
‘A spiritual war’: Are Christian nationalists threatening to turn the US into a religious state?
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adminThe pastor lights his cigar as he sits down on the sofa, casting the lit match aside. The floral upholstery starts to burn, the flames get bigger.
“It’s not the job of the preacher to be a firefighter,” Doug Wilson says, as the fire spreads. “We’re supposed to be arsonists in the world.”
Wilson leads a church in Moscow, Idaho. It’s a small city nestled beside mountains and surrounded by green, home to the University of Idaho. It voted for Joe Biden in 2020.
But Wilson, who opposes same sex marriage and rails against the Pride flag, wants to turn Moscow into a “Christian town”.
Stirring across America is a movement focused on tearing down the wall separating church and state. Conservative Christians are moving to remote states to live a rural life according to their values.
A real-estate company in Idaho that sells survival homes to such people offers buyers an AR-15 rifle as a “closing gift”.

Controversial Pastor Doug Wilson in his office in June 2022
Christian nationalism is the belief that America should be governed as a Christian nation according to faith.
While it is not a new concept, some experts argue it has gone from a fringe ideology to a force in Donald Trump’s Republican party and is now a threat to the very fabric of American democracy.
One professor said the movement uses Christian ideals to mask racist ideas, but others say the Christian nationalist label is simply used to dismiss any Christians who want to be involved in politics.
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More than half of Republicans are at least sympathetic to Christian nationalist ideas, according to a recent survey.
Religious leaders like controversial pastor Wilson and political actors like ex-Trump national security advisor Mike Flynn are considered key figures in the movement.

Crosses and flags saying “An Appeal to Heaven” were seen at the January 6 riots
So how much of a danger is Christian nationalism?
At the January 6 insurrection, flags saying “An Appeal to Heaven” and “Jesus is my saviour” appeared alongside neo-Nazi iconography as rioters poured into the Capitol.
And while hundreds of people have been charged following the events in Washington DC, experts fear that Christian nationalism poses the “greatest threat to democracy” in America, amid talk of a “spiritual war”.
“Well I gotta get home for dinner,” Pastor Wilson says as the video draws to a close. The clip then ends with sped up footage of the sofa engulfed by the fire.
‘They will tell you being gay is wrong’
Bradley Onishi spent seven years as a minister before becoming disillusioned and leaving his church.
Dressed in a flat peak cap and a black t-shirt, he cuts a fashionable figure as he warns of the dangers posed by what he calls white Christian nationalism.
“Christian nationalism is all about order”, he says. “They want everything to feel like it’s in its proper place.
“They want to go back to a time when they understand there to be two genders, a clear patriarchal structure to the family, a restricted approach to immigration, black people and other people of colour knowing their place in the country, socially and politically.”
“They will tell you that being gay is wrong, in all cases. Some of them will tell you openly that interracial marriage is a sin,” he adds.
When asked if he considers Christian nationalism to be a white supremacist movement, his answer is definitive.
“Would I say that? Totally. Are they gonna tell you that? No.”

According to Onishi, large numbers of Christians are leaving more liberal states to settle in Idaho, where they are trying to exert control over local political institutions.
Onishi is from Orange County, California but says that he could find 100 people he knew that have now moved to Idaho.
He was inspired to write his book, Preparing For War: The Extremist History Of White Christian Nationalism – And What Comes Next, by the sobering sight of rioters storming the Capitol building in Washington DC on 6 January, 2021.
“I was pretty horrified that people I knew were there and that if I hadn’t left (the church) maybe I would have been there. That’s pretty terrifying to think of.”
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Moving to Idaho to prepare for civil war?
The American Redoubt movement marries Christian nationalism with the idea of armed rural living in preparation for doomsday, and civil war.
First coined in an online essay posted to a survival blog by former US Army intelligence officer James Wesley Rawles in 2011, the so-called American Redoubt refers to a mountainous area where around 90% or more of the people are white.
It covers Idaho, Montana, Wyoming and parts of Washington and Oregon, in America’s sparsely-populated northwest.
Rawles encourages “freedom-loving Christians” to vote with their feet and congregate in the American Redoubt and prepare for the collapse of society.
He has predicted that increasing polarisation in American politics will lead to armed conflict.
“It will be the second civil war, here in America and caused by the gulf between the right and left – or between the godly and the godless – or between the libertarians and the statists – or between the individualists and the collectivists.”
It’s hard to estimate how many people have been inspired to move to the American Redoubt, but there’s certainly no shortage of estate agents advertising “redoubt” homes online.
One company, Flee The City, tells prospective customers it will find them rural properties that will give them the “safety and security we all require during turbulent periods”.
Customers who purchase a property receive an AR-15 semi-automatic rifle as a closing gift.
While Flee The City’s website says its clientele “hails from diverse backgrounds” all customers must “respect the Constitution and Bill of Rights”.

A deadly gift for buyers of survival homes. Pic: Flee the City
This is far more muted language than that used when the company was known as Black Rifle Real Estate and ruled out “snowflakes, liberals, socialists, Marxists, communists and other tyrants that hate our constitutional republic”.
“The reward for taking a stand and seeing your family safe as the sanctuary cities are burned to the ground? Priceless,” it told customers on a now-archived version of its website.
Flee The City did not respond to a request for comment.
How popular is Christian nationalism?
And it’s not just in the American Redoubt that Christian nationalist ideas have been taking hold, but nationwide.
A poll of more than 6,000 Americans by the Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI) and the Brookings Institution asked if people agreed with various statements including “God has called Christians to exercise dominion over all areas of American society”.
The survey found that more than half of Republicans were at least sympathetic to Christian nationalism.
Christian nationalism was also tightly tied with support for Donald Trump, the data suggests, with 71% of adherents holding a favourable view of the former president.

Some of those adhering to Christian nationalist views are also highly supportive of Donald Trump
“White Christian nationalism is the greatest threat to democracy and the witness of the church in the United States today,” says New York Times bestselling historian Jemar Tisby.
Speaking at a panel discussion of the survey’s findings in February, he said the racial dimensions of Christian nationalism cannot be overlooked and that it typically sees a resurgence around times when black rights are expanding.
“Christian nationalism turns around a sense of loss,” chimed in Kristin Kobes du Mez, a professor of history at Calvin University.
She said there are “clear anti-democratic impulses” in Christian nationalist beliefs, with some adherents holding the law of God above that of democracy.

Mike Flynn has been taking his talk of ‘spiritual war’ across America. Pic: AP
‘Spiritual war’ – Trump ally’s ReAwaken America tour
Former three-star general Mike Flynn was appointed as Trump’s national security advisor but resigned after just a few weeks. He pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI and was later pardoned by the former president.
More recently he has been known for his ReAwaken America tour and the Christian nationalist ideas he has been preaching far and wide.
“If we are going to have one nation under God, which we must, we have to have one religion. One nation under God, and one religion under God, right?” he said at a church in Texas.
He has said that a “spiritual war” is going on in America.

Mike Flynn signs a picture of a girl at a church in New York state. Pic: AP
And it now seems Flynn could be bringing his firebrand Christian rhetoric to the White House, with Trump telling him on stage: “We’re going to bring you back.”
Sky News approached Mr Flynn for comment but did not receive a response.
Colin Beck, a professor at Pomona College and an expert in social movements, says that while it’s correct to describe Christian nationalism as “nativism and racism together dressed up in symbols of Christianity and patriotism”, it has also become something people identify with who would not consider it in that way.
He told Sky News that it has come to dominate the image of the Republican party, but he has diverged from some academics in his belief that its influence will “boomerang” and retreat from politics over the next decade.
On the ground in Idaho
In Idaho the impact of the coordinated efforts of Christians moving to the area and engaging with local politics is clear to see.
“Some of these individuals are very focussed on getting elected into office and have been for well over a decade now”, says democracy activist Alicia Abbott.
“They’re rising to different levels of power, everywhere from our library and school boards all the way up to our state legislatures.”

Cherry Lane library, Meridian. Pic: Meridian Library District
In Meridian, a local group campaigned to dissolve the city’s library district entirely, claiming it allowed children to access sexually explicit material. The library district said this was not true.
But Abbott, who works for anti-extremism group The Idaho 97 Project, says the Concerned Citizens of Meridian group have been trying to get books banned “under the guise that they are grooming young adults” – something she says is “blatantly false”.
“They’re targeting LGBTQIA age-appropriate material and they are organising quite effectively around the narrative that librarians are checking out ‘pornography’ to kids.”
Abbott said “manipulative efforts” are being used to recruit people into Christian nationalism, but emphasised that it doesn’t reflect the general opinions of Idahoans.
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All across America, abortion rights are under threat
Christian nationalism ‘not some means to bring white order’
But not everyone believes Christian nationalism is a racist movement.
Stephen Wolfe is a scholar who recently published a book called The Case For Christian Nationalism, in which he outlines his vision for America – and says Christian nationalists are a “threat”.
In an interview with Pastor Wilson, he said accusations that Christian nationalism is a dog whistle for white supremacy were “false”.
He adds: “It’s not some means to bring back some sort of white supremacy or white order, it’s just identifying what is true on the ground.”

A cross seen outside the Capitol in Washington DC. Pic: AP
He talks about the idea of Christian nationalism being “a Christian nation that is kind of self-conscious of itself as a Christian people”.
Wolfe says he doesn’t want religious neutrality and calls for American institutions to reflect the “fact” that the US is a Christian nation.
“We should have Christian magistrates and Christian governments that enforce Christian norms on the public, in the public, and also ensure that public institutions such as schools are Christian as well.”
Asked if secularism – the separation of church and state – is in trouble, he says: “I hope so”.
“If Christians get serious then yeah, we’re a threat…
“I’m not talking about overthrowing the government, I’m not talking about overthrowing the state. I’m talking about the regime as in the people who kind of control the forces of society…”
“I’m not calling for someone to go shoot up something,” he clarifies.
When approached for comment by Sky News, Pastor Wilson acknowledged he is what some might call a Christian nationalist.
He said: “Accusations of ‘racism’ and ‘white supremacy’ are pretty easy to come by these days, and I am pleased to report to you that when it comes to the people I represent, the charge is utterly false, and ludicrous on top of that.
“Christian nationalism is not a threat to democracy, but it does pose a threat to godless secularism. If someone has simply equated ‘democracy’ with ‘atheistic secularists always getting their way’, then the charge might make some sense.
“But if one defines democracy as a reasonable mechanism for selecting our leaders via fair and free elections, then we are not opposed to democracy at all.”
Stephen Wolfe did not respond to a request for comment.
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1:04
Capitol riots: ‘Intel was a disaster’
Christian nationalism ‘a confused issue’
Dr Albert Mohler, who is president of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, which trains new pastors, says Christian nationalism is a “confused issue” that is sometimes used as a “term of abuse”.
He told Sky News: “In a modern era in which secularisation is considered by the elites to be the norm, anyone who shows up speaking about Christianity in terms of national politics is going to be accused of being a Christian nationalist.”
Dr Mohler, who says he believes in “traditional sexual morality” and believes there are only two genders, said he understands the “propaganda value” in suggesting Christian nationalism is a cover for white supremacy as a way to dismiss it.
Asked if he considers himself to be a Christian nationalist, he said: “I’ve never used the term, but I am a Christian and I believe in the importance of the nation and a Christian influence in the nation.
“So there are some people on the left who would claim that anyone who holds such a position is a Christian nationalist. I’m not going to run from that, but it is not a term that I use of myself.”
Matias Perttula is director of the centre of American values at America First Policy Institute thinktank.
He echoes the idea that people “of other political leanings” tend to overexaggerate Christian or religious expression and “use it as a way to advance their own political agenda”.
Perttula said it was important to have civil dialogue and not approach it from an attitude of creating division.
After January 6, is American democracy under threat from Christian nationalism?
“Christian nationalism is a very serious problem for the United States and specifically for American democracy,” says Amanda Tyler.
Tyler is executive director of Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty, a non-profit dedicated to upholding freedom of religion for all people.
She argues that Christian nationalism is both “un-American and un-Christian”.
“It morphs God’s love into an ideology that subjugates our neighbours, creates an ‘us’ versus ‘them’ narrative, and can even threaten their lives,” she says.
A key “myth” associated with the movement, according to Ms Tyler, is that America was founded as a “Christian nation”.
“And until we deal with some of those underlying myths and beliefs, we won’t be able to dismantle Christian nationalism.”

The so-called QAnon Shaman, Jacob Chansley, seen at the scene of the Capitol riots
She says Christian nationalism “helped fuel” the Washington DC insurrection that sought to overturn the 2020 election, but that the ideology has been gaining steam since then.
Let’s look back at one particular moment from 6 January that might get overlooked among the frenzy and the violence.
After the braying crowd breached the barricades and poured inside, a small number emerged on the floor of the Senate chamber and – in a strange scene – gathered in prayer.
“Thank you Heavenly Father for this opportunity to stand up for our God-given unalienable rights,” Jacob Chansley, the so-called QAnon shaman, shouted through a megaphone.
“Thank you for allowing the United States of America to be reborn.”
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Democrat Cory Booker rails against Donald Trump and Elon Musk during marathon Senate speech lasting more than 17 hours
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A senior Democrat has taken to the Senate floor to speak against US President Donald Trump – with the 17-plus-hour speech still ongoing.
Cory Booker, a New Jersey senator, began speaking around 7pm (midnight in the UK) and said he intended to disrupt the “normal business of the United States Senate for as long as I am physically able”.
Referring to Mr Trump’s presidency, he said: “I rise tonight because I believe sincerely that our country is in crisis.”
As of 5pm in the UK, Mr Booker was still speaking, having spoken for more than 17 hours. He has remained standing for the entire duration, as he would lose control of the floor if he left his desk or sat down.
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As of 4pm, Cory Booker has held the Senate floor for more than 16 hours. Pic: Senate Television / AP
Other Democrat senators have joined Mr Booker to ask questions so he can rest his voice, including Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer.
At the start of his speech, Mr Booker said: “These are not normal times in our nation. And they should not be treated as such in the United States Senate.
“The threats to the American people and American democracy are grave and urgent, and we all must do more to stand against them.”
Overnight, he referenced Strom Thurmond of South Carolina, who filibustered for 24 hours and 18 minutes against the Civil Rights Act of 1957.
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“You think we got civil rights one day because Strom Thurmond – after filibustering for 24 hours – you think we got civil rights because he came to the floor one day and said ‘I’ve seen the light’,” he said.
“No, we got civil rights because people marched for it, sweat for it and [civil rights leader] John Lewis bled for it.”
Only Mr Thurmond and Republican Senator Ted Cruz – who spoke for 21 hours and 19 minutes against the Affordable Care Act in 2013 – have held the Senate floor for longer than Mr Booker.
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Luigi Mangione: What we know about man charged with murdering healthcare boss Brian Thompson
Published
8 hours agoon
April 1, 2025By
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Luigi Mangione could face the death penalty over the killing of UnitedHealthcare boss Brian Thompson.
The 26-year-old has pleaded not guilty to New York state charges of murder as an act of terrorism and weapons offenses.
New York does not have the death penalty for state charges, and so he could face life in prison without parole if convicted in that case.
But he also faces federal charges over Mr Thompson’s killing – and US attorney general Pamela Bondi has directed federal prosecutors to seek the death penalty.
Mangione has not yet been asked to enter a plea to the federal charges.
Here’s what we know about him.
Wealth, private school and Ivy League education
Mangione was born and raised in Maryland and has links to San Francisco and Hawaii.
His social media lists him as being from Towson, a well-to-do area to the north of the city of Baltimore.
He is the grandson of a wealthy property developer and philanthropist and the cousin of a current Maryland state legislator.
He attended Gilman School – a private all-boys school in Baltimore. The school’s annual fees are up to $37,690 (around £29,000) and it boasts alumni including NFL stars and former senators.
After graduating in 2016, Mangione went to the University of Pennsylvania, one of America’s elite Ivy League schools.
According to his social media, he studied computer science and launched a group named UPGRADE (UPenn Game Research and Development Environment).
A university spokesperson said he earned undergraduate and graduate degrees there.
He later co-founded his own computer game company, which focused on small, simplistic games.

Mangione went to a prestigious Ivy League university. Pic: LinkedIn
‘No complaints – a great guy’
According to his LinkedIn page, Mangione moved to California in 2020 and worked for the car-buying website TrueCar. The firm’s boss said he left last year.
Mangione currently lists himself as from Honolulu on LinkedIn, with pictures on Instagram showing him on the Hawaiian island.
In the first half of 2022, he reportedly lived at Surfbreak, a co-living space aimed at remote workers in Honolulu’s Waikiki neighbourhood.
“Luigi was just widely considered to be a great guy. There were no complaints,” Josiah Ryan, a spokesperson for Surfbreak’s owner, told the AP news agency.
“There was no sign that might point to these alleged crimes they’re saying he committed.”
Mr Ryan said Mangione left to get surgery on the US mainland for chronic back pain he suffered from since childhood.
Document reveals back condition
Mangione wrote about his health issue online, saying he has spondylolisthesis – a condition where one of the bones in the spine slips forwards.
Sky News’ Data and Forensics team obtained a 14-page document uploaded to his Google Drive account in 2021.
He details the severity of his “injury” as “low grade two” and goes into fitness goals, diet advice and notes about the condition.

The suspect’s notes say he has back condition spondylolisthesis

His X banner image shows a back X-ray
It’s unclear if the condition is linked to the motive, which police have not publicly identified, but it gives context about his health issues.
Analysis of his Goodreads profile also shows he read books including Crooked: Outwitting The Back Pain Industry and Getting On The Road To Recovery, and Why We Get Sick: The Hidden Epidemic At The Root Of Most Chronic Disease – And How To Fight It.
A banner image on his X account also features an X-ray of a lower back with screws.
Law enforcement officials told NBC News they are looking at whether the X-ray is Mangione’s or from a relative and whether it’s connected to the shooting.
‘Violence is necessary to survive’
Mangione appears to have had an active social media presence.
His X account regularly shared and reposted pieces about topics such as artificial intelligence (AI), philosophy, and the future of humanity.
His Goodreads account also gave a four-star review to Industrial Society And Its Future – by notorious US terrorist Theodore Kaczynski.
The piece, which rails against technological advancement, became known as the Unabomber Manifesto after its author began a mail bombing campaign which lasted nearly 20 years.
Three people were killed and dozens were injured before Kaczynski’s arrest in 1996.
The Goodreads review said: “When all other forms of communication fail, violence is necessary to survive. You may not like his methods, but to see things from his perspective, it’s not terrorism, it’s war and revolution.
“‘Violence never solved anything’ is a statement uttered by cowards and predators.”

Luigi Mangione. Pic: Facebook
Why are some calling Mangione a ‘hero’?
A search of social media sites such as Reddit reveals a thread of people who are sympathetic to the suspect.
Highly rated comments on the site include: “Screw the McDonald’s employee that ratted him out” and “Only a matter of time till shirts with #FreeLuigi start popping up”.
To many, these are shocking comments about someone accused of carrying out a cold-blooded killing. But what’s behind them?
Many in the US pay thousands in expensive insurance premiums to cover themselves and their family, while others rely on the Medicare federal insurance programme.
Support for Mangione appears to come from resentment over this and accusations that companies go to great lengths to avoid paying for treatments in order to maximise their profits.
“He got charged with murder quicker than insurance companies deny claims”, said a comment on Reddit with nearly 7,000 likes.
One post that went viral on X before the suspect’s arrest was from Anthony Zenkus, a Columbia University professor.
He wrote: “We mourn the deaths of the 68,000 Americans who needlessly die each year so that insurance company execs like Brian Thompson can become multimillionaires.”
Read more from Sky News:
Shooting prompts US healthcare debate

Police shared this picture of the suspect following the shooting. Pic: NYPD
A chart shared widely on X claims to show denial rates by UnitedHealthcare exceed those of competitors, using data from consumer finance website ValuePenguin. This is consistent with publicly available data from 2023 analysed by Sky News.
Other people online appear to be angry about what they say is the disparity between the resources put into Mr Thompson’s case and how less well-off people are treated.
One comment on Reddit with 4,000 likes says: “The murdered guy in death, like in life, is still sucking up a huge undeserved and unwanted portion of resources.
“How many underprivileged people’s murders are going unsolved because NYPD and the feds are spending millions on this overpaid, rich, morally questionable millionaire’s murder.”
Arrested in McDonald’s with ‘ghost gun’
Mangione was detained in a Pennsylvania McDonald’s after a five-day search, carrying a gun that matched the one used in the shooting and a fake ID, police said.
He was arrested in Altoona, around 230 miles (370km) west of New York, after a tip-off from a McDonald’s employee who recognised him from the police appeals.
Mangione also had a fake New Jersey ID matching one used by the suspect to check into a hostel before the killing, said New York police commissioner Jessica Tisch.
He was found carrying a “handwritten document” that Ms Tisch said “spoke to both his motivation and mindset”.
Joseph Kenny, New York’s chief of detectives, said it appeared to show “some ill-will towards corporate America”.
Pennsylvania prosecutor Peter Weeks said Mangione was found with a passport and $10,000 (£7,840) – $2,000 of it in foreign currency.
‘Message’ on bullets
Brian Thompson, 50, was chief executive of UnitedHealthcare – the fourth-largest public company in the US behind Walmart, Amazon, and Apple – and was paid about $10m (£7.8m) a year.
It’s the largest provider of Medicare Advantage plans and manages insurance for employers and state and federally funded programmes.
Mr Thompson – who was married with two sons – was shot on 4 December as he was walking to a New York hotel where his company was holding an investors’ conference.

CCTV showed a person shooting Mr Thompson from behind. Pic: NYPD/Reuters
As Mr Thompson walked towards the Hilton hotel on Sixth Avenue, a gunman appeared behind him from between parked cars.
He was shot in the back and calf and died from his injuries.
The words “defend”, “deny”, and “depose” were written on the cases of bullets found at the scene – similar to the title of a book that criticises health insurance companies.
Mr Thompson’s wife said he was an “incredibly loving father to our two sons” and a “loving, generous, talented man who truly lived life to the fullest”.
UnitedHealthcare called him a “highly respected colleague and friend to all who worked with him”.
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Who is Cory Booker? The Democrat making a marathon speech against Trump (and why it’s not a filibuster)
Published
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April 1, 2025By
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A Democratic senator is delivering a marathon speech in the US Senate in protest against Donald Trump.
Cory Booker, 55, took to the floor at 7pm local time on Monday (midnight in the UK), saying he would remain there as long as he was “physically able”.
As of 5pm in the UK, Mr Booker was still going – more than 17 hours after he started.
The senator for New Jersey said his goal is to “uplift the stories of Americans who are being harmed by the Trump administration’s reckless actions, attempts to undermine our institutions, and disregard for the rule of law”.
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During his speech, Mr Booker has only taken brief breaks from speaking, giving the floor instead to questions from his Democratic colleagues, according to Sky News’ US partner network, NBC News.
According to the rules of the Senate, as long as he stays at the podium Mr Booker will hold the floor – meaning he cannot leave at any point, even to go to the toilet or to eat.
So who exactly is the Democratic senator, and what is his multi-hour speech all about?

Mr Booker has criticised the Trump administration during his speech. Pic: Senate Television via AP
Rising star of Democratic Party
Mr Booker was born in Washington DC and moved to northern New Jersey when he was a boy.
He is a graduate of Stanford University and Yale Law and started his career as a lawyer for charities.
Entering politics, he was considered a rising star in the Democratic Party. He was elected to serve on the city council of New Jersey’s biggest state, Newark, and then as mayor, a position he held until 2013.
He was first elected to the US Senate in 2013 during a special election held after the death of politician and businessman Frank Lautenberg.
He went on to win his first full term in 2014 and was re-elected in 2020.
2020 presidential bid
In February 2019 Mr Booker launched his bid for the US presidency from the steps of his home in Newark.
At the time, he played on his personal ties to the “low-income, inner city community” and urged for the US to return to a “common sense of purpose”.
He later dropped out of the race after struggling to raise the money required to make a bid for the White House.

Senator Cory Booker. Pic: AP
Why is he speaking in the Senate?
By holding the floor in the Senate, Mr Booker is protesting against the Trump administration.
Before he began, the senator said he had the intention of “getting in some good trouble”, NBC News reported.
He read letters from constituents about how Mr Trump’s cuts were already taking a toll on their lives.
The longest Senate speeches in history
As he reached 16 hours of speaking, Mr Booker already had the sixth-longest speech in Senate history.
However, he still has a while to go to beat the all-time record for the longest individual speech.
According to the Senate’s website, this belongs to Strom Thurmond of South Carolina, who filibustered for 24 hours and 18 minutes against the Civil Rights Act of 1957.
Only one other sitting senator has spoken for longer than Mr Booker.
In 2013, Senator Ted Cruz, a Republican from Texas, held the floor for 21 hours and 19 minutes to contest Barack Obama’s healthcare reform law.
As well as speaking about health law, Mr Cruz’s speech made headlines as he read the entirety of the Dr Seuss book Green Eggs And Ham, which he said at the time was a bedtime story to his children.
He claimed the US was giving up being a global leader, citing Mr Trump’s proposals to take over Greenland and Canada while feuding with longtime allies.
He also occasionally took aim at Elon Musk, the richest person in the world, who is advising Mr Trump and leading the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).
“In just 71 days, the president of the United States has inflicted so much harm on Americans’ safety; financial stability; the core foundations of our democracy,” Mr Booker said on the floor.
“These are not normal times in America. And they should not be treated as such in the United States Senate.”
Appearing to waver slightly on Tuesday morning, Mr Booker was accompanied by Senator Chris Murphy. In 2016, Mr Booker joined the Connecticut Democrat when he held the floor for almost 15 hours to argue for gun control legislation.
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Why he is not a filibuster
Some reports have referred to Mr Booker’s speech as a filibuster, but technically it is not.
A filibuster is a speech meant to halt the advance of a specific piece of legislation.
Mr Booker’s performance is instead a broader critique of Mr Trump’s agenda, meant to hold up any business scheduled to take place in the Senate and draw attention to what Democrats are doing to contest the president.
Democrats have been forced to use these types of opposition methods as they do not hold a majority in either congressional chamber.
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