WASHINGTON — The State of the Union address is usually the president’s moment to make his case with soaring words. But newly empowered Democrats on Tuesday delivered their own pointed message to President Trump and the nation: We’re back and we won’t be pushed around.

From the party’s restored “Madam Speaker” presiding over the proceedings to the sea of white worn by the scores of Democratic women crowding the party’s side of the chamber, the resurrection of the Democrats as a force in Congress was on full display. At his first speech before a divided Congress, Mr. Trump himself recognized their ascension with his plea for Democrats not to pursue investigations of his administration. There was zero chance of them complying with that request.

“We are not here to play,” Representative Mary Gay Scanlon, a freshman Democrat from Pennsylvania, said as she joined other Democratic women earlier Tuesday to celebrate their growing clout. “We are here to be serious.”

Their invited guests — undocumented immigrants, sexual assault and gun violence victims, transgender Americans, federal employees who suffered in the shutdown — served as the personification of rebukes to the president and his policies. Also scattered through Mr. Trump’s audience on the House floor were multiple eager Democratic presidential aspirants whose goal is to take Mr. Trump’s job away from him in two years.