Trump set to deliver second term’s first State of the Union: What to expect

Washington, DC – United States President Donald Trump is set to deliver the first annual State of the Union address of his second term, a traditionally soaring speech where presidents make the case for their leadership before both chambers of Congress.

Trump’s assessment of the state of the “union” – the collection of 50 states and territories that fall under the federal government – comes after a year that has been nothing short of transformative in the country.

The 2024 election capped a stunning comeback for a president many expected to be relegated to the political wilderness after a definitive election loss to former President Joe Biden in 2020, a campaign to overturn the results that saw his supporters storm the US Capitol in Washington, DC, and four separate criminal indictments, including a conviction in New York for falsifying business documents.

A year into his second term, and those criminal investigations have essentially turned to dust, the so-called “January 6 rioters” have been pardoned, Trump heads an executive branch moulded in his likeness and oversees a loyalty-first cabinet of officials cheerleading his most controversial policies on trade, the economy, immigration, foreign policy and intervention.

Still, the president’s polarising approach spells a punishing midterm season ahead for his Republican Party, which will be trying to hold onto control of both the Senate and House of Representatives in the November vote.

The party’s success or failure will set the constraints for the White House in the years ahead. Here’s what to expect from Trump’s State of the Union.

When and where will the speech be?

Trump will deliver the speech at 9pm local time (02:00 GMT, Wednesday) in front of members of the 100-member Senate and 435-seat House.

The speech will take place from the podium in the House chamber, with Trump likely flanked by Vice President JD Vance and the House speaker, Republican Mike Johnson, as is tradition.

Johnson officially “invited” Trump to deliver the speech last month.

Under the US Constitution, presidents are required from “time to time” to give Congress “information of the State of the Union” and outline the legislative agenda the White House considers to be “necessary and expedient”.

Will focus be on economy?

In 1992, in summing up the top concern for US voters, Democratic strategist James Carville famously quipped: “It’s the economy, stupid.”

The assessment has proven enduring. Exit polling suggested Trump’s success in the 2024 election was due, in no small part, to voter concerns over the cost of living, with the US economy still experiencing high inflation and soaring prices as knock-ons from the COVID-19 pandemic.

Trump has regularly touted the strength of the US economy, but several metrics have shown a mixed bag: relatively strong performance by Wall Street, steady job numbers, but, as announced last week, slower-than-forecasted gross domestic product (GDP) growth at the end of 2025.

Trump’s move last year to fire Bureau of Labor Statistics Commissioner Erika McEntarfer, baselessly accusing her of producing inaccurate labour statistics, has further stoked concerns over federal government data and reporting on the economy.

Meanwhile, the administration’s hyperbolic assessments have run up against a harsh reality: Many US voters have not seen the gains Trump has claimed reflected in their lived experience.

Trump has signalled that he will again send a message that his administration has overcome the country’s “affordability” woes, which he has portrayed as a Democratic bogeyman.

Public opinion polls indicate otherwise, with a Quinnipiac University poll released in early February showing that just 39 percent of registered voters approve of Trump’s handling of the economy, while 56 percent disapprove.

An NPR/PBS News/Marist poll released in December found approval on the issue sat at about 36 percent, the lowest rating for a president over the question’s six-year history.

“I have to listen to the ‘fake news’ talking about affordability,” Trump said during a speech in Georgia last week.

“I’ve won affordability,” he added. “I had to go out and talk about it.”

Major blow to trade policy, but Trump still defiant

Trump’s speech comes after he received one of the most substantial blows yet to his policy agenda, with the Supreme Court rejecting the president’s premise that US trade deficits represented an “emergency” for the country’s national security.

Trump’s wide-ranging reciprocal tariffs had roiled lawmakers within his own Republican Party, representing a rare area of bipartisan support for checking Trump’s broad interpretation of his executive power.

But Trump has made it clear that he will continue to impose tariffs on imports using existing US laws, rather than emergency powers.

“As President, I do not have to go back to Congress to get approval of Tariffs,” the US president wrote in a social media post on Monday. “It has already been gotten, in many forms, a long time ago!”

The US Bureau of Economic Analysis last week reported that the US trade deficit continued to grow in 2025 despite the administration’s new policies, recording a 2.1 percent increase from 2024.

Deportation drive

Also closely watched will be how Trump approaches his government’s aggressive policies on immigration, which have seen the administration transform legal immigration, as well as refugee and asylum programmes, while undertaking a no-holds-barred mass deportation drive.

The first months of Trump’s second term have seen immigration and other federal agents surge to communities across the country, employing what advocates have called a “dragnet” approach, which has increasingly ensnared long-term undocumented residents with no criminal records.

Critics have further accused the administration of taking increasingly dire measures to meet sky-high immigration detention quotas, sparking outrage and protests among US citizens.

In January, two US citizens, Renee Nicole Good and Alex Pretti, were killed by immigration agents in separate incidents in Minneapolis, Minnesota, with the Trump administration initially offering accounts of the killings that diverged from video evidence.

Federal authorities have continued to freeze out independent state investigators from the probes.

The issue has emerged as an unexpected vulnerability for Republicans heading into the midterms. While stricter immigration enforcement, on its face, maintains wide support among some segments of voters, public opinion polls have shown widespread dismay over the Trump administration’s actions.

In a Reuters/Ipsos poll released in late January, 53 percent of respondents disapproved of Trump’s handling of immigration, up from 41 percent shortly after he took office. Meanwhile, 58 percent said immigration agents had gone too far. The poll was conducted after Good’s January 7 killing, and bridged the time period before and after Pretti’s January 24 killing.

An Associated Press-NORC poll released in February suggested that 62 percent of Americans felt Trump’s deployments of immigration agents to cities across the country had gone too far.

Immigration raids have also become a key issue in states like Maine, where the Trump administration launched, and then backed away from, a major operation earlier this month.

Maine’s Republican Senator Susan Collins is considered one of the most vulnerable for the party in November.

Spectre of war

Then there are the soaring tensions with Iran, which have seen the Trump administration lob repeated threats as it surged the largest collection of military assets to the Middle East since the US invasion of Iraq in 2003.

On February 19, Trump said he would take 10 to 15 days to decide whether to strike. It is an uncomfortable juxtaposition for a president who came into office decrying decades of US “foreign entanglement”, as well as Washington’s past involvement in foreign regime change and “endless wars”.

Trump had already launched strikes on Iran in June last year, capping a 12-day war between Iran and Israel.

Meanwhile, the Pentagon has launched a bombing campaign against the Houthis in Yemen, increased strikes in Somalia, Nigeria and Syria, and killed at least 145 people in strikes on alleged drug smuggling boats in the Caribbean, in an operation described by rights observers as extrajudicial killings.

The Trump administration began the year with the extraordinary US military abduction of Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro, a move decried as a flagrant violation of international law and sovereignty.

Trump is set to speak as a set of US lawmakers has again pledged to introduce a so-called “War Powers resolution” that would rein in Trump’s ability to strike Iran without congressional approval.

A similar resolution on Venezuela narrowly failed in January, as a handful of Republican holdouts folded.

Trump also announced last week that the US was committing $10bn to his so-called Board of Peace, a panel meant to focus on reconstruction and rehabilitation in Gaza, for which Trump has envisioned a wider global role.

But while the president has been pushing to involve US allies in the Middle East in the future of Gaza, his administration’s staunch support for Israel’s right-wing government is causing friction with some Arab countries.

Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states have expressed outrage at US Ambassador Mike Huckabee over the past few days for suggesting that it would be “fine” for Israel to take over most of the Middle East.

Democratic response and Epstein guests

Democrats have tapped Virginia Governor Abigail Spanberger to deliver the party’s response to the president’s address, which has become a tradition in the US.

The choice underscores the narrative Democrats hope to establish going into the midterms: one of stable pragmatism in the face of Trump’s policies of upheaval.

The selection of Spanberger, a former member of Congress and CIA agent, steers away from the more progressive flank of the party, embodied in figures like New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani.

Spanberger, who has faced criticism from progressives for her past support of Israel and stances on law enforcement, won her race against incumbent Governor Glenn Youngkin last year by a resounding 15 points, energising beliefs that her brand of affordability-focused politics can make inroads against vulnerable Republicans.

The governor has said she will address “rising costs, chaos in their communities, and a real fear of what each day might bring”.

At least 12 Democrats, meanwhile, have said they will boycott Trump’s State of the Union and instead attend a counter-programming event on the National Mall, hosted by the progressive MoveOn and MeidasTouch groups.

“These aren’t normal times and showing up for this speech puts a veneer of legitimacy on the corruption and lawlessness that has defined his second term,” US Senator Chris Murphy, who is among those boycotting, said in a statement.

Representatives Jamie Raskin and Suhas Subramanyam have announced they will attend Trump’s address with family members of Virginia Giuffre, a survivor of Jeffrey Epstein.

It comes as Democrats continue to heap pressure on the administration for accountability related to the sex trafficking ring that the financier, who was found dead by apparent suicide in 2019, was criminally charged with running.

Get ready to ‘weave’

As with any of Trump’s public events, expect the unexpected.

The US president rarely stays on script, instead dipping into tangents, meandering stories, and lengthy exposition on personal and political vendettas.