Prior to 10 a.m. yesterday, Nancy Pelosi took the House floor to stage a filibuster of sorts against the bipartisan budget agreement after it failed to include protections for young undocumented immigrants called Dreamers. When 5 p.m. rolled around, the House minority leader had been speaking for some eight hours, but it wasn’t just the record-setting length of her speech that captured the country’s attention — it was also her shoes.
Pelosi, who is 77, managed to do the whole thing in 4-inch heels, an observation popularly noted on Twitter when users started sharing videos of the California Democrat under the hashtag #GoNancyGo. Although it remains to be heard whether the shoes were a deliberate choice, her footwear comes in stark contrast to the bright pink Mizuno sneakers former Texas state senator Wendy Davis wore at a 2013 filibuster that lasted 13 hours.
Filibusters aren’t technically permitted in the House, but Pelosi used her status as party leader to speak for as long as she saw fit. To pass the time, she read aloud from letters that Dreamers had written to their representatives, appealing to Speaker Paul Ryan’s reluctance to commit to the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program.
“We want to be sure that the public record of the Congress of the United States forever more will reflect the stories of their great contribution to America in the hopes that those stories will move the speaker of the House to give us a vote,” she said.
According to a House historian, Pelosi broke a record for the longest contiguous speech in the House since 1909.
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