Rep. Al Green, a Texas Democrat, interrupted President Donald Trump during his March 4, 2025, address to a joint session of Congress. Green shouted that Trump had “no mandate” to cut Medicaid until Speaker Mike Johnson had him ejected from the chamber. (Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images)
WASHINGTON — Arizona Democrats walked out early on President Donald Trump and others made no secret of their disapproval, though the state’s Republican lawmakers heaped praise on his Tuesday night speech and chided colleagues across the aisle over their behavior.
Sen. Ruben Gallego and Rep. Yassamin Ansari, D-Phoenix, left halfway through an address that lasted 99 minutes – Trump’s longest speech to Congress and the longest by any president in at least 60 years.
Ansari said she intended to listen to the whole speech but just couldn’t take it anymore. She left after Trump described gender-affirming care as “child abuse.”
“I’m absolutely devastated by the bull— that I just heard,” she said in a video she posted shortly after leaving, adding later in a statement that “the vitriol against so many of us, from immigrants to trans people, was too much.”
Republicans sought to shame Democrats for their lack of decorum.
“The Democrats are throwing a tantrum while President Trump is speaking common-sense,” Rep. Abe Hamadeh, R-Scottsdale, posted on X about 20 minutes into Trump’s speech, after a Texas Democrat had been ejected for heckling the president and refusing to sit down.
Ansari sat stone-faced until she got up and left.
Most Democrats refrained from clapping, though Gallego was somewhat more demonstrative.
He applauded Trump’s boast that illegal border crossings had dropped to historically low levels last month after a surge of troops and Border Patrol “to repel the invasion of our country.” A moment later, he was booing as Trump depicted migrants as “murderers, drug dealers, gang members, and people from mental institutions and insane asylums.”
The first Democrat to leave was Texan Al Green, who began heckling five minutes into the speech, waving his cane and shouting that Trump had “no mandate to cut Medicaid.”
Speaker Mike Johnson directed the sergeant-at-arms to remove him from the chamber after three warnings that Green – who first agitated for Trump’s impeachment four months into his first term, renewing the call last month – ignored.
Johnson scheduled a vote Wednesday on a resolution to censure Green. The last such censure was in 2023. Rep. Jamaal Bowman, D-New York, had pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor for pulling a fire alarm in the Capitol, allegedly to delay a vote.
Rep. Eli Crane, R-Oro Valley, who brought Yavapai County Sheriff David Rhodes to the speech as his guest, criticized Green later for “childish behavior” – though Republicans weren’t the image of decorum throughout the night, either.
They jeered as Green was led from the House, many of them singing the taunt: “Nah, nah, nah, nah, hey, hey, goodbye.”
As for Trump, Arizona Republicans heaped praise on him.
“Good job,” Rep. Juan Ciscomani, R-Tucson, told the president as Trump left the House chamber, in a brief interaction captured on C-SPAN.
Rep. Andy Biggs of Gilbert, who is running for Arizona governor, positioned himself near the entrance for Trump’s arrival and squeezed close to the aisle to score a handshake.
Rep. Juan Ciscomani, R-Tucson, waits in Statuary Hall at the U.S. Capitol ahead of President Donald Trump’s address to a joint session of Congress on March 4, 2025. At left: his guest for the speech, Pinal County Sheriff Ross Teeple. (Photo by Madeline Bates/Cronkite News)
He later called the speech a call to action for fellow Republicans.
“President Trump gave us the playbook. We must enact it,” Biggs posted on X.
As Democrats trickled out, Biggs took a seat near the dais on their side of the aisle.
Arizona Sen. Mark Kelly and Rep. Greg Stanton, D-Phoenix, stayed until the end.
Kelly applauded briefly when Trump mentioned supporting veterans but said later that Trump had “a lot of words, but no solutions.”
He rejected Trump’s defense of tariffs, saying the trade war will drive up prices for consumers, and called the speech “way too long” with “too many things that weren’t true.”
Stanton was seen taking notes.
“What the president of the United States says, whether I like it or not, is critically important policymaking for the White House and I need to be able to respond to it,” Stanton said by phone after the speech.
Gallego, like other Arizona Democrats, expressed anger at Trump’s stance on the CHIPS Act, a bipartisan bill signed by President Joe Biden in 2022. The law authorized $52.7 billion for semiconductor chip research.
Trump called the law “horrible,” arguing that his tariffs would accomplish the same goal of boosting domestic production.
“You should get rid of the CHIP Act and whatever’s left over, Mr. Speaker, you should use it to reduce debt,” he said. The full acronym, CHIPS, stands for Creating Helpful Incentives to Produce Semiconductors.
According to the Arizona Commerce Authority, Arizona leads the nation in the semiconductor industry, with over $102 billion in investment since 2020.
Most of that is from Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, whose $65 billion fabrication complex in Phoenix is the largest foreign investment in state history. The Biden administration locked in $6.6 billion in federal incentives under the CHIPS Act after Trump’s victory.
Trump and TSMC’s chief executive officer C. C. Wei announced another $100 billion investment on Monday at the White House. Trump credited his tariff threats rather than taxpayer subsidies.
Kelly was livid at Trump’s push to overturn the law.
“It has brought thousands of jobs to the state of Arizona and to other states,” he said.
Gallego echoed the sentiment. “Getting rid of the CHIP Act just to be vindictive against Biden will destroy Arizona’s economy,” he posted on X.
Gallego also asserted that Trump was lying by promising to eliminate income tax on tips and overtime, noting that neither proposal is part of the House GOP budget: “The only thing they’re fighting for is cutting YOUR benefits to hand billionaires another tax break,” he said in the post.
Rep. Paul Gosar, R-Bullhead City, used an AI-generated image of the president and vice president with children and a picture book titled “Winners Aren’t Losers.” The caption: “JD Vance be like: When my children act unruly like Democrats, I read them my favorite book.”
JD Vance be like: When my children act unruly like Democrats, I read them my favorite book. pic.twitter.com/IZIAm5euvr
— Rep. Paul Gosar, DDS (@RepGosar) March 5, 2025
Rep. Raúl Grijalva, D-Tucson, was not spotted at the address.
He has been mostly absent from Congress since announcing a cancer diagnosis nearly a year ago. But he issued a statement asserting that “Trump spent the entirety of his Joint Address lying to Americans.”