The state of the union is that the President is spitting in the face of the law and he is letting an unelected billionaire fire cancer researchers and wreck federal agencies like the Social Security Administration at will.”
Washington lawmakers react to Trump’s congressional speech
Mar 5, 2025, 6:08 AM | Updated: 8:12 am
(Getty Images)
(Getty Images)
President Trump’s speech to Congress Tuesday night got the expected results, with high praise from Republicans and heavy criticism from Democrats, including Washington Senator Maria Cantwell.
“President Trump promised to deal with consumer costs and inflation, but we got no ideas tonight on how he’s going to make life more affordable for average Americans. Instead, he’s proposing things that will increase costs,” Cantwell said in a statement released Wednesday. “New tariffs, cuts to critical programs like Medicaid and Social Security, and threatening core services like weather forecasting and aviation safety are all bad for our safety and our economy.”
Trump vowed to keep up his campaign of “swift and unrelenting action” in reorienting the nation’s economy, immigration and foreign policy in an address that left Democratic legislators to register their dissent with stone faces, placards calling out “lies,” and one legislator’s ejection.
Jason Rantz: Three poignant moments from Trump’s speech that should unite all Americans
Cantwell spoke on Senate floor
Sen. Cantwell spoke on the Senate floor Wednesday, raising concerns about the Trump Administration’s actions in its first 44 days, including “slapping tariffs on products that will inflate costs for consumers and hurt Washington’s exports and taking a chainsaw to federal agencies that do critical, lifesaving work.” A video of her speech can be viewed HERE; audio is HERE; and a transcript is HERE.
Sen. Patty Murray, who skipped the session, released this statement before the address:
In the speech that lasted 99 minutes, Trump promised to slash the size of the federal government. Trump pledged to keep delivering sweeping change to rescue the nation from what he described as destruction and mistakes left by his predecessor.
Michigan Sen. Elissa Slotkin, who delivered the Democratic response following Trump’s speech, allowed that “America wants change, but there’s a responsible way to make change and a reckless way, and we can make that change without forgetting who we are as a country and as a democracy.”
More from the Washington delegation
Rep. Dan Newhouse (R-Wash. 4th district) said of the address, “What a list of accomplishments and things that he’s been able to do. I don’t know that we’ve ever had a new president come in and be so energetic on the number of things he wanted to accomplish in his first hundred days.”
Newhouse said that Trump talked about many things that were important to the state of Washington, like energy independence and keeping the borders secure. One of the highlights of the congressional year is getting a report from the president, and I must say this one did not disappoint.”
Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash. 7th district) walked out of the address. In a post on X, Jayapal said, “I went there because I was insistent that I wanted to hear directly from him and what he had to say, but after hearing him spew lie after lie after lie, racism and xenophobia at the center of everything, I walked out.”
Jayapal went on, “I’m going to insist that we…fight back so that we can make sure we are delivering for working people everywhere.”
Contributing: The Associated Press
