Bowman to deliver progressive response to Biden’s speech to Congress

Rep. Jamaal Bowman (N.Y.), one of the newest progressive-aligned Democrats in Congress, will deliver the Working Families Party’s (WFP) response to President Biden’s State of the Union address this week.

The party announced in a press release last week that Bowman would deliver the group’s fourth-ever response to a president’s State of the Union address, a sign that the WFP and other progressive organizations are beginning to flex more national muscle.

“I’m honored to deliver the Working Families Party’s response to President Biden’s Joint Address to Congress,” Bowman said in a statement last week accompanying the news release.

“As we approach the first hundred days of the president’s term, we should celebrate our victories, take stock of where we’ve fallen short, and be crystal clear about what it will take to truly build back better and deliver the recovery and the democracy our people deserve,” he continued.

Bowman is the latest Justice Democrats-aligned progressive to join Congress after unseating a veteran Democratic incumbent, and ousted the chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee – former Rep. Eliot Engel (D-N.Y.) – in a primary win last year that echoed other come-from-behind victories won by progressives, such as Reps. Cori Bush (D-Mo.) and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) in recent years.

The Working Families Party, a New York-based progressive organization, joined the Justice Democrats in funding Bowman’s challenge to Engel last year, at the time calling the race “one of the best opportunities this year to elect a transformative progressive voice to Congress.”

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), a fellow progressive and political ally of Bowman, delivered progressive responses to former President Trump’s State of the Union speeches in 2020 and 2019, but is not currently set to deliver an address in response to Biden’s speech this year.