House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries told his caucus to behave. They aren't listening. In a closed-door meeting last week, Jeffries instructed colleagues to either attend President Trump's State of the Union address with "silent defiance" or skip it altogether.
The directive was blunt and deliberate, a direct response to the Democrats’ childish behavior at Trump’s congressional address last year, which Jeffries reportedly found embarrassing enough to privately chew out some of the most vocal offenders. One “centrist” House Democrat vented to Axios that the disruptions were "completely counterproductive and made us look like children."
During that address, Rep. Al Green (D-Texas) infamously stood up mid-speech, raised his walking cane in the president’s direction, and yelled. Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) was forced to pause the speech and order the sergeant-at-arms to remove Green from the chamber. The House subsequently censured him in a largely party-line vote.
Some Democrats are listening to Jeffries and won’t be attending. Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) will instead participate in an alternative event on the National Mall.
“He’s made a mockery of the State of the Union speech, and he doesn’t deserve an audience,” Murphy told the New York Times. “He’s going to tell 40 different lies, call Democrats names; he’s going to paper over his corruption; and I don’t feel like what he’s doing dignifies having Democrats there to cloak the speech in a veneer of respectability.”
Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), who flew down to meet with suspected gang member and human trafficker Kilmar Abrego Garcia in El Salvador last year, also won’t be going to the speech this year.
“We cannot normalize this moment when Trump is marching our country toward fascism,” Van Hollen said. “I refuse to be a prop in the chamber as Donald Trump shreds our Constitution and attacks our democracy.”
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Others are leaning on the guest tradition to make their point more quietly. Rep. Gwen Moore (D-Wis.) will bring a constituent who runs a small nonprofit daycare and advocates for the Affordable Care Act. "With the address likely to be divisive, I believe it's important to have a guest in the room who has the pulse of what the American people really care about: affordable childcare and healthcare for all," Moore said. Rep. Jennifer McClellan (D-Va.) will bring a guest who, she says, can speak to how the Trump administration’s policies have made it harder for families amid what she claims is an active health care crisis.
But other House Democrats are ignoring Jeffries and gearing up for a range of protest actions, including staging mid-speech walkouts.
Rep. Jared Huffman (D-Calif.) made clear he's not concerned with Jeffries' guidance. "The only question for me is which of his disgusting lines prompts me to get up and leave, because at some point I will," he said.
Rep. Shri Thanedar (D-Mich.) said he's "thinking" about protesting during the speech. "I don't have details to share but this President is not above [the] law, his massive corruption, unconstitutional actions, his insults to our allies and despicable acts at Epstein's island must be protested," Thanedar said. Vague on specifics, heavy on grievance — a reliable formula.
While some members will follow Jeffries' lead, others are clearly more interested in making their moment to stand out and curry favor with the far left base of the Democratic Party.
It’s a bizarre day when Jeffries is the adult in the room of Democrats. It’s too bad this is how they’ve decided to behave at the State of the Union, but honestly, did you expect anything less?
