by Theodoric Meyer, Hannah Knowles, Marianna Sotomayor
(c) 2025 , The Washington Post
Democrats see President Donald Trump’s speech to a joint session of Congress on Tuesday as an opportunity to go on offense. Trump is expected to tout his overhaul of the federal government in the name of economic growth. But with markets shaky as Trump’s tariffs on Canadian and Mexican goods take effect and anger bubbling up in lawmakers’ town halls, Democrats hope to use his record against him – and finally seize some political momentum. “Democrats need to start holding Donald Trump accountable,” said Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Massachusetts). “He said he would lower prices for American families, quote, ‘on Day One.’ So far, he has done virtually nothing to lower prices or even to indicate that it’s somewhere on his radar screen.” Some Democrats will boycott Tuesday’s speech, but most are expected to attend. Many have invited along fired federal workers and Medicaid recipients to spotlight the impact of the ongoing effort by Trump and billionaire Elon Musk to shrink the federal government. Democratic Sen. Elissa Slotkin, a freshman who won her seat in Michigan in November even as Trump carried her state, will deliver the party’s response Tuesday night immediately after the president’s speech. Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii) said Democrats would emphasize the risk of cuts to services. “Republicans are cutting Medicare and Medicaid and firing veterans to create budget room for a tax cut for the wealthiest people to ever walk the planet,” he said. “I think we should never stop saying that,” he added. “I don’t think we should come up with clever new ways to say that. I don’t think we should move to change our message from week to week. This is what they are doing.” While Republicans have not voted to cut Medicaid, House Republicans passed a budget resolution last week that provides for $2 trillion in spending cuts. Trump and other Republicans have insisted they will not cut Medicare and will only target “fraud” in Medicaid, but analysts say the spending cuts they are pursuing will be impossible to achieve without cutting one or the other. Democrats view the potential cuts as a political opportunity. House Majority Forward, a Democratic nonprofit organization, started running TV and digital ads in nearly two dozen districts on Monday attacking vulnerable House Republicans who voted for the resolution. “We’ve seen that work in the past,” said Mike Smith, the group’s president, referring to its strategy of warning that Republicans are targeting popular health-care programs. “So we’re laser-focused on making sure that voters back in districts are aware of who’s responsible for that and tying everything back to that economic lens.” One challenge for Democrats is that some of what they are warning about hasn’t yet come to pass. “It’s difficult to sound the alarm bells for the general public this early in the game, because for the most part, nobody feels any of this yet,” said Steve Beshear, the former Kentucky governor who delivered Democrats’ response to Trump’s address to Congress in 2017. “But they will,” he continued, “and I think we as Democrats would be wise to be out front – front and center – talking to the American people about what is coming that’s going to affect their everyday lives.” Democratic leadership encouraged their members to bring guests who have been hurt by the Trump administration. Slotkin is bringing a Department of Veterans Affairs worker and veteran who lost his job. Sen. Tina Smith (D-Minnesota) chose a National Park Service ranger from Voyageurs National Park who was laid off after being promoted. “I and my colleagues really want to use the speech [Tuesday] to show how the actions that Trump and Musk are taking are really hurting people in each of our states,” Smith said. Rep. Joe Courtney (D-Connecticut) is bringing Gabriel D’Alatri, a disabled Marine veteran from his state who was laid off from the IRS last month as Trump and Musk slashed the federal workforce. D’Alatri said in an interview that his firing – despite his high performance – put huge stress on him and his wife six months after the birth of their daughter. “It highlights just how completely arbitrary and indiscriminately the process is functioning right now,” Courtney said. “It’s sweeping up people who any reasonable person would immediately agree should not be terminated.” Other Democrats are bringing Medicaid recipients as their guests, constituents who stand to lose from Trump’s tariffs and people who have benefited from federal research funding that could be cut. Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-New York) is bringing federal workers who have lost their jobs, along with two Medicaid recipients. Some Democrats are skipping the speech. Rep. Gerry Connolly (Virginia), the top Democrat on the House Oversight Committee, said he would boycott because “these are not normal times.” Sen. Chris Murphy (Connecticut) will join a virtual event hosted by the liberal group MoveOn rather than go to what he described as a “MAGA pep rally,” while Sen. Ron Wyden (Oregon) will hold a virtual town hall with constituents instead of attending. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-New York) urged Democrats not to boycott. “The decision to attend the Joint Session is a personal one and we understand that members will come to different conclusions,” Jeffries wrote in a letter to House Democrats. “However, it is important to have a strong, determined and dignified Democratic presence in the chamber.” He also encouraged Democrats to participate in events with reporters and social media influencers as part of an effort to “flood the zone” before and after Trump’s speech. House Democratic leaders reminded lawmakers in a closed-door caucus meeting Tuesday morning not to make the speech about themselves and instead to emphasize how Trump’s decisions are affecting the American people, according to two people familiar with the meeting who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the off-the-record gathering. Democratic Rep. Suhas Subramanyam (Virginia) said he will attend because he wants people like his guest, retired special-education teacher Susan Perri, to “have the president look them in the eye and tell them they’re not valued by this administration.” Perri is on Medicaid and battling cancer. Showing up, Subramanyam said, will draw attention to the fallout of Republican policies. “There’s this perception that people on Medicaid are poor, that they’re freeloaders, that Medicaid needs to be reformed because there are a lot of people who are lazy and benefiting from it,” Subramanyam said. “If you want to know who’s on Medicaid, just go talk to your neighbors.” Delivering the opposing party’s response to the State of the Union or a presidential address to a joint session is traditionally considered an honor, but also something of a thankless task. Secretary of State Marco Rubio was mocked as a young senator for awkwardly pausing to take a sip of water when he delivered the Republican response to Barack Obama’s speech in 2013. Joe Kennedy (Massachusetts), who as a congressman gave the Democratic response to Trump’s 2018 speech, went viral for his overly moist lips. (It was ChapStick, he said.) “I consider these things a fate worse than death,” said Jim Manley, formerly an aide to Harry M. Reid, the late Democratic Senate leader from Nevada. “They’re almost impossible to execute well. So I wish the senator and her staff good luck, but it’s almost impossible to compete with the president … with all the attendant pomp and circumstance.” Stacey Abrams, the former Georgia House minority leader and a two-time Democratic gubernatorial nominee in the state, said she got enough unsolicited advice when she gave the Democratic response to Trump’s 2019 State of the Union address that she would not offer any to Slotkin. She added that Slotkin’s speech comes at a higher-stakes moment than her own. “In 2019, we had a resistance that was grounded in wanting better policy,” Abrams said. “Right now we’re in a posture of trying to protect the very nature of American democracy.” – – – Marianna Sotomayor contributed to this report.