Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., condemned the Senate filibuster as an “abuse of power” in 2022, years before his party praised him for launching the “longest filibuster in U.S. Senate history” on Tuesday.
Booker set the record for longest Senate floor speech at 25 hours and 5 minutes after starting to speak at 7 p.m. on Monday.
The filibuster has been a deeply controversial tool for the Senate in recent years, with many Democrats condemning the practice during President Joe Biden’s administration as Republicans used it to foil his agenda.
“The filibuster has been abused to stop reforms supported by the vast majority of Americans—from background checks to protecting the right to vote. We must stop this abuse of power,” Booker wrote on X in January 2022.
Booker’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Fox News Digital.
Former Senator Kyrsten Sinema, who was the lone Democrat to oppose abolishing the filibuster during Biden’s administration, has poked fun at Democrats who criticized her at the time.
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“Maybe it isn’t an old Jim Crow relic, after all,” she quipped about Booker’s performance on Tuesday, referencing President Barack Obama’s description of the filibuster.
Sinema specifically called out Rep. Pramila Jayapal. D-Wash., who condemned the “Jim Crow filibuster” just last year.
Jayapal changed her tune when Republicans were trying to pass a continuing resolution in March, urging Democrats in the Senate, “Don’t betray working families. Don’t give Trump and Elon Musk a blank check. Don’t be complicit in the slashing of government programs. Vote NO on cloture and NO on final passage of Republicans’ bad bill.”
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Cloture is the Senate term for ending a filibuster, causing Sinema to chime in, “Just surprised to see support for the ‘Jim Crow filibuster’ here,” she wrote.
Booker himself has flipped on the issue multiple times. He gave a firm defense of the filibuster in 2019 before his call to remove it in 2022.
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He said at the time that Democrats “should not be doing anything to mess with the strength of the filibuster.”
“I will personally resist efforts to get rid of it,” he said.
