Feb. 21, 2026, 5:01 a.m. ET
The state of President Donald Trump‘s union is troubled.
When he delivers the annual State of the Union on Feb. 24, the audience in the House chamber will likely include members of a Supreme Court that just outlawed the stiff tariffs that have been his primary economic and national-security cudgel. A key part of his administration has been partially shut down in a ferocious showdown over his aggressive immigration enforcement.
And congressional Republicans, bracing for what now looks like difficult midterm elections, will be watching for which Donald Trump climbs the dais.
Call it a battle for Trump’s brain.
Some see the effort to re-focus his message on kitchen-table problems − and even to acknowledge that those problems are real − as an existential challenge to their own political futures and the GOP’s continued control of Congress in November.
That has not been the president’s priority so far.
Since he signed the so-called Big Beautiful Bill last July 4, extending the sweeping tax cuts from his first term, Trump has been less interested in legislation and more interested in legacy. He has been less engaged on the close-to-home issues that were key to his re-election in 2024 and more on the global war-and-peace causes he hopes will burnish his place in history.
Not to mention imprinting his gilded brand on everything from the Rose Garden to the Kennedy Center − now designated the Trump-Kennedy Center in the lettering above its marbled entrance.as parts of it remain .
Indeed, it was his eagerness to bypass Congress that ran headfirst into the Supreme Court, which ruled Feb. 20 that the president didn’t have the authority to impose stiff tariffs without congressional approval. The court’s 6-3 decision threatens a cornerstone of his economic policy.
At the State of the Union, not only senators and representatives but also Cabinet members and military chiefs and high court justices and ambassadors from around the world will be arrayed before Trump in the House chamber. The evening offers the grandest venue, the biggest TV audience and the highest-profile speech most presidents have all year.
Will Trump use the opportunity to deliver a forward-looking agenda designed to boost fellow Republicans, some unnerved by Democratic victories in a series of special elections over the past year? Or one that exalts the achievements he claims to have already scored?
We’ll see on Tuesday.
On the economy, triumph v. empathy
Take the economy.
On no other front is there a greater division between what Trump has been saying and what congressional Republicans want to hear.
“I think we have the greatest economy actually ever in history,” Trump told Fox Business. While mainstream economists don’t go that far, Trump can cite stock-market momentum, stronger-than-predicted job growth and the cooling of inflation as evidence his policies are working.
He has graded the economy as “A-plus-plus-plus-plus-plus” and he dismissed the economic anxiety summed up by the word “affordability.” He calls it a “Democratic hoax” and a “con job.”
But “affordability” is the concern that members of Congress in both parties are hearing from their constituents. The rising costs consumers are beginning to pay from Trump’s stiff tariffs and the loss of enhanced premium subsidies in the Affordable Care Act are fueling economic angst. So is a sense that the positive economic developments are rebounding mostly to the benefit of the wealthy, not the workers.
A majority of Americans said in a Pew Research Center poll released this month that they were “very worried” about the costs of a string of specifics − health care, food, housing and electricity. The Gallup Poll found that the percentage of adults who predict they will have a high-quality life in five years has fallen to a record low, a decline that continued during 2025, when Trump was back in office.
Republicans on the ballot this fall hope to hear an empathetic message from Trump. More “I feel your pain.” Less “the economy is fixed” − no matter how it feels to you.
“People aren’t dumb,” Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley, a MAGA Republican and Trump stalwart, told NBC News. “They know when they go to the grocery store what it costs and what it doesn’t. They know what their rent costs. They know what their prescription drugs cost. And all of that stuff is too high. And they can’t afford it. And they know that.”
During the 2024 campaign, Trump hammered predecessor Joe Biden for failing to do more to address inflation. He accused the then-president of being out of touch by making the argument that the economy was rosier than most voters realized.
Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski, a Republican, said Trump and his advisers are the ones who now seem out of touch.
“Trump is not sitting down on a Thursday night and paying his own bills and seeing what’s going on with health care and how much his credit card shows for gas receipts,” she said. “You can’t call it a hoax and suggest that people are going to believe it.”
On foreign policy, America First v. the Nobel Prize
On foreign policy, too, Trump’s actions in office have been different than his campaign message.
During his presidential campaigns, Trump extolled an “America First” message. That is, that the country should focus on its problems at home, not on its role around the world. He promised no more “endless wars” like the one in Afghanistan, the nation’s longest, which ended in 2021 after nearly two decades.
But Trump in office has been extensively engaged in conflicts around the globe, now bragging that he has settled eight wars and deserves the Nobel Peace Prize. In recent days, he convened his “Board of Peace,” with an agenda that starts with rebuilding devastated Gaza. Last week he dispatched a top aide and his son-in-law for back-to-back negotiations in Geneva on the war in Ukraine and tensions with Iran.
He has moved a second carrier group to the Middle East to be poised for possible strikes on Iran, despite warnings from allies in the region that could risk sparking a larger war.
The issue for some of his supporters is not only the expansive global role he has asserted for the United States but also the time and attention he has devoted to it. Voters’ priorities tend to be closer to home, on whether they can buy a house and if the streets in their community are safe.
When Trump was flying to Switzerland last month for the World Economic Forum in Davos, White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles told reporters that the president would scale back his overseas trips this year and ramp up his domestic travel − starting with a trip to Iowa focused on farmers battered by tariffs.
On Thursday, he was in Rome, Georgia, though in scattered remarks he declared that he had already “won affordability,” not exactly the message he has been urged to deliver.
He was in the congressional district holding a special election in March to replace Marjorie Taylor Greene, a MAGA backer-turned-critic who resigned in January.
“If you had put America FIRST from the start, instead of your rich donor class and foreign policy, you wouldn’t have to strategize on how to gaslight Americans,” Greene heckled in post on X about White House planning for the State of the Union. “Messaging won’t fix this.”
You can write a script. You can’t make him stick to it
Even in his biggest speeches, Trump rarely follows the script.
Consider last year’s address to a Joint Session of Congress.
“To my fellow citizens: America is back,” Trump began, reading the version on the teleprompter.
But for the next hour and 39 minutes, he ranged far afield, delivering the longest such address in decades. He praised fire fighters (“unbelievable people” who “voted for me in record numbers”) while denouncing “wokeness” (“wokeness is trouble”). He gave a hat tip to Secretary of State Marco Rubio but paired it with a warning. “Now we know who to blame if anything goes wrong,” he ad libbed.
He also repeatedly blamed the nation’s economic and other woes on Biden, something that will be harder to do after he has been the president in charge for more than a year.
“As you know, we inherited from the last administration an economic catastrophe and an inflation nightmare,” Trump said last year, pointing out in particular the price of eggs as a sign of Biden’s failure. “As president, I’m fighting every day to reverse this damage and make America affordable again.”
There’s that word. Does he say it again this time?
