Texas Rep. Al Green’s demonstration against President Donald Trump’s racism at Tuesday’s State of the Union address put Democrats on notice, too.
As Trump entered the chamber, Green held up a sign that read “Black People Aren’t Apes,” denouncing the president’s racist social media post that depicted Barack and Michelle Obama as apes. Green was then escorted out, through a crowd of cheering white lawmakers — a scene reminiscent of the Reconstruction era, when Black lawmakers were ostracized (and occasionally brutalized) by some of their white supremacist colleagues.
Afterward, Green commented to Raw Story on his willingness to challenge Trump’s racism openly and directly:
If you tolerate this level of racism, you perpetuate it. I refuse to tolerate it. I don’t wanna see it normalized. And that’s why I flashed this to the president, so there would be no question as to where I stand. He needs to know that there are some people who have the courage to tell him things that he doesn’t want to hear, and that nobody else will tell him.
His comments mirror those he made in 2025, when he was also removed from Trump’s joint address to Congress for speaking out. “It’s worth it to let people know that there are some people who are going to stand up” to Trump, Green said at the time.
In many ways, Green has stood alone in his refusal to normalize Trump’s illiberal, unethical and immoral behavior, and in his unvarnished rebuke of Trump’s racist ways. His unwillingness to abide by some of the established rules of decorum are helping draw a distinction between him and others on the left who seem more willing to tolerate Trump’s malignancy. As an example, Green has spoken more directly than seemingly every other lawmaker in Congress about the racism undergirding Texas’ mid-decade, Trump-backed gerrymander. Green has also pushed frequently, across both of the president’s terms, to impeach the president — efforts that have failed and led some Democrats to portray Green as more of a nuisance or rabble-rouser than a defender of democracy. (Categorizations like that are not uncommon terms for Black lawmakers, a trend I discussed in this article about the Texas Democratic U.S. Senate primary race.) On that note, 10 Democrats joined Republicans to censure Green for his demonstration last year, and it will be interesting to see if a similar effort follows his latest protest. When so much evidence bolsters his urgent warnings about the sitting president, it’s hard to argue with Green’s points of opposition to Trumpism, or with his dismay at those who are unwilling to be as confrontational in addressing the problems fueled by Trump’s leadership. As large portions of the American public apparently begin to notice that Trump is every bit the bigoted authoritarian Green has derided him as, Green’s demonstration should be a clarion call to a Democratic Party that, at least according to recent polling data, has yet to convince its base that it’s fully up to the task of rebuffing Trump’s assault on democracy.
Ja’han Jones is an MS NOW opinion blogger. He previously wrote The ReidOut Blog. 
