U.S. Rep. Summer Lee gives Working Families Party response to State of the Union

Summer Lee didn’t hold back in her response to President Donald Trump’s State of the Union speech.

The progressive Working Families Party chose Lee – a second-term Pittsburgh Democrat – to deliver its response to President Donald Trump’s address Tuesday night. 

Dubbed the “Working People’s Response,” Lee’s remarks pushed back on Trump’s policies across the board and said the “Republican-led Congress has abdicated its post as a co-equal branch and yielded itself to the oligarchs in the White House.”

“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,” Lee said during her remarks. “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.”

At nearly two hours, the first State of the Union address of Trump’s second term set a record for the lengthiest presidential address to Congress and State of the Union. 

Lee emphasized that Democrats and opponents of Trump in Washington must be bold and “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 health care is guaranteed, when affordable childcare and education with paid family and medical leave and jobs with a union standard,” she said.

Lee, one of dozens of Democratic members of Congress who refused to attend Trump’s address in protest, promised to deliver a plan to “take on corporate power and defeat authoritarianism” without “watered-down politics.”

Her roughly 15-minute response followed that message, calling for a democratic system that prioritizes the needs of working people over corporate interests. 

“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 and a system built for corporate CEOs and a government that is just not doing enough,” Lee added, ending with a pitch for worker solidarity. 

“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,” she said. “But we do not have to consent – our organized labor and our organized money are far more powerful than they want us to believe.”

In 2019, Lee defeated an incumbent Democrat in the primary to win her state representative campaign and held the 34th state House district seat through 2022. She then set her eyes on Capitol Hill – with a WFP endorsement – winning the PA-18 congressional seat in Pittsburgh and Westmoreland County after Democrat Mike Doyle’s retirement. With her 2022 election win, Lee became the first Black woman to represent the commonwealth in Congress. 

The state legislator-turned-congressperson, now the ranking member of the House Oversight Committee on Federal Law Enforcement, is an outspoken progressive and Trump critic. She’s continually called out the president and his administration’s actions related to immigration enforcement, the Department of Justice’s release of investigative files on Jeffrey Epstein and more. 

Earlier Tuesday, Lee announced she plans to introduce articles of impeachment against U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi over the Epstein files. Her announcement came after an NPR investigation found that the DOJ, which Bondi leads, withheld and removed files related to allegations mentioning Trump. 

“The DOJ’s refusal to comply with our subpoena and the law has gone on for too long,” Lee said in a post on Tuesday. “I’ll be introducing articles of impeachment against Pam Bondi. It’s time to stop allowing institutions and our own government to continue protecting the wealthy and powerful.”

WFP-backed candidates have had some electoral success: Two Philadelphia City Councilmembers won seats in 2023 and the likes of New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani, Seattle Mayor Katie Wilson and Dayton Mayor Shenise Turner-Sloss were among the class of 2025 wins for WFP. 

After the party made the announcement, WFP National Director Maurice Mitchell said Lee “is the kind of leader this moment demands.” 

"She’s fearless, rooted in working-class communities, and unafraid to take on both MAGA extremism and corporate power," Mitchell said. Some rising stars on the left, including U.S. Reps. Ayanna Pressley, Rashida Tlaib and Delia Ramirez, have given the WFP response in recent years. 

The Democratic response to the State of the Union was given by recently sworn-in Virginia Gov. Abigail Spanberger, with California Sen. Alex Padilla delivering the Spanish-language response for the party.