In a Sea of Democratic Rebuttals, Spanberger Frames Affordability As the Party’s Path Back to Power

Virginia Gov. Abigail Spanberger delivered a blunt rebuke of President Donald Trump’s first year back in office Tuesday night, accusing him of deepening an affordability crisis and sowing chaos in American communities and abroad.

“Let me ask you, the American people watching at home, three questions,” she said. “Is the President working to make life more affordable for you and your family? Is the President working to keep Americans safe, both at home and abroad? Is the President working for you?” 

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Speaking just after 11 p.m. following Trump’s two-hour State of the Union address to Congress, Spanberger countered Trump’s portrait of a flourishing nation. She argued that healthcare cuts and rising costs aggravated by Trump’s tariff have squeezed working Americans.

“They’re making your life harder, they’re making your life more expensive, they’re even making it more difficult for you to see a doctor,” she said.

Read More: Trump Delivers State of the Union Address.

Hers was the most prominent of several Democratic attempts to push back on Trump’s big night. The keynote rebuttal typically goes to a rising star in the opposition party, and Spanberger secured one of the Democrats’ biggest wins last year, flipping Virginia’s governorship by a 15-point margin. She spoke from Colonial Williamsburg, the symbolic cradle of Virginia’s revolutionary beginnings, framing her remarks as a defense of foundational American principles at a time she argued they are under threat.

“Our president has sent poorly trained federal agents into our cities where they have arrested and detained American citizens and people who aspire to be Americans,” she said. “They have ripped nursing mothers away from their babies. They have sent children, a little boy in a blue bunny hat, to far off detention centers, and they have killed American citizens in our streets.”

Spanberger portrayed Trump’s tenure as destabilizing at home and abroad, arguing law and order had been replaced by cronyism, megalomania and political retribution. “He’s enriching himself, his family and his friends,” she said. Several times she returned to her own election, predicting that Americans will similarly push back in the 2026 midterms.

“Americans across the country are taking action. They are going to the ballot box to reject this chaos with their votes, they are writing a new story, a more hopeful story.”

Read More: Trump’s State of the Union—the Longest Ever—Struggled To Find the Point. 

Spanberger, 46, served three terms in the U.S. House representing a competitive suburban swing district—the first Democrat elected there since 1968—and cultivated a reputation as  pragmatic and national security-minded. Before entering politics, she worked as a CIA case officer, at times undercover, focusing on counterterrorism and narcotics trafficking. Since taking office as governor, she became a target of the MAGA movement, with several high-profile conservatives expressing outrage after she signed a series of executive orders, including one ending state and local cooperation with federal immigration agents—a policy she pledged to enact during the campaign.

The assignment to rebut the State of the Union has often been a mixed blessing, remembered less for its policy content than for stylistic missteps or viral moments. Spanberger delivered a direct and effective rebuttal, drawing on her electoral success and law-enforcement background. She chose to speak before a small, live audience—a setting that lent energy and momentum to an address that can otherwise feel eerily flat after the applause-filled House chamber.

A deluge of counterprogramming

Spanberger’s address unfolded alongside a variety of Democratic responses as a splintered party without a clear national leader tries to determine the best ways to harness momentum. It’s not unusual for the party out of power to offer multiple public responses to the State of the Union, particularly when audiences are fractured and attention is fleeting. But the number of Democratic responses verged on dizzying. 

U.S. Rep. Summer Lee, a Pennsylvania Democrat, delivered a rebuttal from Washington on behalf of the Working Families Party, describing the state of the nation as “dire.” California Sen. Alex Padilla gave a rebuttal in Spanish. “The truth is that the State of our Union does not feel strong for everyone,” Padilla said in a pre-taped address. “Not when the costs of rent, food, and electricity keep rising. Not when Republicans raise our medical costs to fund tax cuts for billionaires. And definitely not when federal agents—armed and masked—terrorize our communities by targeting people because of the color of their skin or for speaking Spanish—including immigrants with legal status and citizens.”

On the National Mall, about 30 congressional Democrats gathered for a rally organizers called the largest organized boycott of the State of the Union address in history. “I’m not at the State of the Union tonight because Donald Trump is making a mockery of this great institution and he doesn’t deserve an audience,” Sen. Chris Murphy of Connecticut said at the event, which was organized by the progressive group MoveOn. “These are not normal times and Democrats have to stop behaving normally.”

Arizona Sen. Ruben Gallego shared the story of a constituent whose family was struggling to afford healthcare after the expiration of some Obamacare tax credits. “Donald Trump and Republicans have made this country sicker, poorer and less secure,” Gallego said. 

Read More: Some Democrats Loudly Protested Trump’s State of the Union.

As the chilly night wore on, speakers framed by the glow of the Capitol rotunda behind them described what they said were the consequences of the Administration policies. A woman from Arizona spoke about the medical neglect she alleged her partner suffered at the Eloy Detention Center. Mohsen Mahdawi, a student and activist, described being detained at a citizenship interview. Brenda Lewis, a superintendent in Minnesota, described protecting children from ICE agents as they traveled to and from school.

Nearby, at the Washington Press Club, Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey and Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson joined actor Robert DeNiro at an event hosted by DEFIANCE.org, the resistance group launched by former Trump Department of Homeland Security official Miles Taylor. The more raucous grassroots gathering featured a troupe of dancing inflatable frogs—the animal has become a symbol of resistance to Trump—and audience members waving “stand up and defy” signs. Frey told the crowd it was time to “take back the flag” and reclaim what it means to be a patriot. “We can disagree on everything from immigration policy to taxes and regulations,” he said. “But we cannot disagree on whether constitutional rights apply to everyone or whether the Department of Justice exists to uphold justice, not appease the president.”

Read More: Inside Mayor Jacob Frey’s Fight For Minneapolis.

The array of competing messages suggested a party at an inflection point, trying to deliver a rebuttal to Trump as well as a compelling case for why voters should return Democrats to power. It fell to Spanberger to make that appeal. In the 12-minute speech, her focus often came back to the economy, the issue party leaders see as their path back to the majority.

“Democrats across the country are laser focused on affordability, in our nation’s capital, and in state capitals and communities across America,” she said. “Americans deserve to know that their leaders are focused on addressing the problems that keep them up at night, problems that dictate where you live, whether you can afford to start a business, or whether you have to skip a prescription in order to buy groceries.”