While the majority of Democrats sat through President Donald Trump’s address to Congress Tuesday night, progressive Democrats, including Oakland Rep. Oakland Lateefah Simon (D-12), walked out in protest, with Simon subsequently defending progressive values in a rebuttal for the Working Families Party.
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In her speech, the first-term congresswoman outlined an agenda that defined the country’s problems as a division between working class Americans and the “ultra-wealthy,” claiming that the Trump administration and its rich supporters were attempting to divide the public on gender, sexuality, and race to prevent the government from addressing the needs of broad swaths of Americans. Instead, she said she wants to build a government made for and by the working class.
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“Let’s be real. Donald Trump and Elon Musk and others have never had to put groceries back at the grocery store,” Simon said during her speech. “They’re trying to make us blame one another. But diversity isn’t the reason why families can’t afford housing, and immigration is not the reason why you are paying more for your prescription drugs. Billionaires and CEOs don’t care about who you are.”
Since 2019, the Working Families Party — a progressive Democrat-aligned organization — has asked progressives to respond to State of the Union addresses on its behalf. With her speech Tuesday night, Simon joins the likes of Massachusetts Rep. Ayanna Pressley, former New York Rep. Jamaal Bowman and Michigan Rep. Rashida Tlaib who have bemoaned the politics of the Make America Great Again movement.
Simon believes the Trump administration’s actions in the past month have already harmed her district from halted payments to schools for disabled youth to funding for Veterans Affairs clinics.
In an interview with Bay Area News Group, Simon said she wants to be a voice for working-class progressives as the Trump administration dismantles the federal workforce, unravels protections for the LGBT community and seeks to deport millions of immigrants living in the country illegally.
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In her speech Tuesday night, Simon connected the challenges she’s faced as a legally blind woman who lost her husband to cancer to the challenges facing the average American.
“It’s an opportunity to tell the collective story of working people,” Simon told Bay Area News Group. “I got elected by a strongly progressive district. That word – progressive – has been a boogeyman word, but for me, that means showing up with full integrity and advocating for what working families need.”
Simon said those needs were in stark contrast to the vision laid out by Trump since he returned to the Oval Office. The president’s speech Tuesday night targeted Democrats and “wokeness” as obstructing his agenda to overhaul the federal government and revitalize the economy.
“Six weeks ago, I stood beneath the dome of this Capitol and proclaimed the dawn of the golden age of America,” Trump said. “From that moment on, it has been nothing but swift and unrelenting action to usher in the greatest and most successful era in the history of our country.”
These actions have included a swift reduction in the size of the federal bureaucracy through mass firings and slashed budgets, the signing of new tariffs against China, Canada and Mexico, and the pursuit of a distinctly “America First” strategy in foreign affairs while promoting ideas of controlling Greenland and the Panama Canal.
Simon’s is worried about the seizing of power by the executive branch.
“We are in an unprecedented constitutional crisis,” Simon told Bay Area News Group, reflecting on Congress’ role under the Trump administration. “The overreach of the executive branch has been extraordinary, gutting federal agencies with no levers of conditionality, no insight into who and why they’re cutting. It’s insane.”
Simon has pledged to bring resources back to her district and protect constituents who may be vulnerable to the budget cuts by the Elon Musk-led Department of Government Efficiency. Those slashes in government funding, she said, could affect scientists’ efforts to create a cure for sickle cell, a blood cell disorder that causes anemia, at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. She tied these cuts to medical research to her late husband, Kevin Weston, who died of cancer in 2014 from an aggressive form of leukemia.
Speaking for the Working Families Party was not a break from Congressional Democrats, according to Simon, who said she would follow Democratic Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries and the broader strategy to combat Trump’s agenda as the party seeks a new message after its 2024 electoral defeat.
“Mr. Jeffries has said clearly to not let anyone drag you away from your House… While I’m very uncomfortable to listen to lies and attacks on disabled people and the LGBT community and our black and brown communities… (Jeffries) has encouraged Democrats to be there and do our jobs.”
But Simon and numerous progressive Democrats left the chambers of Congress in protest of Trump’s speech as he chided Democrats and heralded his accomplishments. Simon’s own speech Tuesday night emphasized the importance of listening to the public and uniting Democratic-aligned organizations.
“If I’m in the room with people who agree with me 90% of the time, then I know I need a bigger room,” Simon said during her speech. “Let’s create a bigger room. Let’s build that room, and let’s create a nation that finally works for all of us.”
