Democrats Talk Affordability, Immigration In Rebuttal To Trump SOTU

As usual, the opposing party was ready with a rebuttal to the President’s State of the Union address last night. 

Speaking from the House of Burgesses in Colonial Williamsburg, Virginia Gov. Abigail Spanberger focused on affordability and immigration.

“As we watched our nation’s lawmakers gather for a joint session of Congress, we did not hear the truth from our president,” she said, adding that Trump had “offered no real solutions to our nation’s pressing challenges.” 

“The United States was founded on the idea that ordinary people could reject the unacceptable excesses of poor leadership, band together to demand better of their government, and create a nation that would be an example for the world,” she continued. “This year, as we celebrate 250 years since America declared independence of tyranny, I can think of no better place to speak to you as we reflect on the current state of our union tonight.” 

Spanberger, a former US representative and member of the House Intelligence Committee, became the governor of Virginia last November by a 15-point margin. 

Last night she asked: “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?”

As the Epoch Times notes further, Spanberger covered the following topics:

Economics

Most of Spanberger’s speech focused on economic issues, with the governor describing Democrats as being “laser-focused on affordability.”

First, Spanberger decried what she described as Trump’s “reckless trade policies.”

Despite the Supreme Court’s recent decision overturning Trump’s authority to unilaterally impose certain kinds of tariffs, Spanberger said, “The damage to us, the American people, has already been done.”

Spanberger said these new tariffs represent “another tax hike on you and your family.”

“Republicans in Congress, they remain unwilling to assert their constitutional authority to stop him,” she said. “They’re making your life harder. They’re making your life more expensive.

Trump had said that tariff costs would not be passed onto consumers and that foreign countries are taking up the burden. He said tariffs can protect American businesses and jobs by addressing unfair trade practices and boosting domestic manufacturing.

Recently, an analysis of economic data by the Kiel Institute for the World Economy found that Americans paid 96 percent of Trump’s tariff fees in 2025. The non-partisan Tax Committee found that this added up to about $1,000 in new taxes per household in 2025.

Meanwhile, the annual inflation rate slowed to 2.4 percent in January, the lowest level since May, according to new Bureau of Labor Statistics data released on Feb. 13.

Core inflation, which strips out volatile energy and food prices, also eased to a 12-month rate of 2.5 percent, the lowest level since March 2021.

Spanberger also linked the affordability issue to the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which included a nearly $1 trillion cut to Medicaid, a primary source of revenue for many of these types of hospitals.

“They’re even making it more difficult to see a doctor,” she said, citing rural hospital closures.

Immigration and Safety

Spanberger also discussed immigration enforcement and broader national security concerns.

Democrats’ concerns over the behavior of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents under Trump have been one of their primary objections to the administration.

“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, and they have done it without a warrant,” Spanberger said, citing the use of administrative warrants by ICE rather than court-granted judicial warrants to enter homes.

These agents, Spanberger said, “have ripped nursing mothers away from their babies. They have sent children, a little boy in a blue bunny hat, children, to far off detention centers,” Spanberger said. “They have killed American citizens in our streets, and they have done it all with their faces masked from accountability.”

More briefly, Spanberger also cited international concerns.

Trump, she said, “continues to cede economic power and technological strength to Russia, bow down to China, bow down to a Russian dictator, and make plans for war with Iran.”

She said that “through [Department of Government Efficiency] mass firings and the appointment of deeply unserious people to our nation’s most serious positions, our president has endangered the long, storied history of the United States of America being a force for good.”

Andrew Moran contributed to this report.