Trump’s big speech will be delivered to a changed nation
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump will stand before Congress on Tuesday to deliver the annual State of the Union address to a suddenly transformed nation.
One year back in office, Trump has emerged as a president defying conventional expectations. He has executed a head-spinning agenda, upending priorities at home, shattering alliances abroad and challenging the nation’s foundational system of checks and balances. Two Americans were killed by federal agents while protesting the Trump administration’s immigration raids and mass deportations.
As the lawmakers sit in the House chamber listening to Trump’s agenda for the year ahead, the moment is an existential one for the Congress, which has essentially become sidelined by his expansive reach, the Republican president bypassing his slim GOP majority to amass enormous power for himself.
“It’s crazy,” said Nancy Henderson Korpi, a retiree in northern Minnesota who joined an Indivisible protest group and plans to watch the speech from home. “But what is disturbing more to me is that Congress has essentially just handed over their power.”
She said, “We could make some sound decisions and changes if Congress would do their job.”
Upheaval
The country is at a crossroads, celebrating its 250th anniversary while experiencing some of the most significant changes to its politics, policies and general mood in many Americans’ lifetimes.
The president muscled his agenda through Congress when he needed to — often pressuring lawmakers with a phone call during cliffhanger votes — but more often avoided the messy give-and-take of the legislative process to power past his own party and the often unified Democratic opposition.
Trump’s signature legislative accomplishment so far is the GOP’s big tax cuts bill, with its new savings accounts for babies, no taxes on tips and other specialty deductions, and steep cuts to Medicaid and SNAP food aid. It also fueled more than $170 billion to Homeland Security for his immigration deportations.
But the GOP-led Congress has largely stood by as Trump dramatically seized power through hundreds of executive actions, many being challenged in court, and a willingness to do whatever it takes to impose his agenda.
Accretion of power
“Retrieving a lost power is no easy business in our constitutional order,” wrote Justice Neil Gorsuch in the Supreme Court’s landmark rebuke of Trump’s tariffs policy on Friday.
Gorsuch said that without the court stepping in on major questions, “Our system of separated powers and checks-and-balances threatens to give way to the continual and permanent accretion of power in the hands of one man.”
Trump goes it alone, with or without Congress
From slashing the federal workforce to upending the childhood vaccine schedule to attacking Venezuela and capturing that country’s president, Trump’s reach appeared to know no bounds.
His administration launched investigations of would-be political foes, imposed his name on historic buildings, including the storied John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, and perhaps most visibly has been rounding up people and converting warehouses into detention holding centers for deportations.
Where’s Congress?
At almost every step of the way, there were moments when Congress could have intervened but did not.
Democrats, in the minority, often tried to push back, including by halting routine Homeland Security funds unless there are restraints on the immigration actions.
But Republicans believe the country elected the president and gave their party control of Congress to align with his agenda, according to one senior GOP leadership aide who insisted on anonymity to discuss the dynamic.
House Speaker Mike Johnson of Louisiana has said Trump will be the “most consequential” president of the modern era.
Democrats plan to either boycott the speech or sit in stony silence.
