Wisner Baum so long as the independent ethics office at the Health and Human Services Department determines the case does “not involve the United States as a party and in which the United States does not have a direct and substantial interest.”
Kennedy also has insisted in private meetings with senators that he is not “anti-vaccine,” but only wants more study, according to one person familiar with the discussions.
The messaging aligns with what Kennedy has said publicly. Kennedy often notes he was vaccinated as a child and opted to vaccinate his own children decades ago. His work as chair and chief litigator of the Children’s Heath Defense, which opposes the recommended schedule of vaccines for children, did not begin until around 2015.
“What I’ve said is I’m pro-science and pro-safety,” he told a local New Hampshire television station in 2023.
Still, public health experts and many senators — several of them old enough to remember serious outbreaks of measles and polio in the 1950s — have expressed serious concerns about his role in eroding confidence in vaccines even if he says he won’t outright block access to them.
“We potentially face a massive health hazard, maybe especially for our children,” said Sen. Bernie Sanders, the top Democrat on the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee.
Sanders, a Vermont Democrat who had been seen as someone who might be able to find common ground with Kennedy on environmental and food policy, said the concern with the incoming administration was that “we may revert back to those terrible days when so many children died” before age 3.
As head of the Health and Human Services Department, Kennedy would be responsible for the Food and Drug Administration, which regulates the selling and marketing of vaccines, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which collects data on vaccines to issue public health recommendations that are closely followed by doctors.
If confirmed, he could insist upon appointing vaccine skeptics to the independent group that reviews FDA data on vaccines.
Kennedy also could alter how information is used from CDC’s public reporting system known as “VAERS” that allows anyone to flag possible adverse reactions from vaccines. The reports are unverified but used to look for potential patterns that can be investigated.
Health officials say symptoms reported in VAERS are often found to be unrelated from a person’s immunization history.
Dorit Reiss, a professor at UC Law San Francisco and expert in legal issues on vaccinations, said handing over that process to someone with Kennedy’s track record would be unprecedented.
“Kennedy has been a committed anti-vaccine activist for a long time. I have seen no indication that his views have changed,” Reiss said.
ABC’s Sony Salzman and Will McDuffie contributed to this report.
