AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org. I’m Amy Goodman.

On Tuesday night, Congresswoman Summer Lee of Pennsylvania gave the Working Families Party response to Trump’s State of the Union.

REP. SUMMER LEE: So, let’s start with a simple truth: What we are witnessing from our government is authoritarianism. Any response that doesn’t acknowledge that truth is a disservice to Americans who deserve and need honesty right now.

I listened to Donald Trump’s speech tonight. While Trump and his friends profit off his presidency, he’s gaslighting us. He wants to convince working families that we’re better off under his regime. But we know the truth. Our country is in crisis. For millions of Americans, affordability is out of reach. Trump has driven up the unemployment rate, cutting thousands of federal jobs across the country.

Everything he does is making Americans less safe at home and abroad. He’s bringing us to the brink of wars in the Middle East and South America. And at home, ICE agents are hunting down human beings, and cities are under siege. The FBI is raiding election offices in Georgia. Students are being disappeared for protesting tyranny and genocide in Palestine. The environmental protections we earned after a generation of advocacy are being stripped away.

AMY GOODMAN: That was Pennsylvania Congresswoman Summer Lee giving the Working Families Party response to the State of the Union, joining us now from Capitol Hill.

Congressmember Lee, if you can carry on from what you were saying last night? You did not attend the State of the Union. Tell us why, as well.

REP. SUMMER LEE: Because the president is disgraceful, and I don’t think it’s worth our time to give him an audience. That’s what he wants. He wants to be able to tell us to our face lies and gaslight us to our face. And the reality is, is that we have better things to do with our time, and I think that there are people who deserve our attention far more than he does.

AMY GOODMAN: So, talk about the People’s State of the Union, the People’s State of the Union on the Mall last night, with many congressmembers, like you, as well as senators, speaking out.

REP. SUMMER LEE: I think it was an opportunity for us to get in front of the people who are harmed most by Trump’s and Republicans’ policies. Right now people in this country, they really want an end to the status quo. They don’t care about the pomp and circumstance and the decorum of this institution. They’re wondering why we’re not disrupting or doing things differently, or at least not giving any more credibility to this administration.

So, the People’s State of the Union, I was grateful for, because it was an attempt for us and an opportunity for us to walk away from him, to turn our backs on a president that is insistent on lying to us, and just talking straight to the people about a truth that they were just not going to get last night. And that started, obviously, before the State of the Union, but there was no reason for any of us to believe that this would be the first night that he finally actually tells the American people the truth about the state, the truth about his policies and the truth about what his intentions are for the country.

AMY GOODMAN: As you stand at the Rotunda, I’m reminded that the House speaker has said that Jesse Jackson’s body cannot lay in honor in the Capitol, as John Lewis did, as Rosa Parks did. Can you talk about the significance of this and what Jesse Jackson meant to you?

REP. SUMMER LEE: Certainly. I don’t find that — I don’t find that shocking. This whole administration this past year has been about attacking Black folks, attacking our history, attacking the legacy that has been created out of movements like the civil rights movement, like the Black Power movement and so many more. So, for him to kind of try to insult the Reverend Jesse Jackson and his legacy at this last final resting point is not shocking. But the reality is, is that he could do no such thing, right? What Reverend Jesse Jackson has done and what he has meant to this country is not interrupted or is not changed by the fact that Donald Trump would not do right by him in this last moment.

This is a man who, aside from — has impacted people, in my district, in my life — me, myself — around his ministry, his activism, his politics, laying the groundworks for more progressive campaigning. When there is a desperate need for an alternative message and for alternative ways of doing your politics, Jesse Jackson came and ran for president. He set the foundation for so many people after him, including me, to run on a progressive, unapologetically bold platform.

So, I’m grateful for the work that he’s done. Whether or not he is in the Rotunda or not, we still honor the history. We still honor the work that he did. But more importantly, we recognize that right now more than ever, we have to carry on the work, that what those civil rights activists, heroes, movement leaders did 50 years ago is still happening right now, and that we have to re-up that battle. So, right now, listen, don’t focus as much on that. Focus on the attacks not on his person, on attacks not on his final farewell. Focus on the attacks on his work.

AMY GOODMAN: Let’s go back to President Trump criticizing Democrats last night for not supporting the SAVE Act, which voting rights advocates warn could disenfranchise millions.

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: And the reason they don’t want to do it — why would anybody not want voter ID? One reason! Because they want to cheat. There’s only one reason. They make up all excuses. They say it’s racist. They come up with things. You almost say, “What imagination they have.” They want to cheat. They have cheated. And their policy is so bad that the only way they can get elected is to cheat. And we’re going to stop it. We have to stop it, John.

AMY GOODMAN: So, that was President Trump last night. I’m looking at a piece in The Hill saying, in fact, instances of noncitizen voting are exceedingly rare. A 2016 general election study showed an estimated 30 incidents of suspected, not confirmed, noncitizen votes out of 23.5 million, which is .0001% of the votes cast. Voter fraud generally also exceedingly rare. Numerous studies have found fraud rates that are just a fraction of 1%. Talking about Trump’s claims of widespread fraud in the 2020 election, rejected by 62 courts that reviewed the matter. If you could comment further, Congressmember Lee, on what President Trump is trying to do here by questioning the legitimacy of U.S. elections?

REP. SUMMER LEE: Oh, we all know what he’s trying to do. When you take away the lie — and it’s not just on this topic. When you take away the lie, there is no foundation for President Trump. There’s no foundation for any of his cronies to stand on. They have to lie to people to get folks riled up. They have to lie to get conservatives to participate or to at least not come to the side of where people are actually fighting for their interests.

They don’t want people to vote. They don’t want people who won’t vote for them to vote. So, clarification: They don’t want people who won’t vote for them to vote. So, whether that’s Black folk or old or disabled people, they don’t want you to vote, because they want to continue on a system that has been rigged against you and in favor of them, of him and Elon Musk and his family and his friends and all of his friends who are on the Epstein files with him. That’s who he has consistently protected. That’s who they’re protecting right now when they don’t release the rest of the files.

It is the same story over and over and over again. But we know the truth, right? As you said, the facts, the data, it speaks for itself. There is negligible amount of voter fraud. But instances of people, especially our elders, especially disabled folks, especially rural folks, being able to access adequate ID is a real issue. So, why in a country — right? — as well run as we say ours is, why would we make it hard for people to vote? There is no other explanation.

AMY GOODMAN: I want to go back to President Trump speaking about Iran.

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: After Midnight Hammer, they were warned to make no future attempts to rebuild their weapons program, and, in particular, nuclear weapons. Yet they continue. They’re starting it all over. We wiped it out, and they want to start all over again and are at this moment again pursuing their sinister ambitions. We are in negotiations with them. They want to make a deal, but we haven’t heard those secret words: “We will never have a nuclear weapon.”

AMY GOODMAN: A massive military, U.S. military, presence has been moved near Iran. Congressmember Lee, your response to what President Trump is threatening?

REP. SUMMER LEE: Again, he started the speech off by saying that he alone ended six or so wars, while also using this opportunity to threat another country, to threat another endless war, to threat countless people who have been tied up in these endless wars that the United States continuously finds itself in. I think that President Trump has completely abandoned any form of diplomacy. He has completely abandoned any responsibility as a country as powerful as us with our weapons, with our military, to be a positive force in the world.

And it isn’t just Iran. He’s doing this in Gaza. He’s done this in the Southern Hemisphere. He’s done it with Denmark. It is chaotic. It endangers us. And again, like I said last night, everything he does makes us less safe abroad, it makes us less safe domestically, and it’s important that we call that out, and any attempt, that every day we fight to get more people to understand how dangerous his presidency is and how dangerous his policies and his rhetoric are.

AMY GOODMAN: Summer Lee, we want to thank you so much for being with us, Democratic congressmember from Pennsylvania, the first Black woman to represent Pennsylvania in Congress, gave the Working Families response to President Trump’s State of the Union.

Coming up, we stay in Washington, D.C., where we speak with Aliya Rahman, who was a guest at the State of the Union. She was removed from the gallery — and arrested? Last month, video went viral of federal immigration officers in Minneapolis violently dragging her out of her car as she said, “I’m disabled.” Stay with us.

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AMY GOODMAN: “Streets of Minneapolis” by Bruce Springsteen.