Rep. Summer Lee delivered the Working Families Party Response to the 2026 State of the Union on the evening of Tuesday, February 24th.

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Remarks of Congresswoman Summer Lee as prepared:

Good Evening.

I’m Congresswoman Summer Lee, and I’m honored to deliver the Working Families Party response to the President’s State of the Union.

The Working Families Party is the political party for working people — not the bosses, not the big dollars — and I’m proud to be part of a movement that is built for and by the people. 

So let’s start with a simple truth: What we are witnessing from our government is authoritarianism. Any response that doesn’t acknowledge that truth is a disservice to Americans who deserve and need honesty right now.

I listened to Donald Trump’s speech tonight. While Trump and his friends profit off his presidency, he’s gaslighting us. He wants to convince working families that we’re better off under his regime.

But we know the truth. Our country is in crisis.

For millions of Americans, affordability is out of reach. Trump has driven up the unemployment rate, cutting thousands of federal jobs across the country. 

Everything he does is making Americans less safe at home and abroad. He’s bringing us to the brink of wars in the Middle East and South America. 

At home, ICE agents are hunting down human beings and cities are under siege. The FBI is raiding election offices in Georgia. Students are being disappeared for protesting tyranny and genocide in Palestine. 

The environmental protections we earned after a generation of advocacy are being stripped away. Educators are facing attacks on public and higher education, because diversity and truth threaten corporate power. Workers are facing union-busting and retaliation.

And the Republican-led Congress has abdicated its post as a co-equal branch and yielded itself to the oligarchs in the White House.  

Trump bragged about his tariffs, but they were never about creating jobs. They were a tool for Trump to bully countries or companies into paying fealty to him personally, and about making working people pay the price for his tax cuts for billionaires. 

The courts have blocked his illegal actions, but for too many small businesses and consumers, the damage is done. 

He played up his tax cuts, but forgot to mention that it’s a trillion dollar giveaway to the wealthy and well-connected. 

He talked a big game about banning stock trading, but wants to exempt himself so he can keep on cashing in. 

The state of the union is dire. We can’t afford to believe Trump’s lies, and we have to pay attention to his actions. This is not a normal time, and our response to it can’t be politics as usual. 

Trump’s speech wasn’t a list of accomplishments. It was more like an obituary for the country working people built and a celebration for the billionaires who want to strip it for parts. An obituary for our right to vote, for the ability to make rent or the chance to own a home. For good jobs with the right to organize and strike and stick up for each other. 

Trump’s policies are hurting our communities. Working people feel it every single day. We certainly feel it where I come from in Western Pennsylvania, where I was born, raised, and now represent in Congress. I know what it’s like to come from a working-class background, to be burdened by student debt, to witness our communities be neglected time and again. I ran for office because I wanted to make sure the marginalized and unheard voices of my district had representation. Special interests and dark money went hard against me, and we still won. 

In my district, Pennsylvania’s 12th, people work way harder than their paychecks and bank accounts will ever reflect.

It’s a place where teachers and nurses like my sister show up even when they’re exhausted. Where steelworkers carry the pride of generations in their hands, and where restaurant cooks start before sunrise and don’t sit down until midnight. And where childcare workers do some of the hardest work in America and still struggle to pay the rent. 

We have world-class hospitals, yet people can’t access the care they need. Insurance companies drive families into bankruptcy. Parents work two jobs and still can’t afford childcare. Patients ration medicine just to make it to the end of the month. 

No matter how hard we work, we continue to struggle. That is the real state of our union. 

This is not an accident. Trump is failing all of us, but he’s not failing everybody. 

Trump promised to lower our costs, instead he gave $1 trillion dollars in tax breaks to the 1% while cutting your Medicaid and SNAP by $1.1 trillion dollars. In the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania alone, 300,000 people are going to lose Medicaid within the next year. 

He promised us public safety, but we have an FBI director who is focused on flying on private jets to concerts and hockey games using our tax dollars. 

Trump promised accountability and transparency, but his own DOJ is violating our subpoena, protecting pedophiles, and burying documents that name Trump in the Epstein files. 

He said he’d make government more efficient, but now seniors can’t get anybody on the phone to explain why their social security payments stopped. 

While Americans’ bank accounts are being drained, Trump and his family have gained billions of dollars from foreign payments and corrupt oligarchs. 

And while our hearts break for children trapped in ICE detention, Palanteer gets to walk away with a billion dollar contract. 

This is corporate greed and profiteering, and it’s a moral failure. We live in the richest country in the world, yet corporate profits grow while wages don’t. The stock market may be helping CEOs, but it does nothing for working people’s pocketbooks. 

The portfolios of AI moguls that see no place for you or me in their future might be growing, but not as fast as the unemployment rate for Black women that’s up 20 percent just from last year. 

The concentration of wealth has created two separate Americas: one for the working person, and one for the wealthy. And for years, powerful men like Donald Trump and Elon Musk have used the politics of fear and division, telling us to blame our neighbors for our struggles. 

They need you to believe the problem is the immigrant, or trans kid, or someone who looks or worships differently than you. They want you to look anywhere but at them. 

So whether you live in a city where the rent is too damn high, or in a small town where the factory closed down. Or whether you come from a community hit by gun violence, opioids, floods, or fires – working families are facing this same reality: wages that don’t keep up with costs, a system built for corporate CEOs, and a government that is not doing enough.

This rigged system keeps squeezing the people who have it hardest: the communities with the least power, the workers with the least protection, the families already living on the edge. 

But we do not have to accept that. The rich, connected, and well-protected may want us to believe this has to remain the status quo, but we can work to make things right. We’ve seen working people come together from the civil rights movement to the creation of labor unions to change this country for the better despite powerful opposition. 

So right now, we need bold policy proposals that meet this moment. 

We can build an America that works for the many and not just the money. 

An America where you can actually afford a home, where healthcare is guaranteed, with  affordable childcare and education, with paid family and medical leave, and jobs with a union standard.

We can create a just and humane immigration system. And let’s be clear: you can’t reform oppression or hatred. You must abolish it. 

We can have environmental policies that put the health of our people and our planet over the profits of oil and gas executives.

We can fund education instead of endless war and genocide in Palestine, Sudan, or anywhere else in the world. 

That vision is not radical. It is the bare minimum required for a healthy democracy and for people to pursue happiness and live with dignity. 

Imagine what it would mean if healthcare wasn’t tied to your job, and where you can see a doctor without checking your bank account first. Or no parent ever rationing insulin. No family starting a GoFundMe to survive cancer. Medicare for All doesn’t just save money; it saves lives and keeps families out of bankruptcy.

Imagine a national jobs program that guarantees dignified union work: rebuilding roads and bridges, caring for seniors and children, installing clean energy, building affordable housing. No more telling young people, “there’s nothing here for you” and no more small towns hollowed out and forgotten. A good job does more than pay bills; it builds pride and community.

Imagine childcare that doesn’t swallow half your paycheck, and paid leave that allows you to heal, to bond with a newborn, or to care for a parent without risking your livelihood.

When people have the basics secured, stress goes down, small businesses grow, families stay together, and democracy actually works because people aren’t trapped in survival mode. When the foundation is strong, people can breathe again. 

We the people need this. We need a healthy democracy and systems that work for us. And we can have this now. Don’t let anyone tell you we can’t afford it. We somehow find endless money for ICE, for private prisons to warehouse Black and brown people, and for bombs to be sent abroad. But we’re told healthcare and childcare are too expensive. And when we begin questioning those priorities, the powerful try to divide us once more. But that old playbook is losing its grip.

When Trump returned to the White House for a second time, too many institutions surrendered. But ordinary people stood up. When federal immigration agents invaded Los Angeles and Minneapolis, when they killed Keith Porter and Renee Good and Alex Pretti, people didn’t stand by.

They stood together, protesting, documenting abuses, building mutual aid networks, demanding that ICE get out of their communities and that Congress not give them another penny.

I believe the American people deserve leaders who are as brave as they are. Who will wake up every morning ready to fight like hell. 

This year, we can flip Congress against Trump and against this rigged status quo, but we can’t do it by electing more of the same.

The Democratic Party is at a crossroads. On one side are millions of working people demanding bold action — lower costs, higher wages, Medicare for all. On the other side are corporate donors and consultants who are terrified of upsetting the very interests that rigged this economy in the first place. That tension shows up in watered-down bills and speeches that sound bold but govern small.

You can’t promise relief while protecting the corporations driving up the prices. You can’t stand with labor while taking checks from union-busting CEOs. And you cannot defeat MAGA while keeping billionaires comfortable. You can’t serve two masters. 

That is why the Working Families Party exists. To help us bring bolder people into government who better reflect the vision of working people.

Look at Congresswoman Delia Ramirez, a daughter of Guatemalan immigrants in Chicago who expanded Medicaid, built affordable housing, and protected people from eviction as a state legislator before bringing that same fight to Congress. Or Congresswoman Lateefah Simon, who worked for more than thirty years helping survivors of violence and trafficking. Now she pushes for affordable housing, for transit that connects people and helps them get to work, and for an economy that doesn’t treat Black and brown communities as disposable.

Look at New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, who took on Andrew Cuomo and his corporate backers and won. He led a movement of renters, young people, and working families who had been told their voices didn’t matter. He proved that when you show up, and when you speak clearly about how to meet people’s basic needs, the people respond.

And now, look at New Jersey’s newest Democratic nominee, Analilia Mejia. She started her race at five percent, was outspent ten to one, and still won because she outworked the party bosses and billionaires. And, as former director of the New Jersey Working Families Party, she had a record of delivering: raising the minimum wage, guaranteeing paid sick days, and defending voting rights.

And there is more of this to come. 

Our democracy does not work when big money owns politicians. Americans are sick of a corrupt, elite few causing all this harm. And that is why I introduced a bill to abolish the super PACs they use to control our country. The obscenely rich shouldn’t be able to call the shots in our democracy, and they shouldn’t be able to escape accountability. That’s also why I moved to subpoena the DOJ to release the full, unredacted Epstein files back in July. 

I know what it feels like to be targeted by billionaires, to face attack ads and smear campaigns meant to silence you. It was demoralizing and exhausting. And it was a waste of their money. Because our movement won. And we have to keep winning. Because when we have progressives in Congress, we get legislation that meets the moment. We get people who fight for accountability and justice. We get opportunities to do the right thing.

So if you’re sick of the corruption and cruelty in this administration, if you are frustrated by Democrats who speak boldly but deliver cautiously, or sometimes even vote with MAGA, then believe that change can and will happen if we build political power together. That’s what we’re doing at the Working Families Party. Join us. 

Let me end with this: Trump is trying to steal everything that isn’t nailed down for himself and his obscenely wealthy friends. But this level of thievery requires consent. It requires silence. Exhaustion. Resignation. And we do not have to consent.

Our organized labor and organized money are far more powerful than they want us to believe. So join us. We can reject authoritarianism. We can reject corporate power. We can get money out of politics. We can choose a different path — one where we have each other’s backs. 

Because working people are the majority. And when we come together and fight…we win. Thank you, and good night.