President Donald Trump is set to address a joint session of Congress next Tuesday night at 9 p.m. E.S.T. The speech is his opportunity to make the case to the American public for the policies he has enacted over the first thirteen months of his second term, reverse his sliding poll numbers, and rally Republican voters in preparation for the November midterm elections.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
The White House has done little to preview what precisely Trump will say to Congress, though domestic issues will likely dominate. It is a good bet that his speech will go long, and that he will stray from his prepared remarks. Every one of his five addresses to a joint session of Congress has run at least an hour<\/a>; his speech last March ran for nearly one hour and forty minutes as he frequently went off script. It is also a safe bet that Trump will claim credit for a string of historic successes, leaving the pundits on cable news networks and social media to argue over which are real and which are imagined.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n The Political Context\u00a0<\/p>\n Trump will address the nation with the midterm elections just over eight months away. Control of Congress hangs in the balance. Midterms are seldom good news for presidents. Only in four of the past forty-one has the president\u2019s party gained seats\u00a0in the House<\/a>. Republicans now hold just a four-seat margin, so Democrats look primed to retake control. They are even beginning to believe<\/a> they have a shot at retaking the Senate. Either way, the odds are good that divided government will return to Washington next January.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n Another reason for pessimism about Republican chances this fall is Trump\u2019s sagging poll numbers. The most recent Pew poll placed his approval rating<\/a> at 37 percent, roughly matching the lowest number he recorded during his first term. Polls across a range of outlets show Trump upside down on issues such as the economy<\/a>,\u00a0inflation<\/a>,\u00a0and\u00a0crime<\/a>. Nearly six out of ten Americans say that the country is headed in the wrong direction<\/a>.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n Trump\u2019s advisers have been arguing for some time that the way to reverse his sliding poll numbers and boost Republican chances in November is to make the case that his policies are improving the economy and making life more affordable for average Americans. Joe Biden attempted that strategy in the face of declining public faith in his economic policies. It did not work well for him.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n Whatever the merits of telling the public that things are better than they think, Trump has had trouble sticking to that message. In a speech last December aimed at showing that he understood the concerns about the cost of living, Trump instead\u00a0called<\/a> affordability a \u201choax\u201d dreamed up by Democrats. Not much has changed in his thinking in the ten weeks since then. He told a\u00a0rally yesterday<\/a>\u00a0in Rome, Georgia:\u00a0\u201cDo you notice, what word have you not heard over the last two weeks? Affordability. Because I\u2019ve won; I\u2019ve won affordability.\u201d But data released this morning<\/a> shows that the U.S. economy slowed at the end of last year, with fourth quarter growth coming in at just 1.4 percent, down from 4.4 percent in the fourth quarter. Voters may know something the president does not.\u00a0<\/p>\n Tariffs, Trade, and the Supreme Court\u00a0<\/p>\n Foreign policy experts will be listening to what Trump says\u2014or doesn\u2019t say about the rest of the world. There is no shortage of topics he could discuss. He will almost certainly discuss tariffs. This morning, the Supreme Court struck down<\/a> his use of the 1977 International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA), the legal authority he has cited for most of the tariff hikes he has imposed over the past year. Trump no doubt will say a lot about the ruling between now and Tuesday night. Yesterday, amidst speculation that the Court was about to hand down its ruling, he told the crowd in Rome, Georgia, that \u201cwithout tariffs \u2026 the whole country would be bankrupt.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n The Court\u2019s ruling does not take Trump out of the tariff business. He has many other statutory authorities he can use to impose tariffs. However, other tariff statutes require him to follow time-consuming procedures, limit how much he can raise tariffs, or restrict how long tariffs can remain in place. But the Court\u2019s ruling is an inescapable rebuke to his expansive reading of presidential authority. It also creates major uncertainties about what happens to the trade deals he has negotiated or is in the process of negotiating.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n The Court\u2019s ruling is actually the second piece of bad news that Trump received on the trade font this week. Yesterday, the Census Bureau released the numbers<\/a> on the 2025 U.S. trade deficit. On the plus side, the overall U.S. trade deficit with the world narrowed slightly, largely because the U.S. trade surplus in services continues to grow.\u202fHowever, Trump has historically focused on a narrower trade measure, the balance of trade in physical goods. Here the U.S. deficit hit a new high in 2025. That suggests that Trump\u2019s tariffs have so far not led to a renaissance in U.S. manufacturing. The steady decline in U.S. manufacturing jobs<\/a> over the past year seems to corroborate this conclusion.\u00a0<\/p>\n The timing of the Supreme Court\u2019s ruling injects some drama into Tuesday night\u2019s speech. By tradition, all nine Supreme Court justices attend the State of the Union and sit front and center<\/a> as the president speaks. To show their impartiality, they generally sit stone-faced, applauding only at apple-and-pie moments. When Justice Samuel Alito shook his head<\/a> and appeared to mouth the words \u201cnot true\u201d during Barack Obama\u2019s 2010 State of the Union address, the breach of decorum made front-page news. So the justices can expect to have their facial expressions and body language heavily scrutinized while the president speaks on Tuesday night.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n Iran, Venezuela, and More\u00a0<\/p>\n Trump\u00a0is\u00a0likely\u00a0to discuss\u00a0Iran.\u00a0The United States\u00a0has\u00a0been\u00a0amassing military forces<\/a> in the Middle East for weeks as it has pressed Tehran to limit its nuclear and ballistic missile programs. Yesterday, Trump said that the world will learn in the next \u201cten to fifteen days, pretty much, maximum\u201d whether he will order an attack on Iran. The timeline could be much shorter than that, however. Last June, Trump issued a statement<\/a> that he would make a decision about whether or not to strike Iran \u201cwithin the next two weeks.\u201d Just thirty hours later, Trump ordered the U.S. military to strike Iran\u2019s nuclear facilities. An effort to force a vote requiring Trump to come to Congress for authority in advance of any strike on Iran looks likely to fail<\/a>.\u00a0Almost all\u00a0Republicans oppose the motion, and\u00a0some Democrats worry<\/a> that such a vote would undercut Trump\u2019s ability to use the threat of force to strike a deal with Iran.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n Venezuela is also likely to merit a mention on Tuesday, if only for Trump to hail the bravery and skill of the U.S. military in capturing Venezuelan President Nicol\u00e1s Maduro. While many Venezuelans hoped that Maduro\u2019s rendition would lead to regime change, Trump so far has been content with leadership change and \u201cregime management,\u201d as the rest of the Maduro government remains in place. Trump notably did not mention democracy or human rights during his January 3 press conference<\/a> announcing Maduro\u2019s capture, and he has yet to offer any specific plans to help Venezuelans reclaim their democracy. Indeed, this week, Trump seemingly abandoned the U.S. policy of not recognizing Maduro\u2019s government as the legitimate government of Venezuela, calling relations with the government<\/a> of Acting President Delcy Rodr\u00edguez\u202f\u201ca ten.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Other topics to watch for include U.S. policy toward China, the state of relations with NATO and U.S. allies generally, the actions he is taking to end Russia\u2019s war on Ukraine, what the United States is doing to move the Gaza Peace deal forward, the future of the Board of Peace, and how the \u201cDonroe Doctrine<\/a>\u201d is targeting Cuba. As always, the issues that Trump ignores or glosses over could be a noteworthy as topics he does tackle. And he may also throw in a topic that few in Washington are talking about, as he did last year when Greenland and Panama featured prominently in his joint address to Congress<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n The Democratic Response\u00a0<\/p>\n As is customary, Democrats will present a response to Trump\u2019s speech. They have tapped<\/a> Virginia Governor Abigail Spanberger, who took office last month, to deliver the response in English. Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer released a statement<\/a> saying that \u201cGov. Spanberger will lay out a clear path forward: lower everyday costs, protect healthcare, and defend the freedoms that define who we are as a nation.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Meanwhile, Senator Alex Padilla of California will give a response in Spanish. He said that he expects to discuss a \u201cbetter path\u201d for the United States than Trump is offering costs, \u201cone that lowers costs, safeguards our democracy, and reins in rogue federal agencies.\u201d\u202f\u00a0<\/p>\n One quick prediction: Whatever Trump says, Republicans will praise the speech and Democrat will pan it.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"President Donald Trump is set to address a joint session of Congress next Tuesday night at 9 p.m.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":480448,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[23,3,21,19,22,20,25,24],"class_list":{"0":"post-480447","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-united-states","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-united-states","11":"tag-united-states-of-america","12":"tag-unitedstates","13":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","14":"tag-us","15":"tag-usa"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/480447","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=480447"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/480447\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/480448"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=480447"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=480447"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=480447"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}