On Tuesday night, President Donald Trump will make his first joint address to Congress at 9 p.m. ET and, according to White House Mouthpiece Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt, it’s going to be “must-see TV.” He hasn’t been in office for a year, so it’s not officially the State of the Union, but it’s kind of like that. And if you’re sitting there thinking, Oh great, another opportunity for Dems to do literally nothing, then not so fast, buddy! Because actually, they are doing something.
They’re wearing pink! I know, I can…barely believe it.
Rep. Teresa Leger Fernández (D-N.M.), the chair of the Democratic Women’s Caucus, told Time on Monday that wearing pink will “signal our protest of Trump’s policies which are negatively impacting women and families.”
“Pink is a color of power and protest,” she added. “It’s time to rev up the opposition and come at Trump loud and clear.”
I just…is this loud and clear? Wearing pink? To protest a hostile government takeover? Maybe if they plan to throw their pink clothes in a bonfire that burns an effigy of Trump. Or maybe if they match them with “Fuck Trump” hats or a t-shirt of the JD Vance moon face that went viral on Friday after he told Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy that he must say please and thank you to President Trump if he wants more aid to prevent a Russian takeover. Or maybe if they didn’t wear pink at all and instead wore clown suits with Elon Musk masks. That, at least, would definitely be “must-see TV.”
Not every Congresswoman will be wearing pink, though. (God bless.) Some will wear black while others won’t be there at all. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) wrote on Bluesky that she’s skipping Trump’s speech and will be “live posting and chatting with you all here [on Bluesky] instead.” She’ll then go on Instagram Live after the address. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), as well as Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), and Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.), are also skipping.
The White House apparently eXclUsIvEly told Fox News that the theme of Trump’s speech is “The Renewal of the American Dream,” and will have four sections, all of which will surely just be Trump talking about everything he thinks he’s done. “President Trump has accomplished more in one month than any president in four years,” Leavitt told Fox News, which is kind of true—the federal government has been ransacked, our neighbors have accused us of igniting a trade war, and the rest of the world is ripping out their hair after Trump recently broke with decades of U.S. foreign policy to show support for Russia. It’s definitely an impressive amount of damage for just six weeks.
During Trump’s first term, some Dems booed or staged walkouts during his speeches and, per Axios, we may see walkouts again. (Leavitt also warned that Dems should be “standing up in applause” tonight.) At his 2019 State of the Union address, Democratic women famously wore “suffragette white.” And at his 2020 State of the Union, then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi tore up a copy of Trump’s speech while sitting behind him. That was all cute and fun and everything, but we’re so far past wearing a color to protest this egomaniac that I literally thought Time‘s original headline, “Dozens of Democratic Congresswomen Plan To Wear Pink to Trump’s Joint Address to Congress,” was from The Onion.
“Women in my district are terrified and are also losing their jobs with the indiscriminate, inconsistent, chaotic, mass firings,” Leger Fernández said. “When a woman loses her job, she loses the ability to care for her family.” Wearing pink as a reaction to his policies is so dumb that I’d set myself on fire, but I don’t wanna outshine Dems’ big pink moment.
