DETROIT (FOX 2) – After President Donald Trump speaks to Congress on Tuesday, marking the first major speech of his second term, Michigan Democrat Elissa Slotkin will take center stage to deliver the party’s rebuttal.
The freshman Senator who narrowly defeated Republican Mike Rogers for Debbie Stabenow’s vacated seat last fall, was selected to deliver the response to Trump’s speech.
Slotkin, who has won every race for Congress since first campaigning in Michigan’s 7th District in 2018, won the statewide race for Michigan’s open U.S. Senate seat after Debbie Stabenow announced she would not be running.
WASHINGTON, DC – JANUARY 21: U.S. Senator Elissa Slotkin (D-MI) questions Doug Collins, U.S. President Donald Trump’s nominee to be the Secretary of the Department of Veterans Affairs, during his Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committee confirmation hearin
What they’re saying:
Announcing on the social media website X, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer wrote that Slotkin would “deliver our Democratic response to Trump’s Joint Address.”
Slotkin has been a rising star in the Democratic Party for the past six years. She’s expected to focus on economic issues, including responding to the president’s 25% tariffs on imports from Mexico and Canada.
The Associated Press reports Slotkin may use the speech to also highlight her party’s broader platform.
Known more for a moderate stance, Slotkin has criticized her party’s messaging when necessary – particularly last November.
“We didn’t do as good a job as we could have at showing what our priorities are,” Slotkin told The Associated Press after the November election. “Our priorities, in my mind, should start with people’s pocketbooks and their kids. And I think the message got muddled for a lot of people, certainly at the national level.”
President Donald Trump to address Congress: Ukraine relations and controversial tariffs in spotlight
President Donald Trump will deliver his first address of his second term to a joint session of Congress, with a focus on key agenda items including U.S.-Ukraine relations and new tariffs on Mexico and Canada. As the administration pauses military aid to Ukraine to encourage peace talks, and Democrats consider a boycott, the speech is set to be a defining moment. How will Trump’s policies on international relations and trade impact his presidency?
Elissa Slotkin’s background
Before running for office, Slotkin worked for the CIA and spent three tours in Iraq. She worked for President Barack Obama’s State Department and Department of Offense.
In 2018, she was first elected to Congress when she flipped a traditionally Republican district. Since then, she consistently won close races in the battleground state and has proved herself to be an effective fundraiser.
After narrowly winning reelection in 2020, she was targeted by Republicans in the 2022 midterms after new congressional maps divided her home district. She was forced to run in Michigan’s new 7th Congressional District, where she was a new face for about a third of the district’s voters, many in rural GOP-leaning counties north of Lansing.
Throughout the campaign, Slotkin touted herself as a Democrat representing a Trump-voting district, emphasizing to voters her pragmatism and highlighting her role in the House’s bipartisan Problem-Solvers Caucus.
She has represented two congressional districts that experienced mass shootings, and she has called for stronger gun laws. Now a congresswoman for the Lansing area, she represents an area that includes Michigan State University, where a gunman killed three people and injured five others this month. She previously represented Oxford, where a school shooter killed four students and injured seven others at Oxford High School in 2021.
In 2023, she was one of the first Democrats to declare for Debbie Stabenow’s seat. She won the Democratic nomination with 75% of the vote.
She went on to top Rogers for the Senate seat by fewer than 19,000 votes.
How to stream Trump’s speech and Slotkin’s rebuttal
President Donald Trump will speak to Congress at 9 p.m. on Tuesday, March 4.
The President will make his way to Congress to outline his plans for the next year and for his entire term.
After the speech, Michigan Sen. Elissa Slotkin will deliver the Democratic Party’s rebuttal.
The event will be streamed live on FOX LOCAL and FOX2Detroit.com.
FOX 2 will be streaming coverage from LiveNOWfox.com starting at 8 p.m.
After Trump’s speech, FOX 2 News at 10 will recap the speech and Slotkin’s response.
At 11:30, Roop Raj will break down the speech on a live edition of The Pulse.
The Source: FOX 2 used information from previous reporting for this story. The Associated Press was also consulted for content in this story.
