WASHINGTON, DC – US President Donald Trump is scheduled to deliver the first annual State of the Union address of his second term. This is the traditional soaring speech in which the president asserts his leadership in both houses of Congress.
President Trump’s assessment of the state of the Union, a group of 50 states and territories under the jurisdiction of the federal government, comes after a year of transformation for the country.
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The 2024 election capped a surprising comeback for a president many expected to be relegated to the political wilderness after his decisive loss to former President Joe Biden in the 2020 election, which saw his supporters storm the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., in a campaign to overturn the results and four separate criminal charges, including a conviction in New York for forging business documents.
A year into his second term, those criminal investigations have been effectively cleared, the so-called “January 6th riot” has been pardoned, and Trump heads an executive branch made in his own image, overseeing a cabinet of loyalist bureaucrats who support his most controversial policies, including trade, the economy, immigration, foreign policy, and intervention.
Still, the president’s polarized approach sets up a tough midterm for Republicans, who are looking to maintain majorities in both the House and Senate when votes are cast in November.
The party’s success or failure will likely constrain the White House for years to come. Here’s what to expect from President Trump’s State of the Union address.
When and where will the speech be given?
President Trump will address the 100-member Senate and 435-member House of Representatives at 9:00 pm local time (2:00 pm Wednesday local time).
The speech will be delivered from the podium in the House chamber, with Trump expected to be flanked, as is tradition, by Vice President J.D. Vance and Republican Speaker of the House Mike Johnson.
Johnson formally “invited” Trump to give a speech last month.
Under the U.S. Constitution, the president is required “from time to time” to provide Congress with “information regarding the State of the Union,” outlining any legislative agenda the White House deems “necessary and expedient.”
Is economic efficiency important?
In 1992, Democratic strategist James Carville famously summed up the biggest concern of American voters when he quipped, “It’s the economy, you idiot.”
This reputation has proven to be long-lasting. Exit polls suggested Trump’s success in the 2024 presidential race was due in no small part to voters’ concerns about the cost of living, as the U.S. economy continues to suffer from high inflation and soaring prices due to the coronavirus pandemic.
President Trump regularly touts the strength of the U.S. economy, but some indicators show mixed results. Despite relatively strong results on Wall Street and strong employment numbers, gross domestic product (GDP) growth at the end of 2025 is slower than expected, as announced last week.
Concerns about federal data and economic reporting were further heightened by President Trump’s baseless firing of Bureau of Labor Statistics Director Erica McEnterfer last year for producing inaccurate labor statistics.
On the other hand, the administration’s exaggerated assessments are facing harsh reality. Many American voters do not see their lived experience reflecting the interests President Trump claims to represent.
Trump has signaled that he intends to reiterate the message that his administration has overcome the country’s “affordability” problem, which he has portrayed as a Democratic conspirator.
Polling shows otherwise, with a Quinnipiac University poll released in early February showing just 39% of registered voters approve of President Trump’s economic policies, while 56% disapprove.
An NPR/PBS News/Marist poll released in December found his approval rating on the issue at about 36 percent, the lowest rating for a president in the issue’s six-year history.
“We have to listen to the ‘fake news’ that talks about affordability,” President Trump said in a speech in Georgia last week.
“I won affordability,” he added. “I had to go out and talk about it.”
Big blow to trade policy, but Trump remains defiant
President Trump’s speech came after he suffered one of the most significant blows to his policy agenda yet, with the Supreme Court rejecting his premise that the U.S. trade deficit represented an “emergency” to national security.
President Trump’s sweeping reciprocal tariffs have unsettled members of his own Republican Party and have been a rare area of bipartisan support to check his sweeping interpretation of executive power.
But President Trump has vowed to continue imposing tariffs on imports using existing U.S. law rather than emergency powers.
“As President, there is no need for me to go back to Congress for approval of tariffs,” the US president said in a social media post on Monday. “It was already available in different forms a long time ago!”
The U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis reported last week that despite the administration’s new policies, the U.S. trade deficit will continue to widen in 2025, increasing by 2.1% from 2024.
deportation drive
Attention will also be focused on how President Trump approaches the administration’s aggressive immigration policy, which seeks to transform legal immigration and refugee and asylum programs while pursuing unlimited mass deportations.
In the first months of President Trump’s second term, immigrants and other federal agents have flooded communities across the country, employing what advocates call a “dragnet” approach that increasingly traps long-term undocumented immigrants with no criminal records.
Critics also accuse the government of taking increasingly dire measures to meet exorbitant immigrant detention quotas, sparking anger and protests among Americans.
In January, two Americans, Renee Nicole Good and Alex Preti, were killed by immigration agents in separate incidents in Minneapolis, Minnesota, but the Trump administration initially offered an explanation for the killings that differed from the video evidence.
Federal authorities continue to freeze the state’s independent investigators from the investigation.
The issue has emerged as an unexpected vulnerability for Republicans heading into the midterm elections. Although tighter immigration controls ostensibly maintain broad support among some segments of the electorate, polls show widespread disappointment with the Trump administration’s actions.
A Reuters/Ipsos poll released in late January found that 53% of Americans disapproved of President Trump’s handling of immigration, up from 41% shortly after he took office. On the other hand, 58% said immigration officials were overreaching. The poll was conducted after Goode’s murder on January 7th and fills in the period before and after Preeti’s murder on January 24th.
An Associated Press-NORC poll released in February suggested that 62% of Americans believe President Trump has gone too far in sending migrant workers to cities across the country.
Immigration raids have also become a hot topic in states such as Maine, where the Trump administration launched a large-scale operation earlier this month but has since withdrawn.
Maine Republican Sen. Susan Collins is considered one of the party’s most vulnerable candidates in the November election.
ghost of war
Additionally, tensions are rising with Iran, which the Trump administration has repeatedly threatened as it exports the largest amount of military assets to the Middle East since the US invasion of Iraq in 2003.
On February 19, President Trump said he would take 10 to 15 days to decide whether to attack. It’s an uncomfortable juxtaposition for a president who came into office denouncing decades of America’s “foreign entanglements” and Washington’s past involvement in foreign regime changes and “endless wars.”
President Trump had already launched an attack on Iran last June, ending a 12-day war between Iran and Israel.
Meanwhile, the Pentagon launched a bombing campaign against the Houthis in Yemen, stepped up airstrikes in Somalia, Nigeria and Syria, and killed at least 145 people in an attack on an alleged drug-smuggling vessel in the Caribbean. The operation was described by human rights watchdogs as an extrajudicial killing.
The Trump administration began this year with the unprecedented U.S. military abduction of Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro, an act condemned as a gross violation of international law and sovereignty.
Trump is scheduled to speak as U.S. lawmakers renewed his pledge to introduce a so-called “war powers resolution” that would curb his ability to attack Iran without Congressional approval.
A similar resolution on Venezuela narrowly failed in January after a small group of Republican holdouts relented.
President Trump announced last week that the United States would contribute $10 billion to the so-called peace commission, a commission aimed at focusing on rebuilding and rebuilding the Gaza Strip, where Trump envisions a broader global role.
But the president’s push to involve America’s allies in the Middle East in the future of the Gaza Strip has caused friction with some Arab countries because of his administration’s staunch support for Israel’s right-wing government.
Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states have expressed anger in recent days at US Ambassador Mike Huckabee, who suggested it would be “okay” for Israel to occupy much of the Middle East.
Democratic response and Epstein’s guest
Democrats nominated Virginia Governor Abigail Spanberger to deliver the party’s response to the president’s speech, a tradition in the United States.
The choice underscores the narrative Democrats hope to establish heading into the midterm elections: one of stable pragmatism in the face of President Trump’s seismic policies.
The selection of Spanberger, a former congressman and CIA agent, moves away from the more progressive side of the party represented by figures like New York City Mayor Zoran Mamdani.
Spanberger has faced criticism from progressives for her support for Israel and her stance on law enforcement, but her 15-point victory last year against incumbent Gov. Glenn Youngkin strengthened her belief that her brand of affordability politics could stand up to vulnerable Republicans.
The governor said he would address “rising prices, community disruption, and real fear of what’s going to happen every day.”
Meanwhile, at least a dozen Democratic members of Congress have said they will boycott President Trump’s State of the Union address and instead attend a counterprogramming event on the National Mall organized by the progressive groups Move On and Meidas Touch.
“These are not normal times, and by attending this speech we are giving legitimacy to the corruption and misconduct that defined his second term,” U.S. Sen. Chris Murphy, one of the boycotters, said in a statement.
Representatives Jamie Raskin and Suhas Subramanyam announced that they will attend President Trump’s speech along with the family of Jeffrey Epstein survivor Virginia Giuffre.
The move comes as Democrats continue to push the administration to hold the administration accountable for a criminally charged sex-trafficking ring run by a financier who was found dead in an apparent suicide in 2019.
Let’s get ready to “weave”
As with President Trump’s other public events, expect the unexpected.
The American president rarely follows a script, instead digressing, indulging in meandering narratives and long expositions of personal and political vendettas.
During the 2024 presidential campaign, Trump dubbed his rhetorical style “weave” because his ubiquitous stump speeches often dragged on until late at night.
