Virginia Governor Abigail Spanberger has led the Democratic Party’s response to President Donald Trump’s State of the Union address, in which she focused on Americans’ affordability concerns.
The former congresswoman and ex-CIA officer flipped the Republican-held governorship by a double-digit margin in November, promising to lower the cost of living for Virginians.
“We did not hear the truth from our president,” Spanberger said in her speech from Colonial Williamsburg, a history museum in Virginia, Tuesday night shortly after Trump’s record-breaking long speech.
“As I campaigned for governor last year, I traveled to every corner of Virginia and I heard the same pressing concern everywhere — costs are too high,” she added.
Spanberger said Trump and Republicans are “Making your life harder. They’re making your life more expensive. They’re even making it more difficult to see a doctor,” referring to the healthcare cuts in the president’s One Big, Beautiful Bill Act.
Trump spoke highly about the current economy as he addressed the joint session of Congress, calling his second presidency a “golden age of America.”
“Today, our border is secure. Our spirit is restored. Inflation is plummeting. Incomes are rising fast. The roaring economy is roaring like never before, and our enemies are scared,” Trump said.
During her rebuttal, Spanberger said Trump “offered no real solutions to our nation’s pressing challenges, so many of which he is actively making worse,” during his State of the Union address.
Spanberger, Virginia’s first female governor, New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, a Democratic socialist, and Democratic New Jersey Governor Mikie Sherrill beat their Republican opponents on the message of affordability last fall.
Since then, Trump has been trying to convince voters of his economic agenda. But according to an AP-NORC poll from earlier this month, the president still has work to do. Just 39 percent of respondents said they approve of Trump’s handling of the economy, while 59 percent disapprove.
About half of House and Senate Democrats chose to skip Trump’s speech altogether, according to Axios. But some women lawmakers decided to attend wearing white, the color of the women’s suffrage movement. The choice for Trump’s critics to wear white to the State of the Union started during his first presidency.
During his speech, some Democrats did stand in support after Trump asked Congress to pass a bill to ban lawmakers from stock trading, as observed by The Independent’s Eric Garcia. But others yelled about Trump being corrupt.
House Republicans have advanced a bill that would place some restrictions on Congressional stock trading but Democrats don’t believe it goes far enough, according to The New York Times. The Trump family has generated about $1.4 billion from cryptocurrency during his second term, a Bloomberg analysis found.
Democratic Congresswomen Ilhan Omar of Minnesota and Rashida Tlaib of Michigan heckled the president when he spoke about his immigration crackdown at the State of the Union.
Omar shouted, “You have killed Americans!” seemingly referring to the fatal shootings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti by federal immigration agents in Minneapolis last month. The Trump administration has framed both shootings as self-defense, although that justification has been questioned.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said Trump’s “State of Delusion” speech “failed to acknowledge…the reality millions of people face every day with higher costs, unaffordable housing, more chaos, and more corruption.”
Senator Elizabeth Warren, a Massachusetts Democrat, wrote on X that Trump was “lying” about the state of the economy, noting that the price of coffee is up 18.3 percent and ground beef is up 17.2 percent from last year.
California Governor Gavin Newsom, who constantly trolls the president online to push back against his administration’s agenda, wrote on X, “Donald Trump is destroying our country.”
Representative Nancy Pelosi, a California Democrat who is retiring from the House next year, called Trump a “Robin Hood in reverse,” bashing the cuts to Medicaid made in the One Big, Beautiful Bill Act that the president signed over the summer.
Senator Alex Padilla, a California Democrat, said in his own speech criticizing the Trump administration’s immigration policies, “If you are eligible, register to vote. Make sure your family, your friends, your neighbors, and your coworkers do the same.”
“As [rapper] Bad Bunny reminded us a few weeks ago: ‘Together, we are America,’” Padilla said, delivering the speech in Spanish.
With the midterm elections coming up this fall, pressure is on for Trump to help his Republican Party maintain control of Congress.
The good news for Trump is that inflation cooled in January, reaching its lowest point in months, according to recently-released government data.
The annual inflation rate was 2.4 percent this past month, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics Consumer Price Index, which tracks the change in price of consumer goods and services.
The bad news for Trump is the country’s GDP, the value of goods and services produced in the U.S., rose at an annualized rate of just 1.4 percent in the fourth-quarter, according to the Department of Commerce. This is below experts’ reported expectations.
