Paul calls it a night after 10 1/2 hours It’s not clear whether his speech on the PATRIOT Act had any real effect on Mitch McConnell’s plans.

Rand Paul relinquished the Senate floor late Wednesday night after 10-and-a-half hours of lambasting the government surveillance programs — capitalizing on a sleepy day in the Senate to highlight his opposition to key parts of the PATRIOT Act that expire at the end of the month.

Wearing dark green sneakers in apparent preparation to go deep into the evening, Paul launched into a lengthy critique of surveillance — a stance that’s put him squarely against top Republicans and other GOP presidential contenders who advocate continuing the controversial bulk collection programs.


”There comes a time in the history of nations when fear and complacency allow power to accumulate and liberty and privacy to suffer,” Paul said as he opened his remarks at 1:18 p.m. Wednesday. “That time is now. And I will not let the PATRIOT Act — the most unpatriotic of acts — go unchallenged.”

By carrying his talk-a-thon to the brink of Thursday, Paul prevented Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) from filing cloture on a bill to extend or reform the PATRIOT Act.

But it’s not clear that McConnell ever intended to — so it’s uncertain whether Paul truly gummed up McConnell’s plan. And with the House set to depart Thursday, a Senate surveillance vote while House lawmakers are still in town was unlikely anyway.

Still, Paul said his nearly half-a-day control of the Senate floor made a difference.

“I think we accomplished something,” Paul said. It was kinda nice to have bipartisan support and having people come down. I think really there’s unanimity among a lot of us that the bulk collection ought to end.”

Paul didn’t hold the floor by himself. The Kentucky senator was buttressed by ten senators — seven of them Democrats — who came to the floor to at times to give Paul a breather. The lawmakers — including Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah), whose surveillance reform bill Paul criticized repeatedly — chewed up at least 90 minutes worth of floor time in support of Paul. Sen. Ted Cruz, Paul’s 2016 rival, also came to spell Paul in the closing hour of his speech.

“I’m entirely in agreement with my friend the senator from Kentucky,” Cruz said at one point. “It is abundantly clear that a clean reauthorization of the PATRIOT Act ain’t passing this body, and it certainly ain’t passing the House of Representatives.”

Regardless of whether Paul’s speech qualified as an official filibuster, the 2016 presidential contender, who made his name two years ago with a 13-hour filibuster of the nomination of John Brennan to lead the CIA, once again demonstrated his knack for drawing the spotlight to his pet causes.

“The word is: We won’t get any time to actually debate whether or not we’re going to abridge the Fourth Amendment, whether or not we’re going to accept something that one of the highest courts in our land has said is illegal,” Paul said. “Are we going to accept that without any debate?”

Paul, along with Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), has threatened for days that he would filibuster any effort by McConnell and other Senate Republicans to extend the expiring provisions of the PATRIOT Act. After leaving the floor Wednesday, he told reporters he hadn’t given McConnell a heads up that he was going to commandeer the floor.

“I didn’t tell him or anything because, obviously, if they block you from the floor, you can’t take the floor,” Paul said of his fellow Kentuckian. “So I had to wait my turn and hope nobody would block me.”

On Wednesday, the Senate was burning time between McConnell’s move to file cloture on a separate measure on trade, with a key procedural vote set to occur one hour after the Senate convenes on Thursday. For much of Wednesday, Paul could talk freely without actually gumming up the legislative works.

Even though Paul’s time to talk was capped by the looming trade vote, Paul’s control of the floor could ultimately have had other ramifications as the Senate rushed to finish work on a number of bills before lawmakers leave at the end of the week for the Memorial Day recess. While Paul was on the Senate floor, McConnell couldn’t file cloture on other bills, including measures to extend or reform the PATRIOT Act.

His decision to speak while the Senate was still dealing with a trade bill, in some ways, gives Paul the best of both worlds: commanding the Senate stage for hours on end without antagonizing the Republican leader from his home state — who has been a key ally — or jeopardizing his colleagues’ vacation plans.

Asked whether it’s better that Paul was giving his speech now rather than later in the week, Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) smiled and said, “Yes.”

“He’s doing fine,” Cornyn said. “We’ll see how long he goes.”

Whether it was a filibuster or just a very long speech, Paul again demonstrated his talent for drawing the spotlight to his opposition to many forms of government spying. The Kentucky Republican said that many of the programs revealed by NSA leaker Edward Snowden haven’t helped make the country more secure.

“I’m not even sure you can argue that we are safer, but people will argue they feel safer,” Paul said.

While Paul was the lead protester, the libertarian firebrand was far from alone on the Senate floor. About two hours into his speech, Paul was joined by Wyden.

Later on, Paul’s talkathon became a bipartisan affair — with Lee, Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.), Steve Daines (R-Mont.) and Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) piling on against the bulk collection programs. A handful of Paul’s allies from the House — including GOP Reps. Justin Amash of Michigan, Jeff Duncan of South Carolina and Thomas Massie of Kentucky — came onto the Senate floor to show support and listen to Paul.

Outside the Capitol, a small crowd of Paul supporters gathered late Wednesday. They were mostly quiet except for a few “stand with Rand” chants. Amash and Massie briefly stopped by.

Paul’s extended floor speech came as the Senate heads down to the wire over whether to extend parts of the PATRIOT Act that are slated to sunset at the end of May. The House last week passed the USA Freedom Act, a bill that would effectively end the government’s massive bulk collection of telephone records, and the bill has significant support among Democrats and a handful of Republicans in the Senate.

Paul, however, says the measure doesn’t do enough to rein in the intelligence community and could actually give the intelligence community leeway for bulk data collection.

“By trying to reform this, we will actually be granting new power to Section 215 that the court says is not there,” he said, referring to the section of the PATRIOT Act that government attorneys used to justify bulk data collection.

But Paul used the time not only to express concerns with USA Freedom Act. Rather, Paul’s speech amounts to a de facto campaign speech in which he lamented the threat to citizens posed by Big Government.

Paul gave some of his Republican colleagues a heads-up during their Wednesday caucus luncheon that he’d be taking the floor. But lawmakers were unclear on his exact goal. Leaving their party lunch, Senate Democrats said the timing of the speech left them with the impression that Paul was filibustering the trade bill. And Republicans were skeptical of what he might achieve.

“Good luck to him,” said Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.).

The timing of Paul’s speech is more likely to disrupt last-minute negotiations on the trade bill than to stymie efforts by hawkish senators to restore the PATRIOT Act. A vote on the trade bill is locked in on Thursday, though Senate Finance Chairman Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) said Paul’s theatrical speech “doesn’t help us on trade, I’ll put it that way.”

Paul’s speech prevents trade amendment votes from taking place, for example.

“That’s his right. He can do that. I hope he keeps it for awhile because I need a few minutes to myself,” Hatch said. Asked if Paul could hurt his efforts to reach a long-sought deal on trade amendments, Hatch responded: “I can think of some ways I can get around that.”

Paul’s lengthy speech allowed him to shine a spotlight on some of the surveillance tactics that privacy hawks have been criticizing for years. He maligned the government’s efforts to weaken encryption in new technologies, for example, and blasted the government’s current ability to comb their databases for Americans’ content even without a warrant — a practice a majority of House lawmakers voted against last year but isn’t prohibited by the USA Freedom Act.

The Kentucky senator also lent a hand to American tech companies in Silicon Valley — where he’s courting support for his 2016 presidential bid — by highlighting how reports of American spying may make foreigners less likely to use American social networks or email providers.

“Some of these companies are the greatest success stories in our country,” Paul said. “In our zealousness to ignore the Constitution, we’re grabbing up so much stuff, we’re scaring people to death.”

Burgess Everett and Kate Tummarello contributed to this report.