Politics
Some Democrats, including Sen. Chris Murphy (Connecticut), have little interest in Trump’s presentation and planned to boycott Tuesday’s address.
When President Donald Trump visits the U.S. Capitol on Tuesday night to report on the state of the nation, he will do so having generated a level of fury among opposition lawmakers that is rare in recent history and could pave the way for a charged and angry event.
Among Republicans, Trump has attracted everything from fervent support to anxious deference. The evening’s drama, however, is likely to center on the unusual face-to-face encounter between the president and the Democrats livid at his efforts to sideline the very lawmakers he will be addressing.
Some lawmakers say they will boycott the address, while others plan to attend and show their displeasure. Given the drama of Trump’s first weeks in office, the event could be at least as contentious as any of the 100 previous occasions when presidents have visited the Capitol to provide their inevitably glowing descriptions of the country’s condition.
“My first several State of the Union events had me absolutely enthralled by the sheer history of those moments,” said Democratic former congressman Steve Israel of New York, who served from 2001 to 2017. “By the time I left, they had come to resemble something between a sporting event and a long, late-night monologue.”
Tuesday night, Israel added, “will be nothing more than Trump television spectacle. For him, this is just the highest level of television visibility, and it will be geared as a spectacle and not as a substantive view of his vision.”
If the past is a guide, Trump is likely to speak in vivid terms, potentially inflaming Democrats even more. In his 2016 Republican convention remarks, he declared that “I alone can fix it.” In his first inaugural address, he vowed to end “American carnage.” In a 2023 speech, he assured his audience that “I am your retribution.”
And in January’s inaugural address, after saying he had been “tested and challenged more than any president in our 250-year history,” Trump opined that he had survived an assassination attempt because “I was saved by God to make America great again.”
Such sentiments may not go over well with Democrats who believe that Trump is seeking to dismantle the U.S. government in violation of statutes they spent years fighting to pass.
Since taking office on Jan. 20, Trump has tried to freeze billions in spending authorized by Congress. He has fired numerous federal employees in ways Congress has forbidden. He has eviscerated agencies that Congress enshrined in law.
On Tuesday, he will tell them how it’s all going. And people in both parties anticipate an element of theater.
“He’s a television producer at his heart, so expect a dramatic moment that will be a surprise and will own the room, so to speak,” said Matt Gorman, a Republican strategist. “There will be something that will surprise people and get them talking. That’s something that people have not mentioned a lot so far.”
In 2020, Trump interrupted his State of the Union address to award the Presidential Medal of Freedom to radio host Rush Limbaugh, who had been diagnosed with lung cancer. First lady Melania Trump draped the medal around Limbaugh’s neck, creating an unexpected moment that spoke to the president’s base.
Trump also surprised a military family that year by announcing that their husband and father was home from Afghanistan, prompting loud applause and chants of “USA! USA!” as the man entered the chamber.
Some Democrats, including Sen. Chris Murphy (Connecticut), have little interest in Trump’s presentation and planned to boycott Tuesday’s address. “I think that State of the Union speech is going to be a farce,” Murphy told CNN. “I think it’s going to be a MAGA pep rally, not a serious talk to the nation. … And I’m just not going to be a part of that.”
Instead, Murphy plans to participate in a live-streamed “prebuttal” and a live chat during the speech, hosted by the group MoveOn Civic Action. A handful of other Democratic senators are also joining, along with outside advocates.
Other Democrats worry that staying away would cede the territory to Trump – and to Republicans lawmakers prepared to cheer the president at every turn. Lawmakers are allowed to bring guests to the Capitol for the address, and some Democrats were inviting federal workers facing the impact of Trump’s push to cut the government.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Massachusetts), for example, said Monday that her guest would be Doug Kowalewski, a resident of her state who was recently fired as part of Elon Musk’s efforts. “I’m bringing Doug to force Trump to confront the federal workers he fired – the people who make this country run,” Warren said.
Gorman warned that if Democrats go overboard with demonstrative protests, they could risk appearing ridiculous.
“Speaking from experience, this is not your night,” said Gorman, who served as spokesman for the presidential campaign of Sen. Tim Scott (R-South Carolina). “Having gone through this with Biden and Obama, the more you make this into a shared spectacle, the more you look pathetic. It’s the president’s night; they have the bully pulpit. They have the stature difference. If you try to compete, you look stupid.”
House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-Louisiana) framed Trump’s speech as a “triumphant return to Congress” following a string of early policy successes. He noted that the first such address of a president’s term is not officially called a State of the Union, because he’s had little time to tackle the country’s condition.
“But in this case, it actually will be more like a State of the Union address because President Trump has such a long series of victories – things that he has done, promises he has kept,” Johnson said on Fox News. “And it is putting America back on a strong footing.”
Such events are the only time all year that the president, Congress and Supreme Court gather under a single roof. Not so many years ago, this tradition-laden event evoked a certain solemnity from the participants. But in recent years, it has become little more than another venue for partisan gladiatorial combat.
An early sign came in 2009, when President Barack Obama addressed a joint session of Congress to lay out the details of his signature health-care plan. When Obama said undocumented immigrants would not benefit from the plan, Rep. Joe Wilson (R-South Carolina) shouted out, “You lie!”
It was a startling breach of decorum for the time, prompting members of both parties to urge Wilson to apologize. The congressman duly did so, saying his comments had been “inappropriate and regrettable.”
Just a few months later, it was a Supreme Court justice who made a splash at the State of the Union. When Obama criticized the court’s ruling in , a campaign finance law case, Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. could be seen mouthing, “Not true.”
“You begin to see, especially under Obama’s second term, members of Congress thinking they can reply audibly, yelling ‘You lie’ and making it less about unifying the country and more about fracture and division within Congress itself,” said Allison Prasch, an expert on presidential rhetoric at the University of Wisconsin at Madison. “It becomes this theater and stage for the opposition.”
The two sides briefly stepped back from the brink in 2011, as lawmakers sought to show unity after the shooting of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-Arizona). Lawmakers sought out “dates” from the other party, forming bipartisan pairs that sat together during the speech in defiance of the chamber’s usual sharp division between Republicans and Democrats.
But the tensions soon resumed and then escalated, coming to a full boil by 2020, when Trump delivered the final State of the Union address of his first term. As he concluded his remarks, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-California) stood and ostentatiously tore her copy of the text in half, later telling reporters, “It was the courteous thing to do, considering the alternative.”
And by the end of President Joe Biden’s term, the speeches had become free-for-alls. In 2023, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Georgia), wearing an attention-grabbing white coat with a big fur collar, led Republicans in an ongoing stream of heckling and catcalls as Biden spoke.
That prompted Biden to arrive for his final address in 2024 ready for combat. He quickly went on offense, ripping into Trump, then his likely opponent, for attacking democracy and abortion rights. Republicans shouted back, and a tense back-and-forth unfolded, with Greene reprising her role as chief gadfly in a bright-red “Make America Great Again” hat.
On Tuesday, the man whose slogan Greene was showcasing will appear from the podium to punctuate a tumultuous first six weeks. Four days after his back-and-forth in the Oval Office with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky – which the president’s supporters saw as inspiring and his opponents as embarrassing – both sides are in a combative mood.
Trump’s appearance Tuesday will place the most divisive political figure in recent memory into an already combustible setting.
Historically, Prasch said, presidents have used their speeches to Congress to lay out an agenda that they hope lawmakers, and the country, will rally behind. But Trump has shown little concern for the views of the legislative branch.
“Trump has done anything but that,” Prasch said. “He has taken steps in almost every possible way to elevate his own ability to act as a unitary executive apart from Congress.”
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