Tuesday’s State of the Union offers President Donald Trump a chance to reset and relaunch the Republican brand ahead of the midterm elections. But it won’t be easy.
In the last few months, Trump and the GOP have seen their polling numbers lag, with the country reacting negatively to a series of administration moves and congressional inaction.
A Washington Post-ABC News-Ipsos poll released Sunday showed that 39 percent of Americans approve of the way Trump is handling the job and 47 percent “strongly disapprove.” Those are not typically the kinds of coattails that can help retain congressional majorities.
To change their fortunes, Republicans, according to most political observers, need to convince Americans that they take seriously the affordability challenge millions of Americans are facing, and have plans to address it.
Trump has given a series of speeches around the nation touting his record and blasting Democrats and those are expected to continue but there’s nothing quite like a State of the Union to try to shape the conversation. The speech is potentially the biggest platform the president will have leading up to November to help his party retain control of Congress. At stake is the continuation of Trump’s second term agenda versus Democratic-led investigations and impeachments.
It offers Trump a chance to tout economic wins, including lower gas prices and mortgage rates dropping below 6 percent for the first time since 2022. And the opportunity to bash Democrats who he can blame for leaving the country in a mess, pointing, as he often does, to soaring inflation under former President Joe Biden.
It’s a far cry from last year’s joint address, when Trump proclaimed before Congress the beginning of a “common sense revolution,” following an action-packed 40 days that kicked off his second term.
Here are a few areas Trump needs to address to help make the political case for the GOP.
‘Families are still struggling’
Republicans’ task this year will be to convince voters that they are the best steward of an economy where people are still feeling strained by high costs. After repeatedly referring to affordability as a Democrat “hoax,” Trump has shown signs of refining his messaging: “I’ve won affordability,” he said last week, again putting the blame on Biden for the surge in prices over the last few years: “We inherited a mess.”
But his best bet is to sell the idea that the GOP actually has a plan for tackling affordability, said Democratic pollster Carly Cooperman, who added that connecting with voters was key to his victory in 2024.
“The State of the Union presents an opportunity for President Trump to show that he understands families are still struggling -- not deny this reality, which he has done at times -- and lay out a clear plan to bring costs down,” she said. “Voters are focused less on assigning blame and more on hearing what will be done going forward.”
Trump in January put out multiple ideas for tackling various costs, such as a cap on credit card interest rates and a ban on institutional investors buying single-family homes. But both of those policies would require congressional action. There is also bipartisan movement in both chambers on legislation designed to increase the supply of homes, an initiative that the president could point to in an effort to make his case that he’s sensitive to the high cost of housing for many Americans.
But he’s also inserted some ambiguity in that messaging previously. “I don’t want to drive housing prices down,” Trump said in January. “I want to drive housing prices up for people that own their homes.”
The tariff man cometh
After the Supreme Court on Friday ruled that his sweeping emergency tariffs were illegally imposed,Trump faces an even more fundamental challenge: persuading an uneasy public that the tariffs he is reimposing are not a tax hike in disguise.
Polls have consistently shown that voters, including a significant chunk of the president’s base, are wary that broad-based levies will raise prices, undercutting Trump’s central promise to lower costs. The court’s ruling doesn’t just complicate his legal strategy, but it raises the political stakes for how he frames the issue in prime time.
Allies say the speech gives Trump an opportunity to recast tariffs as part of a broader economic strategy rather than a blunt instrument, wielded as often to achieve foreign policy goals as economic ones. That could mean leaning heavily on economic security and competition with China, arguing that strategic trade penalties are necessary to protect supply chains and revive domestic industry.
“He needs to convince low-educated voters, his voters, that tariffs don’t raise prices” said one former Trump official, granted anonymity to speak candidly about how the president should approach the State of the Union. “He goes through the framework of how tariffs have driven up wages, and how some manufacturing has taken place.”
“And if he’s successful in that, it buys him time” for voters to start to feel economic improvement, the person added. But “it doesn’t solve his problem.”
Others close to the White House say that directly confronting Supreme Court justices in attendance at the speech — including the two he appointed who ruled against him in the tariff case — will do little to help him make his political case to voters. But Trump has spent the last several days berating the court for the decision on social media, so it’s possible the court will take a similar lashing during the address.
Reframing immigration agenda
The speech comes at a rare moment of vulnerability for Trump on his immigration agenda.
It’s historically been one of the strongest issues for the president, but the administration's aggressive enforcement actions have caused significant political backlash, forced a rare retreat from the White House and exposed deepening faultlines inside the Republican Party.
Trump faces the daunting task of trying to appease both the immigration hawks and the Republicans who fear he’s gone well beyond what the public will tolerate. He also has to explain to Americans the success of his campaign at the border, as well as the need to maintain a robust law enforcement presence in the interior.
And it comes at a precarious moment. Democrats are refusing to fund his Department of Homeland Security after two American citizens were killed by federal agents last month. Business leaders and Republicans lawmakers are warning that his agenda is harming key industries — and that the party is at risk of losing crucial supporters this fall, including Hispanic voters.
Republicans who have expressed alarm about the political ramifications of the administration’s aggressive mass deportation effort have urged the White House to focus on criminal arrests, public safety and the president’s success in securing the southern border. This was the president’s message during an emotional White House event on Monday, when he hosted Angel Families in remembrance of their loved ones killed by unauthorized immigrants.
A person close to the White House, granted anonymity to speak candidly, said the president needs to connect his immigration agenda to public safety, while drawing a contrast with Democrats who “want open borders.”
“I believe he is going to have some Angel Families there,” the person said. “I think he will tie the deportations to crime rates going down and expose Democrats’ extremist policies: They want open borders and are anti-law enforcement.”
At the same time, immigration hawks are pushing the president to not abandon his maximalist stance against illegal immigration, and some organizations recently launched a “Mass Deportations Coalition” to push their case. They have warned that easing up on his promise to execute the “largest deportation operation” in U.S. history — which he made during last year’s address — could leave his base disengaged at a time when Republicans can’t risk diminished turnout.
“I want to hear the president make clear that mass deportations will begin, and citizens and illegals alike should expect those numbers to increase from a few hundred thousand to the millions,” said Mike Howell, president of the conservative Oversight Project.
Mark Morgan, who served as head of Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Border Patrol during the first Trump administration, argued that the majority of people in the country illegally have not committed violent crimes, and that the administration cannot only focus on “what is a small subset.”
“He’s going to spend a lot of time on the crime, on the violent crime, criminals and American citizens, and he should,” Morgan said. “But I think it will be a fail if he does not make it very clear again that he is steadfast, unwavering, and that you’re going to see the deportation operation just expand in the coming couple of years and not go down. He’s got to make that case.”
And any hints that the president backs an effort to increase legal immigration would “set off alarms” for immigration hawks, as business and industry leaders lobby for new visa pathways and less worksite enforcement, said Jessica Vaughan, director of policy studies at the Center for Immigration Studies, a think tank that advocates for limiting immigration.
Multiple conflicts to grapple with, or ignore
After vowing to steer the U.S. away from entanglement in any more foreign conflicts, Trump has taken a far more aggressive stance in his second term. That’s something he’ll likely seek to justify in Tuesday’s address, particularly for voters who banked on his America First promise.
It’s safe to bet that Trump will reiterate his oft-used line that he has resolved multiple global conflicts, including the ceasefire between Israel and the Hamas militant group in Gaza.
With some in the administration pushing to get Trump to focus more on the domestic agenda ahead of midterms, the extent to which he addresses the war in Ukraine or his threatened strikes on Iran will be telling as to whether that pressure is working.
The address falls on the fourth anniversary of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Trump is likely to project optimism that trilateral talks with Moscow and Kyiv are on the fast-track to peace, despite persistent obstacles. It would involve a significant amount of spin to paint current talks as a success — but Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff has already begun laying the groundwork. After discussions in Geneva last week, Witkoff sought to portray the mere fact that Russian and Ukrainian delegations sat down for talks as a win for the Trump administration.
In the runup to the speech, the U.S. has amassed significant firepower in striking distance of Iran, including two aircraft carriers and their accompanying warships, dozens of fighter jets and surveillance aircraft. Trump last Thursday gave a 10-day window for his decision whether to strike Iran.
Trump may use the address to make an announcement on his plans or issue new threats. As he tries to push Tehran to a nuclear deal, Trump has been weighing a limited strike to increase the pressure — which could then be followed by a wider operation aimed at toppling the regime. While talk of attacking Iran — which runs the risk of getting the U.S. enmeshed in another longer-term conflict in the Middle East — may frustrate some of Trump’s advisers, it’s not an unpopular plan among Trump’s core base. Roughly half of Trump voters said they’d support military action in Iran, according to a recent POLITICO poll.
The weave or the script
Trump’s speechwriters surely know the stakes – but nothing they write matters much if the president veers off script. His candid asides have the potential to become the story – as much as any point he and his staff hope to highlight.
It’s no secret that the president has a penchant for deviating from his prepared remarks.
During his acceptance speech at the 2024 Republican National Convention, the teleprompters stalled for minutes at a time as he rambled about the 2020 election and the size of the crowd.
His 2025 speech clocked in at one hour and 40 minutes,the longest ever by a U.S. president. And his four annual addresses to Congress during his first term averaged one hour and 20 minutes,per the American Presidency Project — again, a record.
Trump has already hinted that his Tuesday address will be lengthy: “It's going to be a long speech,” he said during a White House event Monday, “because we have so much to talk about.”
The problem isn’t length, one GOP strategist noted, but whether he drives home his plan to improve voters’ cost of living even as he rambles.
“Maybe he strays, maybe he doesn’t,” said Douglas Heye, the former communications director for the Republican National Committee. “But the bigger question is, what is the text? Does he launch on the Supreme Court and call it a hoax, or does he speak to the top concern of voters, which is the economy?”
“He needs to tell them he understands their economic concerns, and he has plans to alleviate them,” Heye added.
Mark McKinnon, a media adviser to former President George W. Bush, doesn’t expect the president to stay disciplined.
“Donald Trump has never stayed on message. And he never will,” McKinnon said. “What we can expect is that he will rant about how any misfortunes are the fault of others. And any fortunes are his alone.”
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