Eight years ago, when President Donald Trump gave his first address to a joint session of Congress, Democratic women in the chamber wore white in a concerted effort to call attention to women’s rights. This year they have expanded the dress code, adding pink.
Some women will continue to wear white at Tuesday night’s address by Trump. But New Mexico Rep. Teresa Leger Fernández, who chairs the Democratic Women’s Caucus, told Time magazine that wearing pink is meant to call attention to Trump’s administration “negatively impacting women and families.”
“Women are claiming pink as a color of protest, as a color of power, and we are protesting what is happening right now,” Leger Fernández said during a news conference Tuesday.
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Women in Congress on the left have donned white almost every year since Trump’s first term in honor of suffragists who fought to expand the right to vote a century ago. In 2018, some chose to wear black to reflect the #MeToo movement.
(Tom Williams, Bill Clark/CQ Roll Call/Getty Images)
The choice to wear white mirrors other prominent politicians who wore the color during key moments. Geraldine Ferraro wore white when accepting her nomination as the first woman candidate for vice president in 1984, as did Hillary Clinton when accepting her party’s presidential nomination in 2016.
On Tuesday night, the Democratic women’s white and pink attire will once again draw a contrast with the typically dark suits in the rest of the chamber. The addition of pink to their now-normal white is meant to reflect a shift in tone, Leger Fernández told Time.
But the evening’s bright colors come at a moment of friction between elected Democrats and their constituents. A February Quinnipiac poll showed 68 percent of surveyed Americans — and 63 percent of women — disapprove of the way Democrats have handled their job in Congress. They also found that Trump had a 60 percent disapproval rate among surveyed women.
Ahead of Tuesday night’s address, most Democrats say they want to be present in the chamber to show that the president still faces organized opposition from their party. A handful may protest during the speech or not show up. Some members are bringing federal workers and military veterans recently laid off by the so-called Department of Governmental Efficiency, the cost-cutting effort led by Elon Musk, as their guests.
Members will also wear buttons that read “Betrayed for Billionaires” to draw attention to the proposed House budget cuts that Democratic critics say will disproportionately help lower tax rates for the rich at the expense of gutting public funding.
Grace Panetta contributed to this report.
