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Oregon's senator from the Democratic party, Senator Merkley, has reached the 16-hour milestone of a marathon speech on the Senate chamber, arguing that Donald Trump is acting as an authoritarian, notably by deploying the military into his hometown of Portland.

The senator, aged 68, started his address around 6.20pm on Tuesday and persisted with minimal breaks into the early hours of Wednesday. Positioned on the chamber floor next to placards that read “autocracy has arrived!” and “the President is breaking legal norms”, the senator has paused only to take questions from fellow Democratic senators.

“I’ve come to the Senate floor tonight to ring the alarm bells. We face the gravest threat, the biggest threat to our republic since the civil war. The President is tearing apart our constitutional framework,” the Oregon senator said as he began his speech.

Merkley spoke a day after an appellate court had allowed the president to deploy the national guard into Portland over the objections of city officials, who assert there is no merit to the administration's assertion that the metropolis is a “war zone”. The president has also ordered a similar deployment of military personnel into the city of Chicago, where federal agents are conducting an aggressive crackdown focusing on people they believe to be undocumented immigrants. The supreme court is poised to consider a legal challenge to that move.

Military Actions and Political Reprisals

The senator discussed those deployments to cities that are predominantly liberal, as well as other instances where the commander-in-chief is perceived as retaliating against his political enemies, such as the legal accusations a handpicked US attorney has filed against the NY attorney general, Attorney General James, and former FBI director Comey.

“Fair treatment before the law – that’s the vision here in America. Not biased unfairness, which is what the president is pursuing by taking the power of the government and targeting persons that he dislikes or views as political opponents,” the senator said.

“Such actions are typical of distant dictatorships, and you go, it couldn't occur here, yet it is unfolding presently.”

Historical Context and Precedents

The senator's address is the second occurrence this year in which a Democratic senator has conducted a lengthy floor speech to condemn the administration's policies. Roughly 60 days after Trump’s inauguration, Cory Booker of New Jersey spoke for over 25 hours, setting a new record for the longest speech ever by a single senator.

The Oregon senator has responded to queries from a small group of fellow Democrats, including Dick Durbin of Illinois, Andy Kim of New Jersey, and Senator Booker, who cautioned: “We are seeing a time now that if we do not ring the alarm bells, more and more Americans will be harmed by a president who is behaving similarly to an authoritarian leader than a democratically elected executive.”

Budget Impasse Background

Merkley’s speech come on the 22nd consecutive day of the government shutdown that began at the beginning of October, when Democrats and Republicans failed to agree on legislation to extend funding beyond the end of September.

The Senate has held 11 failed ballots on a Republican-backed bill to extend funding through 21 November, which the Democratic bloc have rejected because it lacks healthcare funding that they are demanding, as well as restrictions on Trump’s use of rescissions to slash funding approved by Congress.

The Senate’s Republican leaders were scheduled to conduct a 12th vote on the legislation on Wednesday.