{"id":19340,"date":"2026-02-25T14:46:43","date_gmt":"2026-02-25T14:46:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/schumer-defends-democrats-who-didnt-stand-during-sotu\/"},"modified":"2026-02-25T14:46:43","modified_gmt":"2026-02-25T14:46:43","slug":"schumer-defends-democrats-who-didnt-stand-during-sotu","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/schumer-defends-democrats-who-didnt-stand-during-sotu\/","title":{"rendered":"Schumer defends Democrats who didn\u2019t stand during SOTU"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<p>Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer defended Democrats for refusing to stand at the State of the Union Tuesday night when President Donald Trump implored both parties to rise if they believe the first duty of the government is to protect American citizens, not undocumented immigrants.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe agree we need to protect Americans,\u201d Schumer told BLN on Wednesday. \u201cHe&#8217;s not. By his reckless ICE agency in Minnesota, two Americans were killed. Americans are being pulled out of their cars and beaten. Americans&#8217; houses, the doors are being knocked down, you know, without a warrant.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Republicans were quick to capitalize on the moment \u2014 a visual of Trump gesturing to the Democrats still seated in the chamber while Republicans stood and clapped for well over a minute. They said it could haunt Democrats ahead of the 2026 midterms<\/p>\n<p>\u201cUnbelievable that Democrats would not stand to reaffirm the American government\u2019s first duty is to American citizens, NOT illegal aliens,\u201d <a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/SenRonJohnson\/status\/2026524187636990145\" target=\"_blank\"><u>Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson wrote on X<\/u><\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Schumer told BLN that it\u2019s the president who is failing to live up to that ideal.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cNo other police department in America run by Americans has done what ICE has done,\u201d he said. \u201cSo, yes, we want to protect Americans. He&#8217;s not doing it. And that&#8217;s why the American people are against what ICE is doing. So it was legitimate and right not to stand.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer defended Democrats for refusing to stand at the State of the Union Tuesday night when President Donald Trump implored both parties to rise if they believe the first duty of the government is to protect American citizens, not undocumented immigrants. \u201cWe agree we need to protect Americans,\u201d Schumer told BLN [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19340","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-congress"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19340","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19340"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19340\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19340"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19340"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19340"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}