Democrats Are Using Their State of the Union Plus-Ones to Protest the President

DACA recipients and the spouses of deportees are on the guest list.

Dick Durbin speaks in support of a DREAM Act

Miguel Juarez Lugo/ZUMA Wire

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.

There are a few things we can predict with certainty about Tuesday’s State of the Union: professional political observers will praise the president for using his “inside voice“; the opposition party’s response will be awkward; and Democratic members of Congress will use their plus-ones to troll Republicans. During the Obama administration, Republican guests included Ted Nugent, Duck Dynasty star Willie Robertson, and the economist Art Laffer (thanks, Darrell Issa). This week the tradition will live on when, for instance, iron-worker and Democratic congressional candidate Randy Bryce takes his seat in the audience facing the man he’s running againstā€”Speaker of the House Paul Ryan. (Bryce is a guest of Wisconsin Democratic Rep. Mark Pocan.)

There is a decided theme to the Democratic guest list this yearā€”the human toll of the new administration. Rep. Nydia Velazquez (D-N.Y.), for instance, is bringing Amy Gotlieb, the wife of Ravi Ragbir, a prominent immigration activist who was detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement in January and held for two weeks before a judge ordered his release Monday. (Immigration advocates and members of Congress have accused ICE of targeting political activists for deportation.)

Velazquez is one of at least 27 members of Congress bringing guests who are at risk of deportation or related to someone who is. Eight members of Congressā€”including one Republican, Florida Rep. Carlos Curbeloā€”invited DACA recipients. Sen. Catherine Cortez-Masto (D-Nev.) and Rep. Seth Moulton (D-Mass.) invited Salvadoran immigrants whose temporary protected status was revoked by the Trump administration in January. Cindy Garcia, whose husband Jorge was deported in January after 30 years in the country and who had no criminal history, will attend as a guest of Rep. Debbie Dingell (D-Mich.). Jorge Garcia’s tearful farewell from his family at the Detroit airport went viral over Martin Luther King Jr. Day weekend:

Several members of Congress invited Puerto Ricans who were displaced by Hurricane Maria last fall. Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) is bringing San Juan mayor Carmen Cruz, whom Trump famously attacked on Twitter while her city was flooded and without poweer.

The next two weeks, as Congress tries to forge an immigration deal, will go a long way toward determining the fate of DACA recipients and the future of legal immigration in the United Statesā€”subjects Trump will no doubt address during his address. The State of the Union invite game may be a stunt, in other words, but this year it is a stunt that carries a deep political message. On Tuesday, Trump won’t just be talking to members of Congress, he’ll be speaking directly to some of the people whose lives are now in his hands.

WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We canā€™t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist to do. The only investors who wonā€™t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its futureā€”you.

And we need readers to show up for us big timeā€”again.

Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

payment methods

WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We canā€™t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist to do. The only investors who wonā€™t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its futureā€”you.

And we need readers to show up for us big timeā€”again.

Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate