(The Epoch Times)—President Donald Trump is set to deliver his first State of the Union address of his second term on Feb. 24, when he is expected to highlight his administration’s accomplishments and seize the moment to shore up support for Republicans ahead of the critical 2026 elections.
Historically, the president’s party almost always suffers midterm losses, and the House appears especially vulnerable this year.
Trump, eager to reverse the trend, is set to deliver a lengthy speech promoting the policy wins over the past year.
“It’s going to be a long speech, because we have so much to talk about,” the president said during an event at the White House on Feb. 23.
Here are five key things to watch at this year’s State of the Union:
Midterms Messaging
With eight months until the midterms, Republicans are working to win voters, especially independents who backed Trump in 2024. The majority of voters are still anxious about the high cost of living, according to recent polls. Trump is likely to prioritize the economy in his speech and talk about what he has done to lower gas, housing, and health care costs for American families.
Luke Nichter, professor of presidential studies at Chapman University in Orange, California, believes that Trump’s primary message will be about the midterms.
“He wants to make sure those enthusiastic supporters are still enthusiastic, they still support him, and continue to turn out this fall,” Nichter told The Epoch Times.
The speech comes on the heels of the Supreme Court’s decision last week that struck down tariffs imposed under the 1977 International Emergency Economic Powers Act.
Trump sharply criticized the justices who supported the ruling and has since pledged to raise global tariffs to 15 percent using other statutory authorities. During a Feb. 20 press conference, Trump said he was “ashamed of certain members of the court.” Hence, his tone and remarks toward the justices in the room will be closely watched during the address.
Trump is expected to make the case for high tariffs, even as some Republican lawmakers have expressed concerns about their economic impact.
Immigration will also be a key topic, as the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) remains shut down due to ongoing disagreement between the White House and congressional Democrats. Trump is expected to defend his administration’s policies while adopting a more measured tone in light of two recent fatal shootings by immigration agents in Minneapolis.
Aaron Dusso, a political science professor at Indiana University, believes that Trump will try to shift the narrative during his speech, especially given recent criticism of the domestic immigration crackdown and declining approval ratings.
“This is going to be an opportunity for him to command attention across the entire country,” Dusso told The Epoch Times.
Foreign Policy Questions
Foreign policy is typically not a major focus in the State of the Union addresses, as presidents usually prioritize domestic issues. Trump’s address may be an exception, Nichter said.
In recent weeks, the administration has stepped up the U.S. military presence in the Middle East to exert pressure on Iran to curb its nuclear program. The Pentagon has dispatched another large aircraft carrier to the region. Amid tensions, another round of talks with Tehran is set for Feb. 26 in Geneva. Lawmakers will be closely watching for any new announcements regarding Iran.
In Mexico, a U.S.-aided operation killed Nemesio “El Mencho” Oseguera Cervantes, a powerful drug cartel leader, on Feb. 22. Lawmakers and foreign policy analysts will be listening for clarity on the extent of the U.S. involvement in the Mexican military’s operation.
Trump is also expected to highlight his broader efforts to broker peace around the world, crediting himself for ending eight wars.
According to Nichter, Trump may also address unresolved foreign policy issues, including Greenland, Cuba, Venezuela, and the golden dome missile defense system.
Guests in the Gallery
The White House and lawmakers will invite special guests to the State of the Union to highlight their political messages.
Over the weekend, Trump invited the U.S. Men’s and Women’s Olympic Hockey teams following their gold medal victories over Canada.
The women’s team declined the invitation, citing scheduling issues. The men’s team is expected to attend.
Democratic lawmakers have invited several people who say they were victims of sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, including Jess Michaels and the family of the late Virginia Roberts Giuffre, to demand legal consequences for those named in the files.
Some Democrats, including Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), will bring constituents to raise concerns about the impact of rising tariffs and health care costs.
Some Republicans are focusing on human rights issues in China. House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) will host the daughter of Gulshan Abbas, a Uyghur doctor detained in China since 2018. Rep. Chris Smith (R-N.J.) will host Claire Lai, daughter of Hong Kong media tycoon Jimmy Lai, who is serving a 20-year prison sentence.
Reaction
There have been dramatic moments at past State of the Union addresses, most notably in February 2020, when then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi tore up a copy of Trump’s speech after he finished speaking.
This time, the setting will be different. Seated behind Trump will be Johnson and Vice President JD Vance.
Reactions from Democrats in the chamber will be closely watched. As with previous years, some lawmakers are expected to stage symbolic protests, wearing coordinated colors or displaying signs.
The official response from the Democratic Party will be delivered by Virginia Gov. Abigail Spanberger, who won a landslide victory last November and became the state’s first female governor. Her response will air immediately after Trump’s speech.
Yemisi Egbewole, a Democratic strategist and former Biden White House adviser, said that Spanberger’s selection shows the party is changing its strategy by focusing on affordability and moving away from identity issues.
The response is expected to be measured and aimed at voters who are uneasy about Trump as president, even if they sometimes support Republicans, Egbewole told The Epoch Times.
“That is really where Democrats need to hit,” she said.
More than a dozen Democrats plan to skip the speech and attend an alternative event, the “People’s State of the Union” rally at the National Mall in Washington.
Sens. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), Ed Markey (D-Mass.), Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.), Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), Tina Smith (D-Minn.), and Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), as well as Reps. Yassamin Ansari (D-Ariz.), Becca Balint (D-Vt.), Greg Casar (D-Texas), Veronica Escobar (D-Texas), Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), Delia Ramirez (D-Ill.), and Bonnie Watson Coleman (D-N.J.) are expected to skip the address.
Defending the Record
The address is scheduled for 9 p.m. ET and will be Trump’s second to Congress since returning to office. He previously spoke to a joint session of Congress on March 4 last year. While it was not an official State of the Union address, the speech was the longest on record, lasting nearly 1 hour and 40 minutes.
Trump is expected to defend his record and outline his legislative goals in another lengthy address.
He will tout economic milestones, including the Dow Jones Industrial Average surpassing 50,000 points. He will argue that crime is falling nationwide.
He will also likely highlight reductions in immigration flows at the southern border with Mexico. Trump has previously said that illegal immigration along that border has reached near-zero levels.
The address is also considered a prime opportunity for the president to lay out his legislative proposals. This year, Trump is expected to encourage the passage of the Safeguarding American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) America Act, a bill that would require proof of citizenship to vote.
He will also tout his other policies, such as banning male athletes with gender dysphoria from competing in women’s sports.
According to David Schultz, a political science professor at Hamline University in Minnesota, Trump will have to keep his base energized while deciding whether to adjust his tone and message to win back the independent voters who helped elect him in 2024.
Republicans’ chances of holding Congress depend on retaining those swing voters, he told The Epoch Times.
“His base is still mostly with him,” Schultz said. “The question becomes, does he only pitch to the base, or does he try to alter his language and approach to appeal to the swing voters?”
Where to Watch
The State of the Union address will be easily accessible through a variety of platforms. Like all other official activities on the floor of Congress, the address will be streamed on C-SPAN.
The White House will provide a livestream of the event on its website and on YouTube.
Viewers can also watch the speech on NTD, The Epoch Times’ sister media outlet, which will stream the address live online in addition to cable and satellite feeds. NTD’s coverage begins at 6 p.m. ET.
Two Storms, One Harvest
Every food crisis in living memory has been a one-shock event. The 2008 price spike was a commodity bubble. The 2020 shortages were a logistics failure. The 2022 grain scare was a war on one exporter’s ports. Each time, the system bent, adjusted, and recovered, and each time the experts assured us afterward that global markets are simply too big and too diversified to fail.
What nobody in Washington seems eager to discuss is that 2026 is shaping up to be something the modern food system has never actually faced. Two independent shocks, one climatic and one geopolitical, are converging on the same harvest cycle at the same time. Not sequentially. Simultaneously.
Start with the weather. The Pacific Ocean is currently building toward what forecasters now openly call a record event. NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center puts the odds of at least a strong El Niño near 88 percent, with roughly two in three odds it reaches “very strong” status, the tier reserved for perhaps three or four events in the entire satellite era. Every major global model now projects a median peak in Super El Niño territory, and most of them project it exceeding the 2015-16 event, which until now held the modern record. Sea surface anomalies were already brushing the super threshold in mid-July, months before these events normally peak. The atmosphere has already shifted into El Niño mode, and the event is forecast to crest in late fall and early winter.
This is not about “climate change.” It’s about the standard cycles of weather, and the cycle we’re currently in is one that has likely devastated societies in the past. We’re better prepared as a society today, but not all Americans are equally prepared.
Serious households have started doing the quiet math on their own. Grocery bills tell part of the story, and the forecast maps tell the rest, which is why long-term food storage has moved from fringe hobby to mainstream line item in the family budget, with established suppliers like Heaven’s Harvest seeing demand from people who five years ago would have rolled their eyes at the idea. That instinct is not paranoia. It is pattern recognition, and the pattern is worth walking through carefully.
Editor’s Note: Heaven’s Harvest IS a sponsor, but the warnings of this article are real and would be written even if we didn’t have a survival food sponsor. With that said, those who take advantage of what they offer can use promo code “Patriot” for 15% off.
The Fertilizer Clock Is Already Running
While the Pacific warms, the second shock has been unfolding in the Strait of Hormuz. The conflict with Iran turned the world’s most important energy chokepoint into a contested waterway, and the consequences reach far beyond the gas pump. Roughly a third of global fertilizer trade moves through Hormuz, and the disruption sent urea prices up 86 percent year over year by March, with a 53 percent jump in a single month.
The World Bank projects energy prices rising about 24 percent in 2026 and fertilizer about 31 percent. By its own accounting, fertilizer prices ran 35 percent higher in the first five months of this year than the same period last year.
Here is the mechanism the nightly news will not explain. Fertilizer is not a grocery item. It is a time-delayed input. The nitrogen a farmer in Iowa or Punjab could not afford to apply this spring does not show up as a problem this spring. It shows up as a thinner harvest six to twelve months later.
The World Bank’s own food security brief concedes that the effects of reduced applications earlier this season “are likely to become visible only later in harvest outcomes.” Translate that from institutional language into plain English and it means this. The damage is already done, it is already in the ground, and we are simply waiting for it to arrive on the shelf.
Now check the calendar. Six to twelve months from the spring planting season lands us squarely in late 2026 and early 2027. Which is precisely when the strongest El Niño in the instrumental record is forecast to peak, bringing its signature droughts to Southeast Asia, Australia, southern Africa, northern Brazil, and South Asia, the very regions that grow the world’s rice, sugar, and oilseeds.
The World Bank warns openly that a strong El Niño “could disrupt multiple crop belts simultaneously” on top of the conflict-driven input costs. Their baseline projection assumes the Middle East disruptions ease by autumn. What in the last two years of Middle East history suggests that assumption is safe?
The System Has No Slack Left
The comfortable answer is that global markets always adjust. But adjustment requires slack, and the slack is gone. Global cereal production is expected to decline from last year’s records even before El Niño does its work. The UN World Food Programme, hardly a den of right-wing preppers, is calling this the most significant disruption to its supply chains since Covid and the invasion of Ukraine, and its supply chain director put the stakes bluntly.
Today’s supply chain challenges are tomorrow’s hunger crisis.
There is also a political dimension that markets cannot price. When food gets scarce, governments do not behave like economists. They behave like politicians. Export bans, hoarding mandates, and panic buying at the national level turned the modest rice shortfall of 2008 into a global crisis, and analysts are already warning that import-dependent nations are the first dominoes.
The 2015-16 Super El Niño, a far weaker event than what is now forecast, threw tens of millions into food stress across Africa and Asia. This one is projected to be stronger, and it arrives with fertilizer already rationed by price and shipping lanes already contested by missiles.
What Joseph Knew
Scripture does not treat preparation for lean years as faithlessness. It treats it as wisdom delivered in advance to those willing to act on it.
Behold, there come seven years of great plenty throughout all the land of Egypt: And there shall arise after them seven years of famine; and all the plenty shall be forgotten in the land of Egypt.
Joseph did not respond to that warning with a hashtag or a committee. He stored grain during the years of abundance, and when the famine came, Egypt stood while its neighbors begged. The lesson is not that famine is certain. It is that the time to prepare is precisely when preparation still looks optional.
Nobody who filled a pantry in a year of plenty has ever regretted it, and nobody standing in an empty aisle has ever been glad he waited for certainty.
None of this calls for panic, and panic is the enemy of sound judgment anyway. It calls for the same unglamorous prudence our grandparents considered ordinary. Keep some cash margin, know your local growers, and put real food in deep storage while it is cheap and available, because the entire arc of this story is that cheap and available is a closing window.
Families looking for a straightforward place to start can visit Heaven’s Harvest and use promo code Patriot for 15 percent off long-term storable food. The forecasts may yet soften, the strait may yet reopen, and we should pray they do. But hope is a fine thing to hold and a foolish thing to eat.