Who is Cory Booker, the Democrat from New Jersey holding the Senate floor?

TRENTON, N.J. (AP) — Sen. Cory Booker, who took hold of the Senate floor Monday night and held onto it Tuesday as he railed against President Donald Trump's Republican agenda, once found common ground with the president during his first term.

Booker, a New Jersey Democrat who ran an unsuccessful presidential campaign in 2020, expressed frustration bordering on exasperation at a host of Trump issues in his long Senate speech — from the possibility of annexing Greenland and Canada to slashing social programs and cutting taxes.

Booker's speech, occasionally interrupted by Democratic colleagues to whom he yielded for questions while catching his breath, came as Democrats are in the minority in the Senate and the House. It's unclear what effect Booker's speech could have, but it reflects one of the levers available to out-of-power parties.

Here's a closer look at who Booker is and what he's been saying:

Booker, 55, was born in Washington, D.C., and moved to northern New Jersey when he was a boy. He's spoken about growing up in a Black family in a predominantly white neighborhood and how his parents faced opposition when they tried to buy a house.

He played football in college at Stanford University before attending Yale Law School and then worked as an attorney in nonprofits, giving legal aid to poorer families. Elected to the Newark City Council and then as mayor of the state's biggest city, he served there until 2013.

His time in office coincided with Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg's $100 million donation to the city's public schools, a boon that burnished his status as a Democratic rising star at the time.

In 2013, he was elected in a special election to the U.S. Senate after the death of incumbent Frank Lautenberg. He then won his first full-term in 2014 and was reelected in 2020.

He launched an upbeat but ultimately doomed 2020 bid for president in a crowded Democratic field. Standing in the front yard of his Newark house, Booker declared “love ain't easy.”

Booker's Senate speech started about 7 p.m. Monday and carried through the night.

By Tuesday morning, his voice occasionally wavered with emotion as he recognized his colleagues who asked him questions, giving him a chance to take a break from speaking.

He read letters from constituents, cited authors like Langston Hughes and leaned into foreign policy and potential social safety net cuts.

He said Republicans' budget language aimed to cut health care for Americans “to give tax cuts disproportionately to the wealthy” and would drive up deficits.

He said the U.S. was giving up leading the planet and cited Trump's proposals to take over Greenland and Canada while feuding with longtime allies.

Reflecting his inclination toward uplifting rhetoric, Booker lamented a lack of unity.

“We are a union in trouble compared to our global peers,” he said. "Yet we are a nation of utter abundance, and we've proven in the past to be a nation of incredible vision."

He also occasionally took aim at Elon Musk, the richest person in the world, who's advising Trump and leading the Department of Government Efficiency. He criticized the president's agenda to renew tax cuts that would benefit wealthy Americans, like Musk.

“I wish he would say the truth — I don't need a tax cut,” Booker said.

Booker played part in a 2018 bipartisan measure to overhaul federal sentencing laws passed after a few Black ministers, leaders and lawmakers forged an alliance with Trump, whom some had condemned as racist for the previous two years. The reforms aimed to create a path to freedom for hundreds of Black and Latino prisoners.

Among the bills he’s sponsored that became law was a 2019 measure that permitted states to transfer money from clean water revolving funds to drinking water revolving funds to address public health.

He chairs the Democratic Strategic Communications Committee and touts in his Senate biography that he sought to protect the Affordable Care Act from repeal.

In this image provided by Senate Television, Sen, Cory Booker, D-N.J. speaks on the Senate floor, Tuesday morning, April 1, 2025. (Senate Television via AP)

FILE - Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., speaks during a hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington, May 21, 2024. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh, File)

ALEPPO, Syria (AP) — The Syrian army on Tuesday declared an area east of the northern city of Aleppo a “closed military zone,” potentially signaling another escalation between government forces and fighters with the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces.

Several days of clashes in the city of Aleppo last week that displaced tens of thousands of people came to an end over the weekend with the evacuation of Kurdish fighters from the contested neighborhood of Sheikh Maqsoud.

Since then, Syrian officials have accused the SDF of building up its forces near the towns of Maskana and Deir Hafer, about 60 km (37 mi) east of Aleppo city, something the SDF denied.

State news agency SANA reported that the army had declared the area a closed military zone because of “continued mobilization” by the SDF “and because it serves as a launching point for Iranian suicide drones that have targeted the city of Aleppo.”

On Saturday afternoon, an explosive drone hit the Aleppo governorate building shortly after two Cabinet ministers and a local official held a news conference on the developments in the city. The SDF denied being behind the attack.

The army statement Tuesday said armed groups should withdraw to the area east of the Euphrates River.

The tensions come amid an impasse in political negotiations between the central state and the SDF.

The leadership in Damascus under interim President Ahmad al-Sharaa signed a deal in March with the SDF, which controls much of the northeast, for it to merge with the Syrian army by the end of 2025. There have been disagreements on how it would happen.

Some of the factions that make up the new Syrian army, formed after the fall of former President Bashar Assad in a rebel offensive in December 2024, were previously Turkey-backed insurgent groups that have a long history of clashing with Kurdish forces.

The SDF has for years been the main U.S. partner in Syria in fighting against the Islamic State group, but Turkey considers the SDF a terrorist organization because of its association with the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, which has waged a long-running insurgency in Turkey. A peace process is now underway.

Despite the long-running U.S. support for the SDF, the Trump administration in the U.S. has also developed close ties with al-Sharaa’s government and has pushed the Kurds to implement the March deal.

Shams TV, a station based in Irbil, the seat of northern Iraq’s semi-autonomous Kurdish region, had been set to air an interview with al-Sharaa on Monday but later announced it had been postponed for “technical” reasons without giving a new date for airing it.

An aerial view shows the area in the predominantly Kurdish Sheikh Maqsoud neighborhood where clashes broke out Tuesday Jan. 6 between government forces and the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces in the northern city of Aleppo, Syria, Monday, Jan. 12, 2026. (AP Photo/Omar Albam)

Buses carry displaced residents as they return to the Achrafieh neighborhood after days of fighting between government forces and Kurdish fighters in the northern city of Aleppo, Syria, Monday, Jan. 12, 2026. (AP Photo/Ghaith Alsayed)

Buses carrying displaced residents drive past a building in ruins as they return to the Achrafieh neighborhood after days of fighting between government forces and Kurdish fighters in the northern city of Aleppo, Syria, Monday, Jan. 12, 2026. (AP Photo/Omar Albam)