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FILE – Sen. Alex Padilla, D-Calif., center, talks at a news conference after a policy luncheon on Capitol Hill, June. 17, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo\/Mariam Zuhaib)<\/p>\n
FILE – Sen. Alex Padilla, D-Calif., center, talks at a news conference after a policy luncheon on Capitol Hill, June. 17, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo\/Mariam Zuhaib)<\/p>\n
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In his speech, Trump described a nation with lower costs than when he took office, declaring, \u201cThis is the golden age of America.\u201d<\/p>\n
He also goaded the Democratic side of the House chambers throughout the speech for not standing, increasing his insults throughout the speech and calling his opponents \u201ccrazy.\u201d But Democrats inside the chamber largely didn\u2019t react, sitting silently. Texas Rep. Al Green was removed from the chamber barely two minutes into the president\u2019s address after holding a protest sign reading \u201cBlack People Aren\u2019t Apes!\u201d<\/p>\n
Outside the chamber, Democrats who had skipped the speech responded at counterprogramming events, including a \u201cPeople\u2019s State of the Union\u201d featuring Democratic lawmakers alongside state and local leaders and celebrities.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe know our state of the union. We know it is under attack,\u201d Sen. Chris Van Hollen of Maryland said at the event.<\/p>\n
Democrats look toward November\u2019s midterms<\/p>\n
Democrats believe the political environment is shifting in their favor. Spanberger\u2019s win in Virginia was followed by other high-profile Democratic victories, including a special election this month in Texas, where a Democrat flipped a reliably Republican state Senate district that Trump carried by 17 percentage points in 2024.<\/p>\n
In California Sen. Alex Padilla\u2019s Spanish-language response to Trump\u2019s address, he described the nation as \u201cliving a nightmare that divides and destroys our communities\u201d and urged viewers to \u201cprepare, starting today, for your voice to reverberate this November.\u201d<\/p>\n
Padilla, who was forcefully removed from a Homeland Security news conference in Los Angeles last year while questioning immigration raids, referenced the moment in his remarks.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey may have knocked me down for a moment, but I got right back up,\u201d he said. \u201cAs our parents taught us: If you fall seven times, get up eight. I am still here. Standing. Still fighting.\u201d<\/p>\n
Spanberger, meanwhile, sought to tie Republicans in Congress closely to Trump as Democrats aim to flip the House and Senate in November. She warned that additional tariffs would raise costs \u201cand Republicans in Congress, they remain unwilling to assert their constitutional authority to stop him.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThey\u2019re making your life harder. They\u2019re making your life more expensive,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"WASHINGTON (AP) \u2014 Virginia Gov. Abigail Spanberger offered a sharp contrast to President Donald Trump\u2019s depiction of the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":489143,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[164749,51932,223486,140884,23,2356,31673,3506,3505,12,1070,793,3138,962,170164,3,111,8638,795,3438,21,792,19,22,20,25,24,5148,800],"class_list":{"0":"post-489142","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-united-states","8":"tag-2026-elections","9":"tag-abigail-spanberger","10":"tag-al-green","11":"tag-alex-padilla","12":"tag-america","13":"tag-california","14":"tag-chris-van-hollen","15":"tag-dc-wire","16":"tag-district-of-columbia","17":"tag-donald-trump","18":"tag-elections","19":"tag-general-news","20":"tag-government-and-politics","21":"tag-government-policy","22":"tag-midterm-elections","23":"tag-news","24":"tag-politics","25":"tag-u-s-democratic-party","26":"tag-u-s-news","27":"tag-u-s-republican-party","28":"tag-united-states","29":"tag-united-states-government","30":"tag-united-states-of-america","31":"tag-unitedstates","32":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","33":"tag-us","34":"tag-usa","35":"tag-virginia","36":"tag-washington-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/489142","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=489142"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/489142\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/489143"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=489142"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=489142"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=489142"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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