First-term Michigan Sen. Elissa Slotkin accused US President Donald Trump of driving up costs while pushing for an “unprecedented giveaway to his billionaire friends” in Tuesday night’s Democratic response to his first joint congressional address of his second term.
Slotkin, just months into her first term in the US Senate after winning an open Michigan seat despite Trump carrying the state, said Trump “has not laid out a credible plan” to address rising everyday expenses for Americans. She said tariffs that went into effect early Tuesday would only worsen the issue.
“For those keeping score, the national debt is going up, not down,” Slotkin said. “And if he’s not careful, he could walk us right into a recession.”
Slotkin spoke from Wyandotte, Michigan, a working-class community south of Detroit, after Trump delivered the longest address to Congress by a president in US history.
“It’s late,” she began, “so I promise to be a lot shorter than what you just watched.”
In his speech, which lasted an hour and 40 minutes, Trump claimed credit for “swift and unrelenting action” in reshaping the nation’s economy, immigration and foreign policy within his first weeks in office. The Republican-controlled House and Senate have done little to check the president’s agenda.
In her rebuttal, which lasted a little more than 10 minutes, Slotkin told Americans that “change doesn’t need to be chaotic or make us less safe.” Her remarks came as Democrats struggle to settle on a unified message to combat Trump. That struggle was on full display Tuesday night as some Democratic members held placards in the House chamber with various messages. The most dramatic moment came when Texas Rep. Al Green was escorted out after heckling the president.
Slotkin focused on economic issues after Trump’s Monday announcement that 25 percent tariffs on imports from Mexico and Canada would begin Tuesday. The move has reignited fears of a North American trade war, which has already shown signs of driving up inflation and stalling growth.
Known for her more moderate politics, Slotkin has not hesitated in the past to critique her party’s messaging when necessary.
“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.”
Her team said she was joined by Marine veteran Andrew Lennox, who recently spoke out after losing his job at a Veterans Affairs hospital in Ann Arbor due to cuts implemented by the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, led by billionaire Elon Musk.
Slotkin, 48, is a Jewish senator who took her oath of office on a book of Torah commentary by women published by the Reform Jewish movement, with which her family has been affiliated. In a year that was deflating for Democrats across the country, she prevailed as a moderate, pro-Israel Democrat in a state that Trump won and that has a sizable Arab-American minority.
Slotkin had begun her career working as an analyst with the CIA, where she served multiple tours in Iraq. In 2018, a wave year for Democrats during Trump’s first term, she won election to Congress, where she emphasized bipartisanship, occasionally crossing party lines to vote with Republicans.
A recipient of support from PACs affiliated with the pro-Israel lobby AIPAC, she has voted since October 7, 2023, for Israel-related measures that divided her Democratic colleagues, such as to fund the Israeli military and to equate anti-Zionism and antisemitism.
As a member of Congress, Slotkin proposed mandating Holocaust education as a strategy to combat the rise of domestic extremism. She was inspired in part by the neo-Nazi and Holocaust-related symbols that appeared during the January 6, 2021, Capitol riot by supporters of Trump.
She is seen as a leading figure in the party’s next generation.
Slotkin was born in New York City but grew up largely on her family’s land in Holly, Michigan, where she lives today. Her grandfather bought the land when he moved the headquarters of the family business, Hygrade, from New York.
Founded in 1914 by Slotkin’s great-grandfather Samuel, a Jewish immigrant from Minsk, Hygrade was a pioneer in processed and packaged meats whose contributions included Ball Park Franks, still the most-sold hot dogs in the country.
Samuel Slotkin was the subject of a two-part New Yorker profile in 1956, when the multimillionaire, then around 70, still lived in New York City. According to the profile, he was one of nine children of a Talmudic scholar in Koidanov, a town outside Minsk that was a center of Hasidic Judaism in the 19th and early 20th centuries.