Voters Are Souring on Trump’s Agenda. Now He’ll Make His Case to Congress.

A majority of Americans no longer believe he’s doing a good job. Republicans in Congress are increasingly willing to resist his agenda.

Whatever President Donald Trump lays out in the first true State of the Union address of his second presidency, he will be up against some serious headwinds.

In recent weeks, the Republican-led House of Representatives voted to revoke the president’s tariffs on Canada. The Republican-led Senate has not taken up the president’s election security bill, the SAVE Act, resisting his demands to get rid of the filibuster to move it past Democratic opposition. Republican leadership has deemed his proposal to cap credit card interest rates at 10% for one year effectively DOA.

And some in his party even publicly celebrated the Supreme Court’s major rebuke that struck down his use of emergency tariffs.

Typically the most-watched speech for a president, the State of the Union gives the commander in chief an opportunity to offer a vision of the future and take a victory lap for their accomplishments. It also offers a chance to address lawmakers to call for new legislation or the passage of already floating proposals. But Trump’s focus is unlikely to be on lawmakers, a source familiar with the speech said.

“Congress will be there, but the audience is the American people,” said the source, requesting anonymity to discuss the address.

The White House has been mum on the specifics of what the president hopes to accomplish with his address, which he spent part of Monday preparing for. Those close to Trump have cautioned that the speech could continue to be tweaked up until Tuesday night, close to delivery.

Trump said on Monday that the speech will be long, “because we have so much to talk about.”

It’s unclear whether the president will call on Congress to extend his global tariffs, and he’s suggested that he wouldn’t push a second megabill on affordability that some Republican lawmakers support.

Given the low chances for consensus on major legislation, the president is unlikely to focus on specific policy, said Marc Short, Trump’s legislative director ahead of his 2018 address. The coming midterm elections likely will loom over the night.

“I would anticipate that he’ll be speaking a lot less to the people sitting in that chamber than he will be trying to speak to the American public, defending his record and what he’s accomplished,” Short said.

Asked if Trump needs to use the speech to get his party back in line, the source familiar with the address pointed to polling that shows an overwhelming majority of Republicans support Trump, even as overall numbers dip.

“Look at where the voters are,” the source said, arguing there was no pressure to wrangle Congress.

Most Republican lawmakers are closely aligned with Trump. He lost only a handful of Republicans on various votes in the last 13 months. And allies on the Hill said Trump doesn’t need to address any rancor in the Republican ranks.

“I think what the president will do tomorrow is take a victory lap,” Sen. Bernie Moreno told NOTUS on Monday. “I think one of the things that has been missed in the last 12 months is how much he’s done for this country in the last 13 months that he’s been here.”

Trump gave his 2025 address in the afterglow of sweeping electoral wins for Republicans. This year’s speech comes in the midst of significant challenges for the administration, and as the White House has struggled to find its footing on several key issues.

A number of Republicans broke with Trump on a bill to force the Department of Justice to release the files from the investigation into Jeffrey Epstein, which the president initially opposed before changing his mind.

Trump’s capture of Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro and the Department of Defense’s campaign of boat strikes is the subject of ongoing Congressional inquiries and bipartisan scrutiny.

Despite efforts to bill himself as the “peace president” and promises to end U.S. intervention abroad, Trump has dangled war with Iran — or at least an extended military campaign — as a possibility for weeks. Trump does not have unified support for military intervention among congressional Republicans, who will soon vote on a war powers resolution.

Meanwhile, Republicans are not confident about keeping the House after November’s elections. Trump is campaigning on their behalf, but the White House is still struggling to formulate a winning strategy on the issue of the year: affordability.

While the president has positive indicators to turn to — like his initiative to bring down prices on prescription drugs, historic highs for the stock market and relatively low inflation despite tariffs — a majority of Americans still are sour on the economy.

Trump is also coming off of a massive defeat from the Supreme Court, which on Friday curbed his tariff authority, crippling an essential part of the president’s economic agenda, with approval from some congressional Republicans.

The Trump administration has turned to Section 122 of the Trade Act of 1974, which allows the president to put tariffs on other countries, but only for 150 days before requiring congressional approval to keep them in place. Trump has repeatedly signaled he does not believe he needs permission from Congress for this second batch of tariffs, either.

House Speaker Mike Johnson did not criticize the court’s decision, saying that Congress and the White House will determine the path forward. But Johnson indicated Monday that there wasn’t much of an appetite in Congress to pursue enacting tariffs legislatively.

Since the ruling, the president has railed against any member of his party who has celebrated the ruling or has voiced disapproval over tariffs in general.

He still insists Republicans are a united front.

“We lost two Republicans or three Republicans, because they’re not good Republicans,” Trump told a reporter on Friday, referring to Congress’ vote against Trump’s Canada tariffs. “We have great unity. There’s great unity in the Republican Party, and I hope everyone’s going to vote Republican, because otherwise you won’t have a country left.”