Trump’s big speech will be delivered to a changed nation and a Congress that has marginalized him

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump will stand before Congress on Tuesday to deliver his annual State of the Union address to a suddenly transformed nation.

Watch live: President Donald Trump’s 2026 State of the Union address

A year into office, Trump has emerged as a president who defies conventional expectations. He has implemented an interesting agenda, upending priorities at home, shattering alliances abroad, and challenging the country’s founding system of checks and balances. Two Americans were killed by federal agents while protesting the Trump administration’s mass immigration raids and deportations.

As lawmakers sit in the House chamber to hear Trump’s agenda for next year, it is an existential moment for Congress, which has become fundamentally marginalized by its vast influence, as the Republican president has overtaken his slim GOP majority to amass enormous power for himself.

“It’s crazy,” said Nancy Henderson Corby, a retiree in northern Minnesota who has joined the Indivisible protest group and plans to watch the speech from home. “But what bothers me most is that Congress has just handed over its powers.”

“We can make some good decisions and changes if Congress does its job,” she said.

The state of union is disorder

The country stands at a crossroads, celebrating its 250th anniversary while experiencing some of the most significant changes in its politics, policies, and overall mood in the lives of many Americans.

The president pushed his agenda through Congress when he needed to — often pressing lawmakers by phone call during spirited votes — but he often avoided the messy give-and-take of the legislative process to gain power, bypassing his own party and the often unified Democratic opposition.

Read more: A growing majority says checks and balances don’t work under Trump

Trump’s signature legislative achievement so far is the GOP’s deep tax cuts bill, with new savings accounts for children, no taxes on tips and other specialized deductions, and sharp cuts to Medicaid and SNAP food aid. It also provided the Department of Homeland Security with more than $170 billion to deport immigrants.

But the GOP-led Congress has largely stood by as Trump dramatically seized power through hundreds of executive actions, many of which have been challenged in court, and his willingness to do whatever it takes to impose his agenda.

“Reclaiming lost power is not easy in our constitutional system,” Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote in the Supreme Court’s historic rebuke of Trump’s tariff policy on Friday.

Without the court’s intervention on key issues, Gorsuch said, “our system of separation of powers and checks and balances threatens to give way to the continuing and perpetual accumulation of power in the hands of one man.”

Trump goes it alone, with or without Congress

From cutting the federal workforce to overturning the childhood vaccine schedule to attacking Venezuela and arresting that country’s president, Trump’s influence seemed to know no bounds.

His administration launched investigations into potential political opponents, imposed his name on historic buildings, including the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, and, perhaps most tellingly, rounded up people and converted warehouses into deportation detention centers.

And almost every step of the way, there were moments when Congress could have intervened but did not.

Democrats, in the minority, have often tried to respond, including by cutting routine Homeland Security funding unless there are restrictions on immigration procedures.

But Republicans believe the country elected the president and gave their party control of Congress to align with his agenda, according to a senior GOP leadership aide who insisted on anonymity to discuss the dynamic.

House Speaker Mike Johnson of Louisiana said Trump would be the “most important” president in modern times.

Democrats plan to either boycott the speech or sit in silence.

“The state of the union is crumbling,” said House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries of New York.

Congress asserts itself, sometimes

There have been times when Congress has sided against the White House, but they have been rare — as in the high-profile, bipartisan campaign of Reps. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., and Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., to force the release of the Jeffrey Epstein files, over the objections of Johnson and the GOP leadership.

The flexibility of Congress’s power has often come from a few dissident Republicans joining with most Democrats to put a check on the president, as when the House voted to block Trump’s tariffs on Canada. The Senate advanced a war powers resolution to prevent military action in Venezuela without congressional approval, but it backed down after Trump intervened.

Those votes were mostly symbolic, because Congress would not have the numbers needed to overcome any expected veto by Trump.

More often than not, Congress accommodated Trump, by canceling already-approved bipartisan funding for USAID foreign aid or public broadcasting, or failing to stop U.S. military strikes on alleged drug smuggling boats that killed two survivors in the Caribbean. When Trump issued pardons on the first day to about 1,500 people accused in the January 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol, Republicans in Congress did not object.

As Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency with billionaire Elon Musk began firing federal employees, GOP lawmakers signaled their approval by forming their own DOGE caucus on Capitol Hill.

“The central question for us is does the public understand what is at stake,” said Max Steer, CEO of the Partnership for Public Service, a nonprofit focused on government and democracy. “We are in the midst of the most significant transformation of our government and our public servants in our history as a nation.”

He said about 300,000 federal employees were fired or transferred, while 100,000 new or rehired employees went to the Department of Homeland Security.

Checks and balances are challenged

In courtrooms across the country, cases against the administration are being filed at record levels, with Congress “asleep at the wheel,” said Skye Perryman, president of Democracy Forward, which has filed more than 150 cases against the administration, as part of the largest legal effort against an executive branch in US history.

But the judicial system was under pressure, and the White House did not always adhere to the court’s rulings. GOP lawmakers joined Trump’s criticism of the courts, displaying outside their offices posters of judges they want to remove.

The next big test will be the citizenship proof voting bill Trump wants before the midterms.

The House passed the Save America Act, which requires birth certificates or passports to register to vote in federal elections and photo ID at the polls. Supporters say there is a need to crack down on fraud, while critics say it will prevent millions of Americans from voting because they do not have readily available citizenship documents.

The Senate has the majority to pass the measure but not the 60 votes needed to overcome an expected Democratic-led filibuster.

Trump pledged to take executive action if Congress fails to approve the legislation.