House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries is urging his caucus to challenge President Trump during Tuesday's State of the Union address, but with a catch: do it discreetly. The directive amounts to a tacit admission that Democrats' behavior during Trump's 2025 joint address to Congress was a political liability, not a badge of resistance.
That earlier spectacle saw Democrat lawmakers holding signs accusing Trump of lying, walking out mid-speech, and, most memorably, Rep. Al Green of Texas standing and heckling the president with a cane pointed at the dais.
Green was ejected from the room. According to Breitbart News, Trump called the display "very embarrassing for the Democrats." He was right. And apparently, enough Democrats agree that the minority leader is now playing hall monitor.
There's something revealing about a party caucus that needs to be told by its own leadership not to make a scene at a formal address to Congress.
Jeffries finds himself in the unenviable position of wanting his members to register opposition without handing Trump another viral moment of Democrat dysfunction. The 2025 address gave the president exactly the contrast he wanted: a commander in chief at the podium, and a room full of elected officials behaving like hecklers at a comedy club.
The plan now, reportedly, is to "challenge" Trump but to do so with enough restraint that the story the next morning is about the president's policies rather than about who got escorted out. Whether rank-and-file Democrats can actually manage that remains an open question. Discipline has not been the caucus's strong suit.
Sen. Adam Schiff of California has chosen a different route: he simply won't show up. Schiff, who acknowledged he has never missed a State of the Union or inauguration, offered this explanation:
"I've never missed one. I have always gone both to inaugurations and to States of the Union. But we cannot treat this as normal. This is not business as usual. I will not give him the audience he craves for the lies that he tells."
The framing is instructive. This is a senator who built his career on television appearances during both Trump impeachments, who never shied from a camera or a microphone when the audience suited him. Now the argument is that attending a constitutionally prescribed address would somehow legitimize the president. One senator's absence from a chamber of hundreds is not the principled stand Schiff seems to think it is. It's theater, just performed offstage.
Democrats are also organizing alternative events. A "People's State of the Union" is planned for the National Mall, and a "State of the Swamp" event is scheduled at the National Press Club. The counter-programming tells you everything about the party's posture: they can't engage with the actual event productively, so they're building their own.
The president enters Tuesday's address with Insider Advantage, one of 2024's most accurate pollsters, placing his current approval rating at 50 percent. That's a number most presidents would gladly take heading into a primetime address.
Republican strategist Mark Bednar captured the atmosphere that Trump's allies expect:
"It's just an opportunity where, actually, Americans can come and celebrate, not just the policies, not just the wins, but actually, just come together… and everything that's good and right about America. It's just a very special night."
The State of the Union has always functioned as a home game for the sitting president. The pageantry, the ritual, the captive audience of lawmakers, justices, and military leaders: it all reinforces executive authority in a way no press conference or rally can replicate. Democrats understood this in 2025, which is precisely why they tried to disrupt it. The disruption backfired.
The question isn't really whether Democrats can behave themselves on Tuesday night. It's whether they've learned anything about who's actually watching.
The State of the Union isn't consumed primarily by Washington insiders. It's watched by millions of Americans who tune in once a year to see their government function. When those viewers saw lawmakers waving signs and a congressman brandishing a cane at the president of the United States, the takeaway wasn't "bold resistance." It was chaos. It was a party that looked more interested in performing outrage than in governing.
Jeffries apparently grasps this. Schiff apparently doesn't, or doesn't care. The rest of the caucus will sort itself out somewhere between those two poles on Tuesday night.
Trump, meanwhile, gets to do what every president gets to do at the State of the Union: stand at the center of American government and speak. The only question is whether Democrats will let him be the only story, or whether they'll hand him another gift.
Last time, they chose the gift. Jeffries is betting they've learned. History suggests otherwise.