The three Democrat lawmakers tasked with responding to President Donald Trump’s Tuesday night speech to Congress have voted to advance or otherwise endorsed radical policy positions on issues ranging from energy to immigration to policing.
Democratic New York Rep. Adriano Espaillat, California Rep. Lateefah Simon and Michigan Sen. Elissa Slotkin will each deliver rebuttals to Trump’s address, which will focus thematically on the “Renewal of the American Dream.” Each of the three lawmakers have endorsed or voted for a host of left-wing policies — even funneling cash to hardline anti-police activists or protesting on behalf of a known terrorist — and will represent their party to a national audience as Democrats continue to try to find their way out of the political wilderness.
Espaillat will respond to Trump’s speech in Spanish, his office announced on Feb. 28. His remarks will highlight how Democrats are working to stymie “the Trump administration’s most egregious violations of our laws, our social norms and of the principles that bind us together.”
Despite his current concerns about American unity, Espaillat took to X in late October 2024 to characterize all Trump supporters as “racists” who “seek to only divide our country.” Moreover, Espaillat protested in 2017 against the imprisonment of known Puerto Rican nationalist terrorist Oscar Lopez Rivera, a member of the Armed Forces of National Liberation (FALN).
Rivera was convicted of seditious conspiracy, use of force to commit robbery, interstate transportation of firearms and ammunition to aid in the commission of a felony, and interstate transportation of stolen vehicles in 1981, according to the Department of Justice (DOJ). FALN’s tactics included dozens of bombings that resulted in the deaths of six people.
Espaillat co-sponsored Medicare-for-All bills that would fundamentally transform the American health sector into a single-payer system if enacted in 2017, 2019, 2021 and 2023. The congressman has also thrown his support behind radical policies like the Green New Deal and a bill that would have changed immigration law to provide citizenship to approximately 8 million migrants, but he has voted against Republicans’ May 2023 border security bill and introduced a 2018 bill to eliminate Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
Slotkin, meanwhile, will be delivering a rebuttal of her own in one of her first major assignments as a senator after barely managing to defeat Republican candidate Mike Rogers for Michigan’s open senate seat in 2024.
As her race against Rogers heated up down the stretch, Slotkin made a serious effort to paint herself as against the unpopular Biden administration electric vehicle (EV) mandates, even though she voted several times to enable the Biden administration’s push to force Americans into EVs.
Like Espaillat, Slotkin voted against the May 2023 GOP border security bill and against a resolution condemning “border czar” and former Vice President Kamala Harris for her poor performance in addressing the immigration problem.
Slotkin did not cast a vote Monday on the cloture motion for the Protection of Women and Girls in Sports Act of 2025, which would “prohibit federally funded schools from allowing transgender
athletes from participating in women’s sports,” though 45 other Senate Democrats voted to block the bill. However, Slotkin co-sponsored the Equality Act — which critics like the Heritage Foundation say would “ultimately lead to the erasure of women by dismantling sex-specific facilities, sports, and other female-only spaces” — in 2019, 2021 and 2023.
Notably, Trump is inviting 19-year-old Payton McNabb, a female volleyball player who was left with a serious brain injury sustained in athletic competition against a biological male, as a special guest to attend his address, the Daily Caller scooped on Tuesday.
Simon is the third Democrat who will look to articulate the party’s response to Trump’s speech and the ideas it contains. Not unlike Slotkin, the rebuttal will be one of Simon’s first big, public-facing undertakings in her new gig given that she was elected to her first term in the House in the 2024 election cycle.
The freshman congresswoman is a longtime acquaintance of former Vice President Harris, with the then-San Francisco District Attorney tapping Simon in 2005 to help establish “Back on Track,” a “first-of-its-kind anti-recidivism initiative for young adults charged with low-level offenses.” Even though Harris officiated Simon’s wedding, she seemingly distanced herself from Simon during the 2024 campaign season as Harris worked to convince America that she is not a left-wing Bay Area Democrat, The Washington Free Beacon reported in October 2024.
Prior to running for federal office, Simon worked as the left-wing Akonadi Foundation’s president from 2016 to 2022, according to the Beacon. On her watch, the organization routed cash toward anti-incarceration initiatives and a group called the Anti Police-Terror Project, which the Beacon characterized as “[advocating] for police abolition while reportedly enriching family and friends.”
Simon did not shed her radical positions after leaving the Akonadi Foundation, her congressional campaign website indicates. She campaigned on packing the Supreme Court, passing the Green New Deal and finding a way to “disentangle the criminal system from the immigration system,” among other progressive wishlist items.
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