Miles Taylor, a former Homeland Security official who emerged as the “Anonymous” author behind a bombshell 2018 op-ed about being “part of the resistance inside the Trump administration,” isn’t keeping his head down during Tuesday night’s State of the Union address. Instead, he’s offering frustrated citizens an alternative place to go.
“I am predicting that our event has more people sitting on the rebuttal floor than Donald Trump has in front of him sitting on the House floor,” said Taylor, whose organization, Defiance.org, expects at least a dozen Congressional Democrats to be among the roughly 500 people filling the National Press Club for “State of the Swamp,” one of two major counterprogramming events during Donald Trump’s address.
Less than a mile away, MoveOn.org is teaming up with progressive media network MeidasTouch for “The People’s State of the Union,” an event on the National Mall that expects upwards of 30 Democratic lawmakers. “It’s evident to us that there is a critical mass of Democratic lawmakers boycotting, stepping away,” Joel Payne, chief communications officer for MoveOn, told TheWrap.
These events, with dozens of Democrats abandoning the House floor for counterprogramming options designed to take attention away from the president, represent an escalation of protests that were once limited to quiet displays of solidarity like wearing white in honor of suffragists. These lawmakers are testing whether it’s more politically savvy to make one’s dissatisfaction visible in the room — or to speak directly to audiences already predisposed to tuning out the president. Because while the president may dominate TV screens on Tuesday night, the streaming world is up for grabs.
Traditionally, it’s difficult for the party out of power to make its presence felt during the State of the Union. The president commands a joint session of Congress, can speak as long as he wants and will be carried live on all the broadcast and cable networks. The biggest names in TV news — Rachel Maddow, Anderson Cooper, David Muir — will be behind the anchor desk for the occasion, along with dozens of anchors, talking heads and correspondents, while news outlets live-blog the proceedings and reporters tweet away.
But as we’ve seen with everything from the Super Bowl to the Olympics, not everyone is consuming big events through a traditional broadcast. Audiences are eager to find personality-driven programming or political framing they prefer.
Or, put more bluntly: “Our sense is there’s a big audience of people who are tired of being gaslit and lied to and misled by Donald Trump,” Payne, of MoveOn, said.
Still, Payne acknowledged that “it is always a tall mountain to scale to try and match the bully pulpit of the president, no matter who is in that office,” For that reason, he added, “expectations are set appropriately” about providing “an alternative vision of what the president is offering.”
Joy Reid and Katie Phang, former MSNBC hosts who have made the shift to Substack and YouTube, are co-hosting the MoveOn and MeidasTouch event, which promises to counterprogram Trump’s “night full of lies and misplaced priorities for the American people.” Senators Chris Murphy, Adam Schiff and Tina Smith, along with Reps. Pramila Jayapal, Greg Casar and Ayanna Pressley are among the Democratic lawmakers attending.
“Donald Trump has made a mockery of the State of the Union speech — taking a moment that is meant to bring the country together and turning it into a campaign rally to spew hatred and division,” Murphy said in a statement to TheWrap. “Democrats have no obligation to reward him with an audience as he lies and attacks people who disagree with him. These aren’t normal times and showing up for this speech puts a veneer of legitimacy on the corruption and lawlessness that has defined his second term.”
MeidasTouch co-founder Ben Meiselas wrote on X that the “dam is breaking” and that “Trump could be speaking to a half-empty room.”
Even with a parade of Congressional Democrats heading to the National Mall, Payne stressed that “the heart of our event is platforming” people who have been hurt by Trump’s policies, from federal workers impacted by DOGE cuts to immigrants targeted by the administration.
At the nearby National Press Club, Sen. Ron Wyden, Rep. Eric Swalwell, and Rep. Seth Moulton are among the lawmakers who will join Hollywood stars (Robert De Niro), prominent mayors (Minneapolis’ Jacob Frey, Chicago’s Brandon Johnson) and Trump critics (Steve Schmidt, Olivia Troye) and media figures (Don Lemon, Jim Acosta, Mehdi Hasan).
Taylor, who Trump targeted last April by revoking his security clearance and calling for an investigation into his actions in government, co-founded Defiance.org in October as a way for people to come together to push back against the administration and its policies. When the State of the Union date was announced, Taylor recalled wanting to “organize the largest rebuttal that’s ever been organized to a President’s State of the Union.”
“And more than that, we shouldn’t just tell people to boycott his State of the Union,” he continued. “We should tell them to speak over it. We should tell them while Donald Trump is spewing lies, we should have an event that is actually focused on telling the truth about what is happening to our country.”
For the event, Defiance.org is teaming up with Courier, a progressive media network, and the Portland Frog Brigade, whose members have donned comical frog suits during anti-ICE protests.
The group sold tickets to attend the National Press Club gathering, and viewers can pay for the livestream to help support the event — though it’s also available for free. Taylor said they will occasionally turn to Trump’s speech and there will be a State of The Union bingo game, but emphasized that people will be speaking over the president, including press secretary-turned-critic Stephanie Grisham.
“Never in American history has a president’s former press secretary countered him and rebutted him during his own State of the Union,” Taylor said.
Taylor also expects about a few dozen new media creators streaming from the event, as well as mainstream media journalists covering it.
While Virginia Gov. Abigail Spanberger will deliver the official Democratic response to Trump’s speech, Democrats at such counterprogramming events — or through their own own social feeds — have the opportunity to respond in real-time. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez skipped Trump’s address last year and spoke for more than 50 minutes on Instagram, where she has 9.6 million followers.
On Tuesday night, Trump will command the chamber and the traditional media’s attention. Many Democrats are betting they can capture audiences elsewhere without ever stepping into the room.
