Nancy Pelosi stood for eight hours to tell the stories of immigrants in the US Congress
The speaker broke the record for the longest continuous speech in Congress.
Nancy Pelosi has broken the record for the longest continuous speech in Congress in an effort to force a vote on protection for DACA recipients on Wednesday.
The Democrat speaker of the House of Representatives used much of the speech – which lasted more than eight hours – to read personal letters from the young immigrants whose temporary protection from deportation is set to expire next month.
The DACA programme has been under threat since September when the Trump administration declared its intention to scrap the protections for 800,000 childhood immigrants. In January, a court blocked the attempt, saying it must stay in place until legal challenges to it have been heard.
The 77-year-old’s supporters took to Twitter, using the hashtag #GoNancyGo to support her efforts.
Republican supporters were not as enamoured with Pelosi’s actions.
“You see, these people are being deported,” Ms Pelosi said, at around the sixth hour of her speech. “We can do something today to at least make whole the children.”
Pelosi began her remarks at about 10am and yielded the floor at 6.11pm, delivering the longest continuous speech on record in the history of Congress. She bested Republican Champ Clark’s five-hour, 15-minute stem-winder about tariff reform in 1909.
