WASHINGTON, D.C. – President Donald Trump praised the first 13 months of his second term as nothing short of “transformative” in his State of the Union address, a triumphant message the White House said will keep him on track to increase support for the Republican Party ahead of November’s midterm elections.
But Tuesday’s speech also highlighted an uncomfortable political reality for Trump, exposing the vulnerabilities of a president who has relied on a slew of executive orders, unilateral actions and emergency declarations to craft policy.
Recommended stories
list of 3 itemsend of list
Days before the speech, the Supreme Court’s ruling against President Trump’s signature tariff policy underscored how quickly his most brazen and signature actions can crumble amid mounting legal challenges.
“Rather than extending an olive branch to Democrats or trying to attract new supporters, it was a speech designed to strengthen their base,” said Aaron Cull, a professor at the University of Michigan who studies presidential messages.
It’s an approach that could be limiting for a president who will need support from Congress, including from vulnerable Republicans and centrist Democrats facing a tough re-election campaign, to accomplish many of his goals in the coming months.
“In some ways, President Trump’s political fortunes and future depend on getting some buy-in and cooperation,” Cole said.
“Big Beautiful Bill” again?
Trump’s most substantial legislative victory of his second term came in July, when the Republican-controlled Congress passed sweeping legislation. He praised this most highly in his speech on Tuesday.
Dubbed by the president as his “big beautiful bill” and Trump’s “ugly bill” by critics, the bill codifies some of Trump’s top campaign agenda items, including populist economic promises that would reduce taxes on tips, overtime and Social Security benefits.
The bill included a number of other items that were key to Trump’s agenda. Significant cuts to funding for welfare, health care, and foreign aid programs. Raise the national debt ceiling. Eliminate clean energy incentives. And billions of dollars are surging to ramp up enforcement at the southern border and support President Trump’s mass detention and deportation drive.
“Last year, I called on this Congress to begin its mission by passing the largest tax cut in American history, and the Republican majority delivered on that in spades,” Trump said during his speech, but fact-checkers dispute the historical characterization of the cut as one of several misleading claims the president has made about his record and the economy.
“Thank you, Republicans,” he said.
Polls show that Americans are unaware of major changes occurring in their lived experiences. President Trump’s approval ratings have declined in the months since the bill was passed, amid expectations that his response to the economy will worsen as he enters the second year of his second non-consecutive term.
“President Trump is taking credit for what he claims are the improvements that have been made, telling people why their lives are better, why they’re saving money in taxes, why gas is cheaper,” Cull said.
“But clearly there is a disconnect between the majority of the population and the story that President Trump is telling.”
Trump talks about affordability
President Trump on Tuesday did not call for another sweeping bill like the one passed last year, but instead proposed several bills aimed at broadly addressing rising costs of living.
While Trump generally favors an arbitrary approach, he emphasized in his remarks that many of the policy initiatives he touted Tuesday still require Congress, even as he blamed Democrats and former President Joe Biden’s administration for America’s persistently high cost of living.
On health care, for example, President Trump praised the 16 “most-favored-nation” agreements his administration has made with pharmaceutical companies. The full details of these agreements have not been made public, but they generally involve fixing prescription drug prices at lower prices than those typically negotiated by foreign countries.
The deal is the basis of TrumpRX, the White House’s drug marketplace. The marketplace is an organization the administration is touting as a cheaper alternative for Americans willing to bypass insurance and buy drugs with cash. But President Trump has hinted at concerns about the plan’s sustainability.
“So I’m now asking Congress to codify the Most Favored Nation program,” Trump said, but it remains unclear what legal mechanism would be used to enact the agreement.
Trump also pointed to an executive order he signed last month that prohibits investment companies from buying single-family homes for rent. This phenomenon is contributing to the nation’s housing access and affordability crisis, an issue that is especially salient as the midterm elections approach.
“And now I’m asking Congress to make that ban permanent, because this is all about the people, and that’s really what we want,” President Trump said in his State of the Union address. The State of the Union came hours after Democrats proposed their own bill targeting the practice. “We want homes for people, not businesses.”
Finally, President Trump proposed a plan to increase retirement accounts for seniors by providing federal contributions to retirement savings programs known as 401(k)s. After the speech, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told NBC News that the plan would likely only be accomplished through legislation.
customs duty
The biggest question mark regarding President Trump’s economic policy is his tariff policy.
President Trump has long touted aggressive tariffs on trading partners as part of his America First vision, arguing that they would lead to a hard reset in global trade that would spur the growth of American domestic industry.
During his State of the Union address, he praised his tariff policy as “one of the main reasons for our country’s economic turnaround,” even as he lamented the Supreme Court’s “disappointing ruling” that the majority of tariffs announced last year were illegal.
President Trump has since used new powers to impose 10% tariffs on global trading partners, and had hoped to increase those tariffs to 15%, saying on Tuesday that the plan would remain in place under “fully approved and tested alternatives.”
“No action by Congress is necessary,” he said.
Still, unless Congress takes action, the new measures will expire in 150 days, months before midterm elections. Some trade experts have questioned the legality of the program, with analysts at the liberal think tank CATO Institute arguing that the new tariffs are “almost certainly in violation of the law”, opening the door to further legal challenges.
Meanwhile, refunds for fees collected from U.S. companies under tariffs recently deemed illegal have yet to be addressed, potentially leaving new political vulnerabilities for Republicans in the coming months.
President Trump on DHS conflict
Taking to the podium in the House of Representatives on Capitol Hill, President Trump signaled little deviation from the hard-line approach on immigration that characterized the first year of his second term, even as the issue has become an increasingly political liability for Republicans.
President Trump welcomed the de facto closure of the U.S. border to asylum seekers, enacted under a state of emergency that continues to face legal challenges likely to reach the U.S. Supreme Court. He used several guests to link illegal aliens to high crime rates, but this premise has been questioned by several studies.
In a particularly dramatic moment aimed at Democratic members of Congress in attendance, Trump asked those who agreed that “the first duty of the American government is to protect American citizens, not illegal aliens,” to stand. He did not mention the killing of two Americans by immigration enforcement agents in Minnesota in January.
Exit polls show President Trump’s victory in 2024 was fueled in part by his tough stance on immigration, but recent polls show growing disenchantment with the tactics used. The issue is considered particularly troubling for Republicans as they face strong Democratic challengers in the coming months.
In the short term, Democrats have seized control of the politically sensitive issue, withholding annual funding for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and calling for increased oversight and reforms. DHS oversees Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and U.S. Border Protection, as well as the Secret Service, Coast Guard, Transportation Security Administration, and Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA).
“Tonight, I demand the full and immediate restoration of all funding for America’s border security, homeland security, and people’s snow removal assistance,” President Trump said in his speech, appearing to suggest that FEMA, which rarely assists with snow removal, is failing to respond to the recent storms that hit the northeastern United States in light of the federal government shutdown.
Conservation method
President Trump also revisited the defining message of his 2024 campaign, repeatedly claiming that U.S. elections, including his loss to Biden in 2020, were marred by high rates of fraud and other forms of fraud.
During his speech, President Trump asserted that “fraud is widespread in our elections,” despite repeated studies by conservative groups and others that have shown that the rate of voter fraud has been negligible and largely inconsequential over decades of elections.
He called on Republicans to pass what’s known as the Securing American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act. The bill would strengthen documentation requirements when registering to vote or arriving at a polling place, and would require states to hand over voter rolls to DHS to identify non-citizens.
Rights groups said the bill would disenfranchise countless voters, pointing out, for example, that about half of Americans don’t have a valid passport.
The bill passed the Republican-controlled House, but passage in the Senate will almost certainly include changes to the rules around the filibuster, a tool used by opposition parties to defeat bills that don’t meet the 60-vote threshold in the 100-seat chamber.
Changing the filibuster rules has long been viewed as a “nuclear option” by both parties.
Changing priorities
The annual State of the Union address is an opportunity for presidents to assert their leadership and vision for the coming months. They also reveal shifts in the administration’s priorities.
For example, as Mr. Cull explained, the United States is on the brink of escalating relations with Iran, uncertainty remains after the U.S. abduction of Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro, and while President Trump recently pledged $10 billion in support for the peace commission he created to rebuild the Gaza Strip and address other conflicts around the world, the president chose not to delve into foreign policy until more than 90 minutes into his speech.
Critics see President Trump’s foreign adventurism as a direct contradiction to his campaign promise to end U.S. interference abroad.
President Trump’s desire to take control of Greenland was another key point in his speech to a joint session of Congress in March. However, Denmark was not mentioned in this year’s speech after a pressure campaign launched in January on European countries has so far failed.
Meanwhile, key themes such as the economy, immigration and trade remained consistent from President Trump’s final speech to the joint session of Congress, while other areas were not mentioned. These include the former Elon Musk-led Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), which cut federal jobs and disrupted government agencies but fell far short of its savings pledges.
“The president has a vested interest in how he structures the State of the Union,” Cull said. “Trump’s speech reflected the political reality of the time.”
