Congress
Here’s how to watch Trump’s State of the Union address
President Donald Trump is set to descend on Capitol Hill for his annual State of the Union address on Tuesday, as his administration faces growing outcry over its nationwide immigration crackdown and declining support for several of his key policies.
Trump’s high-stakes speech comes just days after the Supreme Court dealt a crushing blow to the centerpiece of his economic and foreign policy agenda, ruling his sweeping tariffs illegal. The president is also staring down brewing conflict abroad, with an immense military buildup in the Middle East amid threats toward Iran, and an ongoing partial government shutdown impacting the Department of Homeland Security.
Amid a stark backdrop — and just months before kicking off festivities for America’s 250th anniversary — Trump will be tasked with highlighting his administration’s biggest wins in his first year back in office and shoring up support with key voter blocs ahead of November’s midterm elections.
Here’s what you need to know before Trump delivers his highly anticipated address to Congress — and the nation:
How can I watch the speech?
Trump’s State of the Union speech is scheduled to begin at 9 p.m. Eastern on Tuesday. The address will be broadcast on major television networks and available to stream online, including on Blue Light News’s website. You can follow our live coverage of the address here.
What will Trump talk about?
Trump said Monday that his address is “going to be a long speech because we have so much to talk about,” hinting that his remarks will likely touch on the state of the economy. The White House has attempted to keep Trump on message about affordability ahead of this fall’s midterm elections, with the president offering a preview of his possible remarks during a Thursday rally in Georgia.
“They would say affordability, everybody would say, ‘Oh, Trump caused–,’ no, they cause– they caused the affordability problem,” Trump said at the rally. “And we’ve solved it. And we’re going still lower, but we’ve solved it.”
Several Republicans told Blue Light News they hope Trump will focus on highlighting economic issues, American energy dominance and the tax cuts passed in last year’s GOP megabill during his address.
The president’s job approval has slid in recent months, with numerous polls revealing widespread disapproval of his handling of immigration and the economy — two issues that helped propel Trump back to a second term in the White House.
Who is attending?
Lawmakers from both chambers of Congress, members of Trump’s family and several administration officials, including Cabinet secretaries and Vice President JD Vance, are expected to attend. Several personal guests of the president will also be at the Capitol, including Turning Point CEO Erika Kirk, widow of the late conservative influencer Charlie Kirk.
Supreme Court justices are also invited to the State of the Union, although Trump sniped at several of the justices who voted to strike down his tariffs last week, telling reporters Friday: “I couldn’t care less if they come.”
Members of Congress are each permitted to invite a guest to the address, and lawmakers frequently use the invite to draw attention to high-profile issues. Some Democrats — including House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer — have announced that they’ll bring survivors of convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein as their guests. Many Republicans are bringing guests who benefited from Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act passed last year.
Speaker Mike Johnson confirmed Tuesday the U.S. men’s hockey team will attend Trump’s address, although the women’s team said it would not participate due to scheduling issues.
Who won’t be there?
More than a dozen Democratic lawmakers have announced that they won’t attend Trump’s State of the Union, with several choosing to attend a counterprogramming rally on the National Mall instead.
The event, dubbed the “People’s State of the Union,” will feature lawmakers who also skipped Trump’s inaugurations, including Sens. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) and Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) and Reps. Greg Casar (D-Texas) and Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.).
Jeffries advised Democrats during a private leadership meeting earlier this month that members of his caucus should either attend alternative programming or sit in “silent defiance” of Trump’s speech, hoping to avoid the image of Democratic hecklers during last year’s address.
Lawmakers from both parties are also facing weather-related delays in traveling back to Washington after a winter storm led the House to cancel Monday votes.
Who is giving the Democratic response?
Virginia Gov. Abigail Spanberger is set to deliver the official Democratic rebuttal to Trump’s address Tuesday night.
Spanberger, a former CIA officer who served in the House from 2019-2025, defeated GOP nominee Winsome Earle-Sears to flip the Virginia governor’s mansion blue in November. Democrats widely lauded her campaign for its focus on affordability.
Spanberger hinted last week that her response will likely center on those issues, writing in a statement that “Virginians and Americans across the country are contending with rising costs, chaos in their communities, and a real fear of what each day might bring.”
Sen. Alex Padilla (D-Calif.) — California’s first Latino senator and the son of Mexican immigrants — will deliver the Democratic response in Spanish.
This time last week, the progressive and moderate wings of the House Democratic Caucus were gearing up to battle for influence in what they thought might be a slim governing majority. After surpassing expectations to win as many as 260 seats Tuesday night, members are showing signs of detente.
The results of the blowout midterm elections mean that House Democrats’ major ideological contingents will all swell in the next Congress. The centrist New Democrat Coalition is projecting at least 140 members, with the even more moderate Blue Dog Coalition grow to more than 20. The Congressional Progressive Caucus, meanwhile, is expected to have more than 100 members, six of whom identify as democratic socialists.
The prospect of having a 30-vote-minimum margin to pass legislation means no one group will come to the table with an obvious edge that would handcuff the likely incoming speaker, Hakeem Jeffries. If Democrats’ midterm gains had not been so pronounced, members might have more easily weaponized the narrow margins for their own political gains — by withholding their support for party-line bills, for instance, or opposing key procedural votes.
“There’s been so much attention throughout the course of this campaign, because of some really tough primaries that happened very early on in the primary season, about intraparty squabbles among Democrats,” Rep. Greg Stanton of Arizona, who runs the centrist New Democrat Coalition’s campaign arm, told reporters Wednesday.
“But what happened last night was a political earthquake,” he continued, “where the American people demanded that checks and balances be restored to government.”
That’s not to say that Democrats won’t disagree next year. The caucus won’t unite overnight on whether to advance Medicare for All or end aid to Israel, and the party infighting over emotionally fraught issues could get ugly. Both moderate and progressive members insisted in interviews and media calls Wednesday that their proposals are best suited to satisfy voter demands to lower costs and tackle corruption.
“I’ve always said that being a progressive just means you’re the first to the best and most just idea, and then everyone else runs to catch up with you,” said Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), a former chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, adding that it will be “the CPC [that] will continue to be a leading force in driving, accomplishing these ideas across the finish line.”
“Many of the policies [democratic socialists have] been championing just won’t hunt with the average Blue Dog and the district they represent,” said moderate Rep. Josh Gottheimer of New Jersey, who added there are “plenty of policy areas where we can find common ground.”
Buoyed by their massive new mandate, however, Democrats were starting to talk about a deliberative, consensus-building blueprint for governing that would not involve hard-line tactics like those deployed by House Republicans over the last two years. Thanks to the GOP’s razor-thin majority, just a few members had the power to wrestle control of the floor from leadership and derail legislative business for days.
Rep. Jason Crow of Colorado, a member of the New Dems, said there will be a broad imperative to accommodate Democrats’ “big tent” and give some deference to the members who helped build the new House majority in swing districts.
He added, “It’s a leadership challenge for all of us to make room for those folks to find those commonalities and overlap to develop relationships.”
Jeffries was leaning into consensus proposals at a news conference Wednesday morning. When asked about advancing policies like Medicare for All, he talked about legislation that the entire party backs — reversing Republican-led Medicaid cuts and extending enhanced Affordable Care Act tax credits.
“We’ll have a family conversation when we get back, and certainly in the new Congress, about what’s the best way to do that beyond what we know we need to do immediately,” Jeffries said about health care.
The House will gavel back into session next week, and sitting Democrats will gather with incoming freshmen for orientation — an early opportunity for members from disparate ideological factions to find common ground. It could help that the next two years will be more about building a platform for 2028 rather than trying to actually pass laws given the likelihood of a presidential veto.
Rep. Delia Ramirez of Illinois last month said she and her progressive colleagues were coming up with a list of “non-negotiables” for a House Democratic majority platform. In an interview Wednesday she said the party’s vote cushion would work to progressives’ advantage: “There’s no excuse that we can’t, in fact, pass Medicare for All because we can’t put these three frontliners on the line.”
Rep. Greg Meeks of New York, the likely incoming chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee and an ally of leadership, said in an interview Tuesday night as the polls were closing that he was optimistic Democrats would “compromise among ourselves for the benefit of the American people.”
“I think that’s what we’re going to do,” he said. “That’s why I think that the candidates that turned red seats into blue seats, that’s why they ran.”
Senate Majority Leader John Thune spoke Wednesday with President Donald Trump after the party’s sweeping losses Tuesday, according to a person granted anonymity to disclose the private discussion.
The conversation comes amid speculation in and out of the Capitol about whether Trump would publicly stand by Thune if the GOP lost its Senate majority. But so far Trump has stayed silent on Thune while telling reporters Wednesday he would stay out of the brewing House GOP leadership race.
Thune has long said he intends to run for another term as leader, and GOP senators believe he’ll keep the job. A spokesperson reiterated Wednesday he will run for leader in Tuesday’s closed-door election.
House Majority Whip Tom Emmer launched his run for the minority whip job Wednesday in a letter to fellow Republican lawmakers, telling them, “There is no sugarcoating the failure we just experienced.”
“We lost, and I take that loss personally, both as a competitor and a member of this team,” the Minnesotan wrote about Tuesday’s results, adding, “We are down, but we are not out.”
Emmer, the No. 3 GOP leader since 2022, would rise to the No. 2 position if successful. He is expected to face Rep. August Pfluger, chair of the influential Republican Policy Committee.
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