Oregon Democrat speaks on the Senate floor all night long to protest Trump [View all]
Source: USA Today
Updated Oct. 22, 2025, 12:05 p.m. ET
WASHINGTON – Sen. Jeff Merkley, D-Oregon, held the Senate floor all night long Tuesday and into Wednesday morning, giving a marathon speech to disrupt legislative business and protest the Trump administration's policies as lawmakers struggle to reopen the federal government.
As of noon, the nearly 69-year-old senator had been talking for roughly 18 hours. He began speaking at 6:21 the prior evening.
Merkley said his filibuster, as the procedural tactic is known, was an effort to sound the alarm on both the government shutdown and President Donald Trump, in his view, dragging the country "further into authoritarianism." "Trump's plan is to replace government by and for the people with government by and for the powerful," he said at one point.
"This is an incredible threat to our nation, to the entire vision of our Constitution," he said at another point. "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."
Read more: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2025/10/22/jeff-merkley-senator-protests-trump-marathon-floor-speech/86832504007/
Video posted here - LIVE: Senator Merkley holds floor to 'protest Trump's threats to Democracy' - MSNBC
ETA - he is STILL going. I did check in earlier when he apparently had a colloquy with Amy Klobuchar (similar to what happened when Corey Booker did his marathon speech).
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