⚡️ Special Edition: Why this SOTU is different

IN THIS EDITION

Why Trump’s State of the Union is different this time

Dems try a new strategy for Trump’s SOTU address

Hawks: SOTU an opportunity to clarify global agenda

Republicans hold their breath for an economic plan

THE TOP

Why Trump’s State of the Union is different this time

Welcome to State of the Union day.

President Donald Trump enters tonight’s State of the Union in an extremely tenuous political position.

Nearly six in 10 Americans say the state of the union isn’t strong. And 57% of Americans disapprove of Trump’s handling of the U.S. economy. More worryingly for GOP lawmakers, Trump is rapidly losing ground with independents. With less than nine months until the midterm elections, Republicans are very much at risk of losing their razor-thin House majority. Some Republicans privately fret that the Senate could be in play as well.

In other words, it’s a massive moment for the Republican Party.

Capitol Hill bustles with activity when lawmakers are in Washington. A potential war with Iran is looming. There are tough legislative fights over tariffs, government funding, economic policy, homeland security and Trump’s harsh immigration crackdown.

Last year, an ascendant Trump used his first joint address to press the GOP-run Congress to pass what became the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. Trump ended up signing the measure on July 4, making it the centerpiece of his legislative accomplishments since returning to the Oval Office. B-2 bombers flew overhead as the president celebrated both his big policy win and the stunning U.S. attack on Iranian nuclear sites.

Fast forward to today, and Trump’s constantly shifting agenda appears to have stalled. Worse for Republicans, the American public doesn’t think he’s paying enough attention to their problems. We expect Trump to call on Congress to pass his health care plan, which the Hill has all but ignored.

Trump is again threatening strikes on Iran. U.S. Special Envoy Steve Witkoff claimed Tehran is “probably a week away” from producing enriched uranium for a nuclear weapon, although administration officials had said Iran’s proliferation program had been set back “many years” from that goal following last year’s attacks.

The Department of Homeland Security is shut down amid a political clash with Democrats over ICE and deportations, and there’s no end in sight to that dispute. This is the third full or partial government shutdown since Oct. 1. The Jeffrey Epstein scandal continues to drag down Trump and Republicans every day. Democrats are gaining ground on immigration, Trump’s signature issue. Though Trump asserts he’s “won” on affordability, most Americans would strongly disagree as the economy wobbles.

Trump still has a stranglehold on the GOP, which means rank-and-file Republicans are hesitant to break with him. He’s not quite a lame-duck. But the clock is ticking on the 119th Congress, and Republicans don’t have a lot to run on in November.

It’s against this backdrop that Trump will head down Pennsylvania Avenue for his sixth address to Congress, including during his first term. On average, more than 40 million people have tuned into each of Trump’s joint speeches to Congress.

The president is already projecting that today’s address will be quite a stemwinder. During an appearance at the White House on Monday, Trump proclaimed it will be “a long” speech.

“Because we have a lot to talk about,” Trump said.

Indeed, there is a lot on the president’s mind. We put the over/under for the speech at 90 minutes. And we’ll take the over.

– Jake Sherman and John Bresnahan

DEMOCRATIC DILEMMA

Dems try a new strategy for Trump’s SOTU address

In 2025, a number of Democrats showed up to President Donald Trump’s joint address to Congress sporting handheld protest signs and ready to make a scene. This year, many of these same Democrats say they’re taking a different tack.

House Democratic leadership has urged members to either skip the speech or sit in “silent defiance.” The message? Don’t repeat 2025.

“I’m not a big fan of signs,” House Democratic Caucus Chair Pete Aguilar said.

“I think lots of us agree that lots of the things we did last year didn’t break through,” Congressional Progressive Caucus Chair Greg Casar (D-Texas) told us. “There’s going to be a significant number of people that ask themselves, ‘Why go hear Trump just make stuff up?’”

Casar is among the dozen Democratic lawmakers headlining a progressive counter-programming event labeled the “People’s State of the Union.” Other members involved in the MoveOn and MeidasTouch-organized rally include Sens. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) and Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), in addition to Reps. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) and Veronica Escobar (D-Texas).

The Democrats planning to skip Trump’s address altogether expand beyond the progressive left, however.

Rep. Ami Bera (D-Calif.), a former Frontliner and member of the New Democrat Coalition, isn’t going to the State of the Union either.

“After watching the last 12 months of Trump, and his total disregard for Congress, it just didn’t seem like the right thing to do,” Bera told us. “I couldn’t find it in myself to go sit in that chamber knowing that he’s going to essentially troll Democrats.”

We expect scores of empty seats on the Democratic side of the aisle on Tuesday evening.

But the Democratic Party is far from a monolith. There’s a difference of opinion on whether to skip the speech or show up. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries said he plans on attending.

“We’re not going to Donald Trump’s house. He’s coming to our house,” Jeffries said. “It’s my view that you don’t let anyone ever run you off of your block.”

Interruption watch: In 2025, Rep. Al Green (D-Texas) stood up and interrupted Trump’s speech before getting ejected from the chamber. Green hasn’t said whether he will repeat the demonstration at this year’s address.

— Max Cohen

NATSEC OUTLOOK

Hawks: SOTU an opportunity to clarify global agenda

GOP defense hawks hope President Donald Trump will use the first State of the Union address of his second term to fill out the details of his national security agenda as he seeks to overhaul the way the United States projects power globally.

Many Republican lawmakers desire less saber-rattling abroad and more concrete information on Trump’s sweeping domestic defense priorities, such as his calls for a $1.5 trillion military budget and how he plans to rebuild the domestic industrial base. We scooped on Monday how the Pentagon wants to spend $150 billion from the One Big Beautiful Bill before the end of FY2026, a stunning move that would have a huge impact on the U.S. defense industrial base.

“I certainly hope he’s not going to say he wants to acquire another country,” Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) said. “I hope that we’re beyond those discussions. I would like a little more specificity and clarity in terms of some of the [defense] initiatives that he has already announced.”

Trump has often boasted falsely of having ended eight wars as he publicly sought the Nobel Peace Prize last year. He’s done so even as the United States captured former Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro, threatened to take Greenland by force and hinted at possible strikes on Iran.

“Wages are climbing faster than inflation. Gas prices are down. He’s working on pharmaceutical costs. That should be — if I was him, that’s how you win, right?” Rep. Don Bacon (R-Neb.) said. ”He likes to exaggerate about how many wars he stopped, and it doesn’t play too well.”

There’s also some hope that Trump will focus on a message of national unity rather than stoking further division about U.S. actions overseas.

“We’ve done a lot of our core agenda,” Sen. Tim Sheehy (R-Mont.) said. “It’s time to lower the temperature and try to bring people together.”

Dual focus. Defense hawks on Capitol Hill have rejoiced at the news of Trump’s push for a 50% increase in Pentagon funding. And they’re eager to hear Trump underscore the need for that investment later Tuesday.

Rep. Rob Wittman (R-Va.) anticipates Trump will outline “his effort to refashion the defense budget to put a significant amount of additional resources into it.”

“I think he’ll talk about what he is doing to modernize the military, what he is doing to counter the building threats from our pacing adversaries,” Wittman added.

Rep. Trent Kelly (R-Miss.) said he wants Trump to talk about his defense funding aspirations, but added, “I hope he says them in ways that make sense to the American people.” Rather than saying $1.5 trillion, for example, Kelly said he wants Trump to talk about defense spending as a percentage of gross domestic product and how current spending compares to past decades of military investment.

“The dollar figure doesn’t matter as much as the percent of GDP, so hopefully he’ll articulate it that way,” Kelly said.

— Briana Reilly and Anthony Adragna

IT’S THE AFFORDABILITY, STUPID

Republicans hold their breath for an economic plan

Heading into an election that could be defined once more by Americans’ cost of living, congressional Republicans are anxious to hear President Donald Trump give them marching orders on their approach to the U.S. economy.

There will be points for Trump to tout, certainly. Recent economic data has gotten a touch sunnier for the White House. Inflation estimates are slowly ticking down. Annual GDP growth clocked in above 4% during the third quarter, though it dropped to 1.4% in the fourth. The latest jobs report for January beat economists’ expectations, and weekly jobless claims remain low, while revisions for 2025 showed the labor market was weaker than we thought.

And as far as economic policy goes, getting the One Big Beautiful Bill through the reconciliation process was a triumph for Trump and GOP congressional leadership. Republicans are hoping that some of the benefits – including a potential windfall in tax returns over the next few weeks – would form a bunker heading into a tough midterm cycle.

But more than once, the president has been his own worst enemy on economic policy and messaging. Democrats have never stopped hammering Trump for saying that affordability was a “hoax” and “Democrat scam” in late 2025.

Then came Trump’s populism pivot in early 2026, when the president called for credit card interest rate caps and a crackdown on swipe fees, plus the push to ban institutional investors from purchasing single-family homes. But those policies have badly divided congressional Republicans, if not encountered stiff resistance.

Those Republicans are now looking at a tough, tough election cycle. And while GOP lawmakers have told us for months that the economic boom of the second Trump administration is right around the corner – or, depending on who you ask, already here – Americans aren’t feeling it yet.

It’s going to take one heck of a sales pitch from Trump and congressional Republicans to turn that around before November.

– Brendan Pedersen

BINGO