The Actual State of the Union

Two U.S. aircraft carriers, 16 other warships, and more than 100 planes have now been deployed in the Middle East, and Secretary of State Marco Rubio briefed lawmakers behind closed doors regarding Iran on Tuesday afternoon. But Trump mostly focused on extolling his foreign policy achievements, while offering few hints on what will happen with Iran.

“Our country has never been stronger,” Trump claimed, as he would multiple times Tuesday night. His first year saw remarkable assertions of American military power, from the seizure of Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro by special forces and ongoing strikes against alleged drug boats, to last year’s Operation Midnight Hammer against multiple targets in the Iranian nuclear program.

But the White House has yet to achieve some of its key foreign policy goals. The war in Ukraine, which Trump promised to end on “Day One” of his second term, continues to grind on with no clear end in sight, despite multiple U.S.-brokered meetings between Ukraine and Russia. Russian President Vladimir Putin remains adamant about demanding all of eastern Ukraine, while Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky insists that his country will not give up unoccupied land.

In the Middle East, ongoing talks between Tehran and Washington are potentially the only thing holding back a large-scale American air campaign. Top military advisers, including chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Dan Caine, are reportedly warning Trump that U.S. strikes risk a drawn-out U.S. engagement, which the president has historically abhorred.

But Trump seemed to recognize that Iranian leaders are likely unwilling to budge on U.S. demands. “They want to make a deal, but we haven’t heard those secret words. We will never have a nuclear weapon,” he said of negotiations with Iran. “My preference remains to solve this problem through diplomacy, but one thing is certain: I will never allow the world’s number one sponsor of terror, which they are by far, to have a nuclear weapon.”

Trump claimed that in his first year, the U.S. had experienced a “stunning economic turnaround,” but the numbers don’t support that assertion and voters don’t feel it.

U.S. GDP grew by 2.2 percent in 2025, down slightly from 2024’s 2.8 percent, with annual inflation (as measured by the Consumer Price Index) declining to 2.6 percent from 2.9 percent in 2024. Revised figures show the economy added just 15,000 jobs per month on average in 2025—a sharp step down from 2024’s pace of 122,000—but unemployment remains low at 4.3 percent.

The U.S. economy still outperforms most developed countries, but Americans aren’t satisfied. U.S. consumer confidence is at its lowest levels in more than a decade, buffeted by trade wars, actual wars, and political tensions at home. The core complaint is affordability and cost-of-living: Majorities of voters told a recent New York Times-Siena poll that education and housing both felt “unaffordable,” with 77 percent saying that a middle-class lifestyle is harder to achieve than a generation ago.

Trump acknowledged the widespread affordability concerns but blamed Democrats for them. “You caused that problem, you caused that problem,” he repeated to the Democratic side of the chamber at one point. He also highlighted the efforts his administration had gone to relieve Americans pressed by rising prices—“We gave you no tax on tips, no tax on overtime, and no tax on Social Security for our great seniors”—and claimed that a variety of products such as chicken, butter, and cars had actually seen price declines over the past year.

Trump’s tariff regime is the centerpiece of his economic agenda—one thrown into chaos Friday when the Supreme Court overturned all tariffs enacted under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, invalidating most of Trump’s levies on imports. To learn more about that decision, read Monday’s TMD.

The president mostly held his ire over that defeat. During his address, Trump called the decision a “very unfortunate ruling” to the four stone-faced Supreme Court justices in attendance (John Roberts, Amy Coney Barrett, Elena Kagan, and Brett Kavanaugh). But he didn’t repeat the accusations from his Friday press conference, in which he called the justices who voted against him unpatriotic and disloyal.

Trump has been able to reconstitute the tariffs using an alternative authority, Section 122 of the Trade Act of 1974, to impose a 10 percent baseline tariff on all imports. His administration has also announced plans to pursue sector-specific tariffs on a range of goods and to continue targeting countries like China using additional trade powers. “The policy hasn’t changed,” Jamieson Greer, the White House’s top trade negotiator, said Sunday.

But some American trade partners appear to believe otherwise. The European Union has paused final ratification of its pending trade pact with the U.S., several countries that could face higher tariffs than their negotiated rates are now seeking to clarify the terms of their deals, and India has postponed meetings with the U.S. to finalize the landmark agreement with the U.S. at the beginning of the month.

Trump tried to project confidence that the deals would stick. “Despite the disappointing ruling, [tariffs] will remain in place under fully approved and tested alternative legal statutes—and they have been tested for a long time, they’re a little more complex, but they’re actually probably better, leading to a solution that will be even stronger than before,” he said.

Trump’s mass deportation campaign has been one of the most polarizing policies of his first year, but he hasn’t backed away from it. “We are deporting illegal alien criminals out of the country at record numbers, and we’re getting them the hell out of here, fast,” Trump said during his speech Tuesday, after introducing the mother of Lizbeth Medina, who was murdered by an illegal immigrant in 2023.

In fiscal year 2025 that ended in September, the U.S. Border Patrol recorded just 237,538 encounters with migrants at the southern border: the lowest levels since 1970 and down from more than 1.5 million the previous year. And 2025’s fewer total deportations than in the last two years of the Biden administration largely reflected the steep drop in attempted border crossings. About 230,000 people were deported from inside the country, higher than in previous years, with an additional 40,000 “self-deporting” through a new Customs and Border Protection program.

But if the statistics reflect early successes for Trump’s immigration policy, recent events suggest there may be a limit to the public’s tolerance for high-profile immigration raids. The deaths of two bystanders—Renee Good and Alex Pretti—at the hands of federal agents in Minneapolis last month provoked a backlash that forced the administration’s first significant retreat on deportation policy. Border Patrol officer Gregory Bovino was removed from his position as commander-at-large for the Minnesota operation and replaced with border czar Tom Homan, who announced a drawdown of federal officers in the state. Trump did not mention either incident Tuesday night.

“The Revolution that began in 1776 has not ended, it still continues because the flame of liberty still burns in the heart of every American patriot,” Trump concluded. “And our future will be bigger, better, brighter, bolder, and more glorious than ever before.”