Some are bringing fired federal workers. Others plan to hand out stickers accusing Elon Musk of “stealing Social Security.” Several will boycott President Trump’s speech altogether.
Congressional Democrats are planning to use Mr. Trump’s first address to a joint session on Capitol Hill since returning to the White House to protest his agenda and his actions — by skipping it, wearing messages of dissent, or by packing the House chamber with Americans who have been adversely affected by the administration’s actions.
“The state of the union is that the president is spitting in the face of the law and he is letting an unelected billionaire fire cancer researchers and wreck federal agencies like the Social Security Administration at will,” Senator Patty Murray of Washington, the top Democrat on the Appropriations Committee, said in a statement. She said she would not attend Mr. Trump’s address and instead spend the evening meeting with constituents who are affected by the administration’s cuts.
More than a dozen Democrats have announced they would be bringing fired federal workers as their guests to the speech. Several have invited fired veterans to highlight what they say is a disproportionate and unfair targeting of former service members.
And several progressive Democrats are planning to hand out and wear stickers that read “Elon Is Stealing Social Security,” an apparent reference to Mr. Musk’s recent interview with podcaster Joe Rogan in which he called Social Security a “Ponzi scheme.”
“I won’t sit and watch him lie to the American people again,” Representative Becca Balint, Democrat of Vermont, said in a statement explaining why she would not attend Mr. Trump’s speech. She said she would join Senators Chris Murphy of Connecticut, Ed Markey of Massachusetts, Angela Alsobrooks of Maryland and Brian Schatz of Hawaii to provide live fact-checking of the speech and real-time reactions.
Senator Amy Klobuchar, Democrat of Minnesota, said she would bring Gary Wertish, a third-generation Minnesota farmer who she said was worried about how to make ends meet if the Trump administration follows through on proposed tariffs, funding freezes and mass layoffs at the Department of Agriculture and other agencies.
“These are real people that the administration is hurting with their chaos,” Ms. Klobuchar said from the Senate steps on Tuesday afternoon as she and several of her colleagues, dressed in parkas and bracing against the wind, clutched life-size photos of their guests.
Among the guests to be hosted by Senator Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York and the minority leader, is Emma Larson, a 12-year-old born with spinal muscular atrophy. After her doctors said she likely wouldn’t live more than a year, Ms. Larson was able to access lifesaving treatment because of a grant from the National Institutes of Health, Mr. Schumer said.
“The nerve of Donald Trump, taking away those grants that gave Emma her life and her happiness, to make some billionaire pay even less taxes,” Mr. Schumer said from the Senate steps. “When he speaks tonight, what can he possibly say that the American people should take seriously?”
Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the New York progressive Democrat who has become a favorite target for Republican attacks, said she wouldn’t be attending the speech and instead would post live reactions on the social media platform BlueSky. She plans to join Instagram Live afterward to offer a reaction.
In doing so, she and several other Democrats were defying Representative Hakeem Jeffries of New York, the minority leader, who encouraged his members in a letter on Monday to show up at the speech, in order to have a “strong, determined and dignified Democratic presence in the chamber.”
“Donald Trump and Elon Musk are destroying the state of the union,” Representative Kweisi Mfume, Democrat of Maryland, said in a statement. “I don’t need to be there to watch him claim otherwise.”
