Jeff Merkley previously spoke for more than 15 hours in 2017 to protest President Donald Trump's nomination of Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court.
Notes on verification
Confirmed by multiple independent contemporaneous 2017 news sources (CNN, NBC News, Roll Call, AP) and corroborated by a 2025 OPB article referencing the same event. [tier=silver indep_score=0.833 clusters=3 claim_tier=notable]
Sources
- Democratic Sen. Merkley of Oregon speaks for more than 22 hours to protest Trump amid shutdown (seed:politics_and_current_events)
- https://www.opb.org/article/2025/10/22/oregon-senator-jeff-merkley-speaks-holding-floor-overnight-decry-authoritarianism/ (corroboration)
- https://www.cnn.com/2017/04/05/politics/jeff-merkley-neil-gorsuch-talk-a-thon (corroboration)
- https://www.ijpr.org/2017-04-05/merkley-speaks-for-15-hours-opposing-gorsuch-nomination-but-was-it-a-filibuster (corroboration)