WASHINGTON–U.S. Senator Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) joined U.S. Senator Cory Booker (D-N.J.) on the floor of the Senate starting at 7pm Monday night for Booker’s marathon speech. Booker, Murphy, and other Senate Democrats are taking the Senate floor to elevate the voices of Americans who are being harmed by the Trump administration’s actions and to lay out President Trump and Elon Musk’s attacks on democracy. Throughout the night and into today, Murphy has directed questions to Booker.

During the fifth hour of Booker’s speech, Murphy referenced his 2016 filibuster to demand action on gun violence: “There is so much similarity between the debate that you are forcing this Senate to have tonight and the debate that we were having back in 2016 on this epidemic of gun violence. I always describe it this way: the only thing that matters, the thing that matters more than anything else in your life is protecting your loved ones from physical harm. Right? You would give anything, right? Anything. You would give your life’s savings, your house. You would perhaps give your own life in order to protect your child or your brother or sister or mother or father from physical harm. And so when you and I have sat across from the victims of gun violence, many of which live in your neighborhood and my neighborhood in Newark and Hartford, we are looking at a kind of desperation and sorrow that is unique, that is unique, that comes with not just losing a loved one to gun violence, but feeling powerless in that exercise, feeling like there was nothing you could do, and watching your elected leaders stand by and allow for this reality to continue to occur in your neighborhood, where kids are being shot down in cold blood, and your elected leaders, the adults in charge of your community, are standing idly by.”

He continued: “That is not fundamentally different than the reality that will be visited upon millions of families if this size of a cut in Medicaid funding goes into effect because families out there who rely on Medicaid to keep alive their son or daughter who has a complicated medical disease, have no other quarter, have no other last resort besides Medicaid. And so Medicaid stands between life and death for their son or daughter. There is no other place for them to go. And so that same empty, hollow look that we have seen so many times in the eyes of a mother or father who lost a son or daughter to gun violence, that is the look that we are choosing to visit upon millions of families in this country who when faced with the loss of their only health insurance option for their disabled child, will watch their child potentially face the same fate as those young men in your neighborhood and my neighborhood. And so that's the reason why I pose this question to you that you're answering about the moral gravity of this moment because it is not fundamentally different than the one that brought us here in 2016.”

Booker will continue speaking on the floor for as long as he is physically able, and Murphy will stay with him throughout.

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