President Donald Trump's 2026 State of the Union (SOTU) address is set for this Tuesday night, February 24. Because Trump frequently expresses his opinions via his Truth Social platform, some political voices aren't expecting to hear anything new from him. But Slate's Jim Newell, in an article published the day of the speech, lays out some reasons why a SOTU can have a major impact — and in some cases, a negative one.

To illustrate his point, Newell looks back on two past SOTU addresses: Trump's in 2017 and former President Joe Biden's in 2024.

"Why does this snookering keep happening?" Newell asks. "The State of the Union is a moment when the president can project the exact aura he wants on a grand stage. For Biden, that was vigor. For Trump's first, that was gravitas. They get not only that moment, but an artificial news peg — a chance to reassess whatever narrative is setting in that they don't like. And people keep falling for it by acting as if these speeches are reflections of reality. You're better off trusting the version of the politician you see outside the heavily staged infomercial in the House of Representatives."

After Biden's SOTU in February 2024, many of his allies were convinced that he could go the distance with his reelection campaign and win a second term. But Biden's widely criticized performance during a debate with Trump later that year doomed his campaign, and he ended up dropping out of the race.

"The stakes were unusually high for President Joe Biden in his 2024 State of the Union address," Newell recalls. "Most Americans thought he was too old to run for a second term, but Biden was dead set on doing so….. Biden's team got the headlines they wanted, with his hour-plus speech being described as 'feisty,' 'fiery,' 'energetic' and 'impassioned,' 'rowdy and shouty.' It was all of those things…. Biden hadn't become a younger man overnight, but he gave enough of a performance of energy to temporarily contain Democratic murmurs about his standing for reelection."

Trump's 2017 SOTU, Newell notes, was viewed as his chance to present himself as a more traditional Republican and a "statesman."

"Only old souls will remember," Newell explains, "but there was a moment early in his first presidency when it was an open question as to whether the enormity of the job would humble Trump into becoming something different: that he'd talk less trash, that he’d project gravitas. That he’d become something, in other words, resembling a statesman. That, at least, was an image his speechwriters sought to project in his first joint address in 2017…. Not many days after the speech, Trump was back to his usual self, going on tweet binges about how President Barack Obama had tapped his phones."

A SOTU, the Slate journalist warns, can do damage when it gives "false senses of security."

"Some advice, then, to 2028 candidates for president: Promise to refuse a congressional invitation to address a joint session of Congress, and return Americans their regularly scheduled programming," Newell argues. "That can't hurt."

The United States is now at war with Iran.

A single person, Donald J. Trump, has released the dogs of war on one of the most dangerous countries in the world — and done it without the consent of Congress or our allies, or even a clear explanation to the American people.

Four days after delivering a State of the Union address in which he boasted of ending eight wars and spent just three minutes discussing Iran and a preference for “diplomacy,” we are now bombing, maiming, and killing.

Anyone who has doubted Trump’s intention to replace American democracy with a dictatorship should now be fully disabused.

I share your despair, sadness, and fear. Even if our president were a wise and judicious man, surrounded by thoughtful advisers with impeccable integrity and wisdom, this would be a highly dangerous move.

Trump is facing the consequences of his decision in his first term to abandon the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action negotiated with Iran by Obama and backed by France, Germany, the United Kingdom, Russia, and China.

Trump walked away from that treaty because it was Obama’s — and he hates Obama because Obama negotiated safeguards against Iran enriching uranium to weapons grade. Obama also got Obamacare through Congress, addressed climate change and nuclear proliferation, and was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

Obama was a winner. Trump is a loser. Trump cannot stomach this.

But why should America and thousands if not millions of innocent people pay the price of Trump’s egomaniacal stupidity?

Trump claimed in June to have disarmed Iran. He claimed again in his State of the Union last Tuesday to have “obliterated” the Iranian nuclear weapons program (an assertion rejected by the International Atomic Energy Agency).

Since then, Iran has taken steps to dig out the nuclear facilities hit during those strikes and has resumed work at some sites long known to American spy agencies.

But those same spy agencies say there’s no evidence that Iran has made active efforts to resume enriching uranium or trying to build a mechanism to detonate a bomb.

Iran’s stockpiles of enriched uranium remain buried after June’s strikes, making it nearly impossible for Iran to build a bomb “within days,” as Trump and his lapdogs claim.

Trump says he wants “regime change.” But unlike Venezuela, the Islamic Republic has nearly a million men under arms. Any attempt to overthrow that regime will require American troops on the ground and almost surely inflict mass casualties on Americans and Iranians.

Besides, Trump won a second term promising “no regime change,” and in 2024 he campaigned as “the first president in decades who started no new wars.”

He hasn’t prepared the American people for this.

In his State of the Union, he said Iran has refused to foreswear any nuclear weapons ambitions. Yet just hours before his address, Iran’s foreign minister reaffirmed on X that his country would “under no circumstances ever develop a nuclear weapon.”

Trump noted the Iran regime’s killing of thousands of protesters, but this hardly justifies a war that may cause the deaths of thousands more innocent civilians. (This morning, Iran’s Red Crescent said more than 60 children were killed in the strike on Shajarah Tayyebeh school in the southern town of Minab — a toll that has since been raised to 85.)

Make no mistake. The costs of this war — mayhem and deaths in the Middle East, higher oil prices (as Iran closes the Strait of Hormuz), increased risk of terrorism in Europe and the United States — could be catastrophic.

Yet Americans don’t support this war. They haven’t been told why we’re waging it. Trump’s MAGA base doesn’t want him to engage in regime change. Congress hasn’t voted for this war.

Trump is going to war for himself and his boundless, malicious ego.

Robert Reich is a professor of public policy at Berkeley and former secretary of labor. His writings can be found at https://robertreich.substack.com/

During his 2024 campaign, now-President Donald Trump insisted that he had no desire to cut Social Security or Medicare. But according to ex-Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley — who served as commissioner for the Social Security Administration (SSA) under former President Joe Biden — mass SSA layoffs being carried out by the Trump Administration and the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) will make it much harder for the agency to function. O'Malley fears that an "interruption of benefits" will occur.

Trump officials, in response to criticism from O'Malley and others, claim that SSA downsizing is designed to protect Social Security and make the program run more efficiently — not endanger it.

In an article published on August 5, however, Salon's Heather Digby Parton warns that when it comes to "privatizing Social Security," some Trump allies are saying the quiet part out loud — including Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent.

READ MORE: Donald Trump just debunked his own lie — and it should get him sued

"One provision of the 'One Big Beautiful Bill Act' was called 'Trump Accounts,' which are new retirement savings accounts for babies that supposedly will be opened with a $1000 contribution from the federal government," Parton explains. "At an event hosted by Breitbart News, Bessent suggested the accounts would be so popular that people will demand the government replace Social Security with it. 'In a way, it is a backdoor for privatizing Social Security,' he said."

Parton continues, "The White House quickly walked back his comments, saying that they have no intention of privatizing Social Security, yadda, yadda yadda. As Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., said about Bessent's little truth bomb, 'Between Bessent's comments and the harm DOGE has already done to the agency, it's clear Trump was lying all along about protecting Social Security.' Donald Trump, lying? This should come as no surprise."

Privatizing Social Security, Parton notes, is an idea some Republicans were proposing long before Trump's 2016 campaign.

"After his reelection in 2004," Parton recalls, "President George W. Bush declared he would spend his political capital on it. After debuting his plan in the 2005 State of the Union address, he barnstormed the country in support of it — and the idea flamed out like a SpaceX rocket. Apparently, it’s time to try again."

READ MORE: Trump official reminds the world that the US now has a 'national position' on a single word

The Salon journalist continues, "Yes, Republicans staged a full-blown tantrum back in 2023 when President Joe Biden suggested in his State of the Union address that they wanted to cut the program. But nobody believed their denials. ... Promise or no promise, it's clear the GOP has not changed its goal one bit — and the fight to protect Social Security and the social safety net should remain the essential mission of the Democratic Party."

READ MORE: There's a very simple reason why Trump will never release the Epstein files

Heather Digby Parton's full article for Salon is available at this link.

Donald Trump's "biggest policy announcement" from his State of the Union address was not actually something he signed into law, with reporters noticing that the plan he touted was actually signed by his predecessor and rival, former President Joe Biden.

Trump's address on Tuesday broke his own record for the longest State of the Union address, but various observers noted that it was light on any actual policy announcements. The main "new" policy he touted will allow workers without access to 401K accounts to set up retirement accounts that the federal government can match contributions to, up to $1,000. Trump claimed that this plan, which some reporters likened to "Trump accounts for adults," will offer "access to the same type of retirement plan offered to every federal worker."

Reporters reacting to the address quickly noted that Trump was, in fact, talking about a law signed by Biden in 2022 as part of a major funding bill. Josh Wingrove, a political correspondent for Bloomberg, cited clarification from a "White House official."

"Trump is referring to the Savers Match program under the 2022 Secure 2.0 law, which expands retirement savings plans to millions of working Americans and incentivize [sic] savings with a gov-funded match for eligible workers, per a White House official," Wingrove posted to X. "It provides a path for an annual match of up to $1,000 for low-income workers. 56 million workers will be eligible, per the official."

"Biggest policy announcement of Trump SOTU was actually touting a bipartisan retirement savings law signed by Biden," Erik Wasson, a congressional reporter for Bloomberg, observed in a post to X late Tuesday night.

"Totally forgot about this," Punchbowl News founder Jake Sherman wrote in his own post Wednesday morning. "The retirement savings accounts that Trump announced last night were already signed into law by President Joe Biden. It was part of a big funding bill that Congress passed in 2022."

Wingrove later added that the Trump administration is essentially planning to "tweak" this existing law to make participation simpler, and is seeking "philanthropic" funding to cover the costs.

"Trump is looking to basically tweak it -- he has set up a structure for workers who don't have employer plans to more easily participate, per an official. The admin will also seek to allow philanthropic contributions," Wingrove explained in another post to X.

During his press conferences, President Donald Trump often boasts that he has revitalized the U.S. economy since returning to the White House. And he is expected to do some more boasting about the economy during his 2026 State of the Union (SOTU) address this Tuesday night, February 24.

But New York Times reporters Ashley Cai and Linda Qiu fact-check Trump's claims about the economy in an article published the day before his SOTU.

During an NBC News appearance in February, Trump claimed, "I inherited the worst inflation in the history of our country. And now, we have almost no inflation."

But according to Cai and Qiu, "Inflation has slowed under Mr. Trump, but not by the drastic margins he is claiming. And prices are still increasing above the target of 2 percent set by the Federal Reserve."

During a MAGA rally in Georgia on Thursday, February 19, Trump told the crowd that former President Joe Biden "was sleeping while you were trying to get a job," adding, "You weren't working, and now, we have the most people working in history."

According to Cai and Qiu, however, Trump "falsely described the employment situation under his predecessor."

The Times reporters note, "Former President Joseph R. Biden Jr. could also have claimed to preside over the most people working during his term, as could most other presidents not in office during periods of economic downturns or recessions. But labor force participation — those who were employed or actively looking for a job — has held steady under Mr. Trump, changing little from 62.6 percent in January 2025 to 62.5 percent this January. The unemployment rate rose slightly from 4 percent to 4.3 percent. The economy added 359,000 jobs from February 2025 to January 2026, compared with more than 1.2 million in the previous year."

In a separate New York Times article published the same day, reporter Audra D.S. Burch takes a look at U.S. workers who are still being pummeled by inflation — which Trump, during his 2024 campaign, promised to end "starting on Day 1."

"For millions of Americans," Burch explains, "affordability has become a defining issue as the soaring cost of big-ticket necessities such as housing, education, health care and child care take a toll on household budgets. Though unemployment is lower and inflation has slowed — data points that President Trump will likely cite in his State of the Union address on Tuesday — recent economic gains have largely benefited the wealthy. In interviews, some working Americans said the improved economy does not reflect their real-world struggles to pay bills or plan for the future. They have a hard time making sense of Mr. Trump's claims that he has defeated inflation, and the rising stock market has no bearing on their income."

New York City resident Kristin Errico told the Times, "Everything is up 20 percent in cost except my salary."

According to Erin Hatton, a sociology professor at New York State University, Buffalo, inflation remains a major problem for many U.S. workers.

Hatton told the Times, "For so many people, basic living has become a burden. The fact is that there are so many people that don't have a couple extra hundred dollars if faced with an emergency or, they can pay their bills but can't save for their retirement."

President Donald Trump’s State of the Union address was full of factual errors, although this is consistent with his lengthy history.

Among other things, Trump falsely claimed to have secured $18 trillion in investment commitments since assuming office even though that figure is wildly inflated, reported CNN. The news network also found Trump’s claim about gas prices being as low as $1.85 per gallon were untrue; it is nowhere below $2.37 per gallon, even though Trump said he saw a gas station with that price in Iowa. Similarly, Trump lied when he said inflation was at an all-time high when he took office (its Biden-era height of 9.1 percent was far short of the all-time height of 23.7 percent in 1920) and that the economy is “roaring” under his stewardship (it only grew 2.2 percent in 2025, slower than any year of Biden’s presidency).

The news network was not alone in fact-checking Trump’s tariffs in real time. The progressive think tank American Bridge 21st Century tweeted during the broadcast that “American families and businesses paid at least 90% of Trump’s tariffs last year. His agenda taxes Americans anyway you slice it.”

Others have also called out Trump’s misstatements about inflation. The New York Times responded to Trump’s claim to have had “almost no inflation” that “inflation has slowed under Mr. Trump, but not by the drastic margins he is claiming. And prices are still increasing above the target of 2 percent set by the Federal Reserve." Similarly CNN’s Daniel Dale wrote earlier this month that “inflation is not over; prices continue to rise. Overall prices have gone up, not down. Overall grocery prices have gone up, not down. Iowa’s average gas price is much higher than $1.95. And Democrats have certainly not stopped mentioning affordability; in fact, it remains a key focus of their public remarks.”

“While criticizing the Biden administration’s border policies, Trump repeated his regular claim that the Biden administration allowed 11,888 murderers to enter the US as migrants – saying, ‘They were murderers, 11,888 murderers. They came into our country,’” CNN also reported. “Trump was inaccurately describing federal data. The Department of Homeland Security and independent experts have noted that the figure it appears Trump was referring to when he uses the ‘11,888’ number is about non-citizens who entered the US not just under Biden but over the course of multiple decades, including during Trump’s own first administration.”

CNN added, “They were convicted of homicide at some point, usually in the US after their arrival, and are still in the US while being listed on Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s “non-detained docket” – which includes people who are currently serving their prison sentences, not roaming free as Trump has also claimed.”

The network also reported that Trump lied when he claimed foreign countries bear the costs of his tariffs, citing both the Federal Reserve and Congressional Budget Office in reporting that roughly 90 to 95 percent of the tariffs are shouldered by American businesses and consumers. It also pointed out that Trump’s claims of voter fraud being rampant have long ago been thoroughly discredited.

When Donald Trump narrowly won the United States' 2024 presidential election, many polls of voters found that the economy — especially frustration over inflation — played a key role in his victory. The U.S. enjoyed historically low unemployment rates during Joe Biden's presidency, but high prices did a lot to hurt his popularity. And former President Joe Biden's vice-president, Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris, was unable to get past the finish line and lost the national popular vote by roughly 1.5 percent.

In a column posted on his Substack page on February 27, liberal economist Paul Krugman describes the connection between authoritarian movements and economic meltdowns. And he argues that inheriting a generally healthy economy from Biden slowed down Trump's push for far-right authoritarianism.

"When Adolf Hitler came to power in 1933," Krugman explains, "Germany's economy was in dire straits. Under Chancellor Heinrich Brüning, the German government had clung dogmatically to economic orthodoxy in the face of the Great Depression, staying on the gold standard and imposing ever harsher fiscal austerity. The result was economic devastation and extremely high unemployment.… When Vladimir Putin came to power in 1999, Russia had just experienced a devastating financial crisis."

Krugman continues, "The crisis precipitated a severe recession, forced the Russian government to default on its debt, and led to a plunge in the value of the ruble…. Donald Trump's return to power in January 2025 was largely thanks to public dissatisfaction with the Biden economy. However, there was no economic crisis: unemployment was low, and inflation had declined sharply from its peak in 2022…. And because there was no crisis when he regained the presidency, Trump — his bombastic lies in the State of the Union notwithstanding — hasn't been able to preside over a clear economic improvement. Indeed, his approval on economic issues has plummeted."

Trump, according to Krugman, "can't credibly claim to be an economic savior." And the former New York Times columnist lays out three obstacles that Trump and the MAGA movement are facing.

"Make no mistake, MAGA is a fascist movement," Krugman warns. "But can a fascist movement that controls many but not all of the levers of power achieve total control when most people see that it is making their daily lives worse, not better?.... In the end, if Trumpist fascism is indeed defeated, I believe that there will be three sources of that defeat."

Krugman continues, "First is the courage and basic decency of the American people, who refuse to bow down. Second is the egomania and malign incompetence of Trump, who tried to bludgeon and gaslight Americans into submission. And last is the weakness of a fascist movement that just can't deliver the goods."

The editor-at-large at a prominent right-leaning magazine is blasting President Donald Trump’s “debased state” — in particular, thinking he can dupe the American people out of their economic woes.

“In our debased state of national politics we have become accustomed to presidents making promises they cannot possibly hope to deliver on, particularly just months before they become a lame duck,” Reason Magazine’s Matt Welch wrote on Tuesday. Pointing out that two-term presidents tend to spend their sixth-year State of the Union message boasting, Welch warned that “as the ghost of Joe Biden can attest, woe unto the POTUS who points to the cloudy economic sky and declares it blue.”

Trump is “shouting into political headwinds considerably stiffer than those faced by” the last similarly scandal-ridden president, Bill Clinton, whose approval rating averaged to 60 percent during his 1998 State of the Union. By contrast, Trump has been in the high 30s in three recent national polls.

“Like professional athletes in their mid-30s insisting they can make their bodies perform as if in their 20s, sixth-year presidents have a hard time internalizing that their spells are weakening, their days are growing short, and the electorate is kinda tired of hearing from them,” Welch wrote. “Even popular second-term presidents like Ronald Reagan and Dwight Eisenhower saw their public support slip between SOTU day and the midterms, on the way to shellackings in the Senate.”

While Trump will engage in “Tourette's-like boasts (of often dubious factual quality) about the stock market and gas prices and manufacturing growth,” Welch predicted, this will not help him politically unless he can lower prices.

“Trump, haunted by his underwater economic numbers and spurred on by the unlikely electoral success of New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani, will announce a bunch of ‘affordability’ measures tonight (at least when not angrily defending his across-the-board tax hikes on imports),” Welch wrote, adding that this will not help him if he undercuts the argument for passing such measures if he also insists that he has already “won” on affordability issues.

“Trump may not get his Nobel Peace Prize, but he has at least a 50–50 chance of breaking his own all-time record for minutes spent babbling from the throne,” Welch concluded.

The Wall Street Journal editorial board made a similar point in a Tuesday editorial slamming Trump’s tariffs for raising prices.

"The larger reality is that Mr. Trump is so bull-headed about tariffs that he’s going to re-impose them any way he can," the editorial board wrote, adding that Trump’s attempt to impose tariffs using the legally dubious method of invoking the 1974 Trade Act will “create more uncertainty for business, at least for a while. And with the midterm elections coming soon, this timing is fraught for Republicans. Amid an 'affordability' panic, Mr. Trump says he is going to impose more border taxes on enough imports to make up for his lost emergency tariffs. Democrats must be thrilled at their dumb luck."

In addition to raising prices, Trump’s tariffs have failed to stimulate manufacturing jobs as the president promised they would.

“Far from the manufacturing sector ‘roaring back’ as Trump promised, the United States has lost more than 100,000 manufacturing jobs over the past year,” wrote Allison McManus and Dawn Le of the Center for American Progress. “These actions have pushed the country’s closest trading partners to seek deals elsewhere, including with China: Canada, India, Japan, South Korea, and the European Union have all recently sought new agreements without the United States.”