As President Donald Trump prepares to deliver his State of the Union address on Tuesday evening before Congress, several members of the Congressional Black Caucus are skipping the primetime remarks entirely, while others will protest in other ways.
“I will not dignify his actions with my presence,” said Maryland U.S. Senator Angela Alsobrooks, one of only two Black women serving the U.S. Senate. “Our country has been thrust into an accountability and affordability crisis through the cruelty, lawlessness, and greed of this President and his Administration.”
“Instead of sitting in Washington listening to President Trump lie about an economy that Americans know is unaffordable, tariffs that illegally drive up costs, and masked ICE agents who are terrorizing communities, I’m choosing to be with Houston residents,” said U.S. Rep. Christian Menefee, a newly sworn-in member of Congress from Texas’s 18th Congressional District. “My priority is listening to the people who sent me to Congress. Not to a President who has time and again shown he cannot be trusted.”
Menefee said his constituents “don’t want political theater,” but rather “someone who shows up, listens, and fights to lower costs and protect their neighborhoods.”
U.S. Rep. Ayanna Pressley, D-Mass., said rather than attend the SOTU at the U.S. Capitol, she will instead spend time “uplifting stories of children detained and traumatized by ICE and Trump’s terrorizing of immigrant communities.”
“The state of our union is traumatizing our children,” said Pressley. “The heartless Occupant of the White House has no regard for our nation’s children— his terror campaign is wholesale child abuse —and I have no regard for a man who rips parents away from children, deports families, and imprisons our babies.”
Pressley added, “Instead of giving this man an audience, I am shedding light on the stories of our children and making it known that they deserve more. They belong everywhere and they deserve a childhood free from fear.”
During a press briefing with Black reporters on Capitol Hill ahead of the SOTU, Congressional Black Caucus Chairwoman, U.S. Rep. Yvette D. Clarke, explained that some members of her caucus have skipped out on the address because of Trump’s “utter disrespect for the Black community.”
Clarke pointed to the president’s “disdain” for Black Americans, from the “erasure” of Black history, to court battles over voting rights instigated by his push to keep Republicans in control of Congress and his “lies” about the affordability crisis that he says his administration has fixed. She added, “[We] ultimately saw the largest withdrawal of Black employees in the history of this nation, expelled from their jobs.”
While Clarke will be in attendance, she noted, “Many in my district consider him to be a white supremacist…and so I expect that his rhetoric will reinforce that.”
The CBC leader added, “We intend as Democrats to sit there and to listen, to be as respectful as we can under the circumstances, and you know, we don’t expect him to offer us that same respect.”
U.S. Rep. Lateefah Simon of California, who also attended Tuesday’s briefing, said she will also not attend the SOTU, but dismissed any efforts to divide the CBC based on who is attending and who is not.
“It is very similar to how we think about Sunday. Some people are [at] Bedside Baptist, and some are in the spot to bear witness. Our job is to bear witness everywhere,” said Simon, using a metaphor connected to the community’s cultural ties to the Black church.
“We have to remember all of our grandmothers said, ‘Don’t let nobody kick you out of your house.’ And so for the folks who are attending, there’s an assignment there. There’s an assignment to hold space,” she explained. “So there will be some of us on the floor, and…some of us will be outside, standing in solidarity, and vice versa.”
Some CBC members will be joining counterprogramming in protest of Trump’s address, like the State of the People virtual program, pegged as “The Black People’s Alternative to the State of the Union.” Other members will instead show their protest in their guests for the SOTU, as every member is allowed to bring at least one guest.
U.S. Rep. Ilhan Omar, who has repeatedly been personally insulted by President Trump, is bringing four guests from Minnesota whose stories, she says, reflect how the administration’s immigration operation in her state has “devastated Minnesotans’ safety and economic security.” Omar’s guests include Mubashir Hussen, a 20-year-old US citizen detained by ICE in Minneapolis, and Aliya Rahman, a disabled, autistic woman who was dragged out of a car by ICE in Minneapolis and said she suffered serious injuries.
Some members of Congress will bring women survivors of child sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein, amid the Trump administration’s delayed release of the full FBI files, which have contained questionable redactions related to Trump and individuals associated with him. Trump has repeatedly denied knowing about his former friend Epstein’s sex crimes or having done anything illegal; however, how his Justice Department has handled the files’ release has raised suspicions as to whether the agency is protecting him or those close to him.
“The Pedophile Protection Party in chief has instructed his Justice Department to cover up the Epstein file. So far, only half of the Epstein files have been released,” Congresswoman Omar said at a press conference ahead of the SOTU address.
“We know his speech will be full of lies about how our nation is thriving under his leadership. We know that it is BS,” she said. “The truth about the state of the union is this, our country is on life support, and the American people are the ones paying the price.”
