How Democrats reorganized their State of the Union resistance

When President Donald Trump addressed Congress a year ago, the Democrats seemed to be, as the meme would have it, “in disarray.” They were lambasted for their disorganized responses to Trump — remember those little ping-pong paddles? 

But things were different this time. The opposition party seemed to be more in array than they’ve been in a long time.

In the chamber on Tuesday night, they remained largely silent — save for some heckling from Reps. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota and Rashida Tlaib of Michigan when Trump laid into Somalian immigrants in Minnesota — and did not clap. 

But Democrats otherwise had a consistent message: Release the Epstein files. They wore pins to that effect, and brought Epstein survivors and their family members to the House chamber to stare down Trump.

Immigration enforcement and ICE violence was their other major messaging point. To highlight it, Rep. Chuy Garcia of Illinois brought a survivor of an ICE-involved shooting as his guest. But it was outside the Capitol that the new Democratic resistance was really on display — one that was driven in large part by the left’s rambunctious and growing alternative media ecosystems.

The “People’s State of the Union”

Democrats and their media allies organized two separate events that would be streamed online ascounter-programming. Among the attendees announced in advance were the expected: politicians like Sens. Ruben Gallego of Arizona, Chris Murphy of Connecticut, and Tina Smith of Minnesota, but also Robert De Niro and Mark Ruffalo — figures intended to appeal to the less politically engaged voters the party had lost in 2024.

The first major counterprogramming event took place in front of the Capitol, on the National Mall. Gathered in 30-degree weather, dozens of Democratic senators and representatives led a three-and-a-half-hour in-person rally dubbed the “People’s State of the Union,” sponsored by the prominent Democratic resistance group MoveOn and broadcast online by the liberal media network MeidasTouch.

The themes were familiar: Epstein, but also affordability, ICE, and tariffs.

Trump “owes us,” the chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus (CPC) declared at the rally, reading off an estimate of how much money the average family is owed in tariff revenue and the cost of tax breaks — the latest rallying cry from Democrats after the Supreme Court struck down Trump’s universal tariffs. “Spare us the speech. Pay up or shut up,” he said.

Fellow CPC member Rep. Delia Ramirez of Illinois zeroed in on ICE and CBP detentions, reading off the names of those killed by ICE officers or who have died in ICE detention since the start of the year and leading a chant: “Tonight, I ask you to be as loud as you can be and say it with me: We demand justice! We demand justice!”

These members were joined by Epstein survivors, families affected by Trump’s mass deportations, and Americans struggling financially because of the cost of living, all of whom spoke at the rally. Their speeches were clipped for social media, where MeidasTouch’s accounts reach well over 10 million followers and subscribers across platforms — and anywhere from 20,000 to 50,000 viewers were tuned into the livestream at any given moment. 

By the end of the night, the stream had racked up more than 300,000 views. That’s not nothing, but it is a sign of how even the State of the Union has become a culturally niche event — which raises the value of creating viral and affecting clips that, ideally, will circulate for days to come.

The “State of the Swamp” 

Across the city, meanwhile, another Resistance event attracted Never Trump luminaries and former Republicans, organized by Defiance.org. 

This “State of the Swamp” event at the National Press Club was a more humorous gathering. Defiance partnered with the Portland Frog Brigade, an artist-activist group that protested ICE in Oregon last year, and focused on Trump’s abuses of power and corruption through a live rebuttal of Trump’s address. 

This time, the media partner was the Democratic-aligned digital news network Courier, which launched in 2019, but exploded in growth over the last two years, picking up 2 million followers across its platforms over the last year alone (it now claims to reach at least 9 million people).

Speakers here included senators, former TV news anchors, local and state politicians, like the mayors of Chicago and Minneapolis, and stars like De Niro and Tom Arnold. Combined, their online reach exceeds 100 million, the independent politics and media writer Kyle Tharp estimated on Tuesday. 

“For Democrats,” Tharp wrote, “it seems like the goal of these events isn’t really to break through the noise so much as to add to it to prove they’re still part of the conversation.” The goal, he argued, is “a thousand different parallel broadcasts, where everyone’s yelling about politics into a camera, but only a few are really listening in between endless scrolls.”

Much of American politics, persuasion, and education now hinges on those fleeting seconds between endless scrolling, or on the longer commentary that these talking heads provide in the days following the main events.

That liberals, never-Trumpers, and official Democrats are now more fully leaning into these avenues suggests at the very least, that they’re capitalizing on one of the main lessons of 2024: Go everywhere, and build up and expand an alternative media environment.

And there were still the traditional Democratic response

Given the length of Trump’s speech, the official Democratic response and the Spanish-language version, the traditional TV venues for Democratic rebuttal, didn’t begin until after 11 pm ET.

For the main thankless task, Democrats chose the new governor of Virginia, Abigail Spanberger. “Tonight, our president did not tell you the truth,” Spanberger began her address with, before going on to explain how Trump is making life more unaffordable, sparking fear through immigration enforcement, and enriching the ultra-rich. “Is the president working to make life more affordable for you?” she asked the audience. “Is the president working for you?” 

The rebuttal for Spanish-language viewers, delivered by Sen. Alex Padilla of California, focused on the rising costs of health care, housing, groceries, and electricity, as well as the administration’s weaponization of government services and threats to election integrity.

But Padilla leaned into his own immigrant heritage and experience with immigration agents: “Many of you saw when federal agents pushed me to the ground and handcuffed me for demanding answers from this administration over its military occupation in Los Angeles.”

“They may have knocked me down for a moment,” he continued, “but I got right back up…I am still here. Standing. Still fighting.”

Whether this level of message discipline and multimedia coordination will cause voters who have soured on Trump to actually embrace Democrats is, of course, something we won’t know until at least this year’s midterms. But politics under the second Trump administration is basically information warfare — and the Democrats may actually be getting better at it after all.