Trump touts ‘roaring economy’ as president calls affordability crisis a ‘lie’

Edited by Alexandra White, Zehra Munir and Peter Wells in New YorkJames Politi in Washington Donald Trump lashed out again at Democrats in the chamber who were refusing to stand up and heckling him during the speech. “These people are crazy. I’m telling you they’re crazy. We’re lucky we have a country with people like this. Democrats are destroying our country, but we’ve stopped it just in the nick of time,” he said. Lauren Fedor and Abigail Hauslohner in WashingtonThe mood in the chamber became more heated as Donald Trump defended his administration’s heavy-handed immigration enforcement tactics.Trump called on lawmakers in the chamber to stand if they agreed that the “first duty” of the US government was to citizens rather than “illegal aliens”. The president told Democrats who stayed seated that they should be “ashamed” of themselves.Minnesota congresswoman Ilhan Omar and Michigan congresswoman Rashida Tlaib repeatedly shouted over the president, saying he had killed Americans.Democrats have called for immigration enforcement reforms in the wake of the killings of two US citizens at the hands of federal immigration agents in Minnesota earlier this year.Stefania Palma in WashingtonDonald Trump said vice-president JD Vance would lead a “war on fraud”, as he criticised the state of Minnesota, where governor Tim Walz last month dropped his bid for re-election over allegations of sprawling state welfare fraud.Federal prosecutors have claimed scams, many involving Somali migrants, have occurred on a wider scale than previously thought. Trump zeroed in on Minnesota’s Somali community during his speech.Vance last month said the Department of Justice would create a new fraud section. The announcement came after the DoJ disbanded units such as the national cryptocurrency enforcement team, which was set up under ex-president Joe Biden to focus on criminal misuse of digital assets including fraud and extortion.Lauren Fedor in WashingtonDonald Trump called on lawmakers to pass legislation that would ban members of Congress and their families from trading stocks. “As we ensure that all Americans can profit from the rising stock market, let’s also ensure that members of Congress cannot corruptly profit from using insider information,” Trump said, prompting applause from Republican and Democratic lawmakers.Repeated efforts to ban congressional stock trading have stalled, despite public outcry over the practice.Trump went on to dig at former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, one of the wealthiest members of Congress, who has for years resisted calls to hold a vote on legislation to prevent lawmakers from trading.“Did Nancy Pelosi stand up, if she’s here? Doubt it,” Trump said. “Pass the Stop Insider Trading Act without delay. I wasn’t sure if anybody on this side was going to applaud for that. I’m very impressed. Thank you. I’m very impressed.”Pelosi, who will retire from politics at the end of this Congress, did stand up and applauded in support of the president’s call for a ban on congressional stock trading.Martha Muir in New York and Michael Acton in San FranciscoTrump said major tech companies will make a “rate payer protection pledge” to build their own power plants for AI data centres. “We’re telling the major tech companies they have the obligation to provide for their own power needs,” he said. “In many cases, the price of electricity will go very substantially down.”Electricity costs are a hot-button issue heading into the midterms, one that Democrats have exploited in gubernatorial races in New Jersey and Virginia. Trump promised on the campaign trail to cut energy costs in half within a year of taking office, but electricity prices have gone up an average of 8 per cent nationwide. Microsoft and OpenAI have pledged they will keep electricity costs in check.

The White House in January announced plans to make tech giants pay for additional power generation in PJM, the grid operator which serves large concentrations of data centres in Virginia and Pennsylvania.While some data centres are already going without grid connections in favour of their own power supply, wait times for gas turbines to generate electricity can stretch as long as seven years.Google, Amazon, Microsoft and Meta are set to spend $660bn on AI data centre infrastructure this year, much of it in the US.Patrick Temple-West in New YorkPresident Donald Trump urged Congress to adopt a healthcare plan he proposed in January that would codify his drug pricing agreements with several pharmaceutical companies.Trump’s scheme would supplement healthcare insurance plans following the expiration of certain subsidies from the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare. It would also codify lower drug prices that the White House negotiated with more than a dozen pharmaceutical companies from AstraZeneca to Pfizer.As part of these deals, pharma companies are offering lower prices for certain drugs on a new website: TrumpRx.The president praised the new website, which offers coupons for 43 medicines including weight-loss drugs, insulin and a drug to help people stop smoking.Lauren Fedor in WashingtonSeveral Democratic lawmakers, including former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, stood to applaud the president’s move to prevent institutional buyers from snatching up houses.“Now I’m asking Congress to make that ban permanent because . . . we want homes for people, not for corporations; corporations are doing just fine,” the president said. Myles McCormick in WashingtonDonald Trump doubled down on his claims that Democrats were to blame for the affordability crunch that has been hurting him in the polls.“They simply use the word affordability,” the US president said. “Somebody gave it to them, knowing full well that they caused and created the increased prices that all of our citizens had to endure.”“It’s the same dirty rotten lie. Their policies created the high prices. Our policies are rapidly ending them.”Trump ran for office on a vow to end inflation. While the price of some goods has declined since Trump took office, the cost of most consumer goods has continued to rise, keeping inflation at elevated levels and undermining the president’s popularity.A poll last week from the Council on Foreign Relations found about two-thirds of respondents blamed Trump’s tariff policies for higher prices.Zehra Munir in New York Donald Trump touted the US Treasury’s so-called Trump Accounts, which will award children born in 2025 or later $1,000 in an investment account.“Tax free accounts for every American child,” the president said. He gave a special mention to technology billionaire Michael Dell and his wife Susan Dell, who have donated more than $6bn to fund the accounts. Trump also thanked tech investor Brad Gerstner, who has advocated for the accounts.Claire Jones in WashingtonDonald Trump sought to play up the impact of his One Big Beautiful Bill Act on Americans, despite economists saying it will widen the gap between rich and poor. “With the great big beautiful bill, we gave you no tax on tips, no tax on overtime and no tax on social security,” the president said. A Congressional Budget Office analysis shows Trump’s landmark tax-and-spend package will widen the gap between the richest and poorest workers.The breakdown from Congress’s fiscal watchdog on the act’s distributional impact showed the top-10 per cent of earners would be $13,600 better off annually, while the lowest 10 per cent of workers would have a $1,200 decrease in their resources because of healthcare and food stamps contained in the legislation.James Politi in Washington Donald Trump spoke for more than 30 minutes before moving to defend his trade policies, suggesting tariffs could end up replacing the US income tax. “I believe the tariffs paid for by foreign countries will, like in the past, substantially replace the modern-day system of income tax, taking a great financial burden off the people that I love,” the president said. Since the Supreme Court struck down many of the levies he imposed last year using emergency powers, Trump has imposed a 10 per cent global levy based on a different statute, doubling down on his devotion to tariffs even though polls show American voters are sceptical of their benefits. “Countries that were ripping us off for decades are now paying us hundreds of billions of dollars,” he said.Lauren Fedor in Washington Donald Trump lamented the Supreme Court opinion that found the tariffs he implemented via emergency powers were illegal.The US president called the ruling “unfortunate” and “disappointing”.

The Supreme Court on Friday ruled that the president had exceeded his authority when he invoked the International Emergency Economic Powers Act to slap a raft of levies on countries worldwide.The Supreme Court justices in the chamber are stony-faced as the president rails against their ruling that struck down his use of emergency powers to impose sweeping tariffs.Democratic lawmakers applauded for the justices. Zehra Munir in New York US President Donald Trump said mortgage rates are the ‘‘lowest in four years and falling fast”, as he touted a new mortgage is down almost $5,000 since he took office. “Low interest rates will solve the [Joe] Biden-created housing problem, at the same time protecting the values of those people who already own a house, that really feel rich for the first time in their lives,” he added. The average 30-year mortgage rate has fallen to 6.01 per cent this week, according to Freddie Mac, which is the lowest level since September 2022. High mortgage rates have weakened US housing market activity since the Federal Reserve raised borrowing costs in 2022. Trump has consistently put pressure on the US central bank to lower the benchmark rate. Martha Muir in New YorkDonald Trump touted his “energy dominance” agenda, claiming American oil production is up 600,000 barrels per day and the US has received 80mn barrels of Venezuelan oil.Since taking office he has leaned on oil and gas producers to boost production, with permits for drilling on public lands surging 55 per cent since the start of his second term.“I kept my promise to drill baby drill,” Trump said.Under former president Joe Biden, US oil production reached historic highs, with production hitting a new monthly record of 13.5mn in December 2025.Oil producers have complained low prices are disincentivising drilling and capital spending. Brent crude prices have fallen about 10 per cent since Trump took office.Lauren Fedor in Washington Cheers and a unanimous standing ovation in the House chamber for the gold medal winning USA men’s hockey team, who entered the chamber above the president.A second standing ovation and applause from lawmakers as well as the ice hockey players for the Team USA women’s ice hockey team, which also won gold at the Winter Olympics in Italy.The women’s ice hockey team declined an invitation to attend the State of the Union.Claire Jones and Myles McCormick in WashingtonTrump claimed inflation was “plummeting” and incomes were “rising fast”, despite official figures showing that price pressures remained above the Federal Reserve’s 2 per cent goal. “The roaring economy is roaring like never before,” the US president said. Annual inflation has fallen from 3 per cent when Trump took office, but remained at 2.4 per cent last month.The issue of affordability has been a persistent challenge for the president amid the continued rise in prices.Lauren Fedor in Washington Al Green, the Texas Democrat who was censured for his behavior at last year’s joint address to Congress, was removed from the chamber.Before being escorted out on Tuesday, he stood with a handwritten sign saying “BLACK PEOPLE AREN’T APES!”Earlier this month, Donald Trump removed a social media post that included a racist meme.Democratic lawmakers largely stood as Trump entered the chamber on Tuesday, but refrained from clapping.James Politi in Washington US President Donald Trump started his speech by declaring that America was “stronger than ever before” as he hailed a “turnaround for the ages” and pointed to the upcoming 250th anniversary of US independence. “You’ve seen nothing yet, we’re going to do better and better and better,” he said to kick off the speech.FT reportersDonald Trump is delivering a State of the Union address at a pivotal moment in his presidency as his approval ratings sink in the face of a lingering affordability crisis and US leader weighs launching another war in the Middle East.The president entered the House of Representatives ahead of the address on Tuesday evening to applause from his Republican allies but a cold reception from Democrats, many of whom skipped the occasion.Trump shook the hands of the Supreme Court justices in the room, including Amy Coney Barrett, whom he said should be “ashamed” after she voted with the majority to rule that the president’s sweeping tariffs were illegal.Trump’s approval ratings have languished amid anxiety about affordability in the US and polls suggest Democrats are on course to reclaim the House — and potentially even the Senate — in the midterms after sweeping off-year elections last year.The State of the Union speech follows a tumultuous few months that have included fallout from the Jeffrey Epstein disclosures, concerns about the president’s violent immigration crackdown, another government shutdown and the Supreme Court’s ruling on tariffs.Foreign policy issues, from Venezuela to Greenland and Iran, have also pulled Trump away from the kitchen-table issues he vowed on the campaign trail to resolve for ordinary Americans.The US has amassed a huge naval force in the Middle East as Trump weighs whether to launch a new attack on Iran.Follow the FT for live updates and analysis of the addressLauren Fedor in Washington Republican lawmakers began chanting U-S-A after Speaker of the House Mike Johnson introduced the president.Lauren Fedor in Washington Republican lawmakers have given a standing ovation for First Lady Melania Trump, who entered the chamber and briefly embraced her son, Barron Trump, before shaking hands with Second Lady Usha Vance.Lauren Fedor in WashingtonDonald Trump has entered the chamber to thunderous applause from Republican lawmakers.The US president began making his way down the aisle as Republican House members stopped to shake his hand or pose for selfies.Amy Mackinnon in WashingtonSteve Witkoff, Donald Trump’s special envoy who has led US efforts to broker an end to the wars in Gaza and Ukraine, has filed into the chamber behind the cabinet.Witkoff is due in Geneva for Iran talks on Thursday.Stefania Palma in WashingtonFour Supreme Court justices have entered the chamber, five short of the full bench.Chief justice John Roberts as well as justices Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett — all members of the conservative wing — were in attendance. They were joined by liberal justice Elena Kagan.Conservative justices Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch were absent, as were liberal justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson.Donald Trump’s speech comes days after the Supreme Court dealt the biggest blow against his administration, ruling on Friday that the president had exceeded his authority when invoking emergency powers to impose his signature tariff policy. Trump attacked the court following the opinion, but praised Kavanaugh for penning the main dissent.Lauren Fedor and Steff Chávez in WashingtonThe president’s cabinet has entered the chamber, starting with secretary of state Marco Rubio, followed by Treasury secretary Scott Bessent, defence secretary Pete Hegseth, attorney-general Pam Bondi and White House chief of staff Susie Wiles.Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the top-ranking military officer, is also in the chamber.Special envoy Steve Witkoff walked in with the cabinet as did CIA director John Ratcliffe and director of national intelligence Tulsi Gabbard.Steff Chávez in WashingtonUS President Donald Trump is now at the Capitol. Lauren Fedor in WashingtonTonight’s State of the Union address comes just days after the US Supreme Court ruled Donald Trump had no authority to use emergency powers to impose tariffs. Friday’s ruling delivered a setback to the president’s signature economic policy, upending Trump’s tariff agenda and sending corporate America racing for reimbursement for the billions of dollars in duties they have paid since the tariffs took effect last year.The ruling also served as a major check on the president’s power and underlined the central role Congress plays in not only setting tariff rates but also legislating more broadly.The White House has said the president will tout his economic agenda in tonight’s speech. But it is unknown whether he will use the opportunity to again rail against the court’s decision and insist he has the authority to muscle through tariffs through alternate means.James Politi in WashingtonDonald Trump will say he will “never hesitate to confront threats to America” as he weighs US military strikes against Iran, according to the first excerpts of his State of the Union address released by the White House.“As president, I will make peace wherever I can — but I will never hesitate to confront threats to America wherever we must,” the president will say. In the aftermath of last month’s US raid in Venezuela to capture former autocratic leader Nicolás Maduro, Trump said the US was “restoring American security and dominance in the western hemisphere, acting to secure our national interests and defend our country from violence, drugs, terrorism and foreign interference”.Claire Jones in Washington Donald Trump will call on Congress to ban institutional investors from buying homes in an attempt to make houses more affordable for Americans and address claims the US president has failed to tackle a cost of living crisis. “Last month, I signed an executive order to ban large Wall Street investment firms from buying up, in the thousands, single-family homes,” Trump will say, according to excerpts of his State of the Union address. “And now I am asking Congress to make that ban permanent, because homes are for people, not corporations.” Americans’ claims that essential goods, including housing and groceries, remain unaffordable — despite the US president promising to address the surge in prices under his predecessor Joe Biden — could cost Trump votes in the November midterm elections.Lauren Fedor in WashingtonVice-president JD Vance has entered the House chamber to polite applause, followed by senators from both political parties. Vance will sit behind the president, alongside Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, throughout the president’s speech.The House chamber has filled up gradually over the course of the last hour with members of both parties, though it appears that Republican lawmakers comfortably outnumber their Democratic counterparts.Steff Chávez in Washington Donald Trump will certainly boast about the military operations he has ordered over the past year, particularly the bombing of Iran’s nuclear facilities in June 2025 and the capture of Venezuela’s former strongman president Nicolás Maduro. “You'll hear the president tout the accomplishments overseas of the United States military,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said on Tuesday ahead of the speech. Since retaking office, Trump has continued the US’s campaign against Houthi rebels, ordered strikes on Isis targets in Iraq and Nigeria, expanded counterterrorism strikes in Somalia, and launched a revenge operation against Isis in Syria following the deaths of two US soldiers.During Israel’s 12-day war with Iran last June, the US sent seven B-2 bombers to drop 30,000lb bombs on two key Iranian nuclear facilities and hit a third with missiles. In the first days of January, he ordered his most daring operation yet: sending US special forces into Caracas to capture Maduro. Some content could not load. Check your internet connection or browser settings.Demetri Sevastopulo in WashingtonThe State of the Union comes one month before Donald Trump will meet Xi Jinping during a state visit to Beijing.Observers are watching to see whether he provides any clues about the deal he wants to strike with the Chinese leader in what will be their second face-to-face meeting since Trump returned to the White House.In last year’s address to Congress, Trump made only a few passing references to China. Since then, he launched a potentially catastrophic trade war with Beijing before reaching a quasi-détente with Xi in Busan in October.Many allies will be hoping Trump’s speech provides detail about his overall strategy towards China and the Indo-Pacific.Steff Chávez in Washington Trump has departed the White House and is en route to the Capitol. Lauren Fedor in WashingtonTonight’s State of the Union address will take place during the continued stalemate between Democrats and Republicans over funding for the Department of Homeland Security. The department entered a partial shutdown on February 14 after lawmakers failed to strike an agreement to keep it funded. Democratic lawmakers have refused to sign on to more funding for the DHS without securing reforms to immigration enforcement tactics. “As we speak, Democrats in this chamber have cut off all funding for the Department of Homeland Security,” President Donald Trump will say in his speech tonight. “They have closed the agency responsible for protecting Americans from terrorists and murderers. Tonight, I am demanding the full and immediate restoration of all funding for the Border Security and Homeland Security of the United States.”Democrats have long protested the Trump administration’s mass deportation efforts but drew a red line to demand reform after federal agents shot and killed two US citizens protesting Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Minnesota earlier this year.Oliver Roeder in New YorkUS stocks have risen during Donald Trump’s second term, and the S&P 500 reached a record high above 7,000. Wall Street’s relative performance is less than in Trump’s first term, though, and trails either of president Barack Obama’s terms. The gains are more comparable to those under president Joe Biden.Some content could not load. Check your internet connection or browser settings.Stefania Palma in WashingtonParamount chief executive David Ellison will attend Donald Trump’s State of the Union address at the invitation of Lindsey Graham, the Republican senator from South Carolina. Ellison’s presence will come just hours after Warner Bros Discovery said Paramount’s revised proposal of $31 a share in cash to buy the studio and streaming group could trounce Netflix’s existing deal, the latest twist in a fraught takeover pursuit.Paramount’s bid, which is bankrolled by Oracle billionaire and Trump donor Larry Ellison, has drawn scrutiny from Democratic lawmakers who argue it raises significant competition concerns. The media group last week cleared a critical antitrust hurdle in a signal of the Trump administration’s support.Steff Chávez in WashingtonThe US has amassed its largest naval force in the Middle East since the start of the US invasion of Iraq in 2003 as Washington considers new strikes against Iran. The military assets are enough to sustain a multi-week air campaign against the Islamic republic. Donald Trump has promised “traumatic” and “bad things” will happen to Iran if the regime does not strike a deal over its nuclear programme, warning any US action would be far worse than Washington’s co-ordinated attack on three of its nuclear facilities last June. The assembled force consists of 18 warships, including two air aircraft carriers, 13 destroyers and three littoral combat ships, along with two support vessels. More destroyers are expected to be dispatched, said a person familiar with the matter. The US has also assembled tremendous air power on bases and at sea, significantly increasing the number of fighter jets it has in the region. The warships are scattered throughout the Arabian Sea, the Gulf, the Gulf of Oman and the Mediterranean Sea, according to the US Navy. About 40,000 troops are in the region. Some content could not load. Check your internet connection or browser settings.Abigail Hauslohner in WashingtonEven as the US has marched closer to war with Iran, Donald Trump has continued to promote himself as the president “of peace”.Trump last week convened a group of foreign leaders for the inaugural meeting of his Board of Peace. Administration officials have suggested that the body, which Trump created to oversee the fragile US-brokered ceasefire in Gaza last year, could rival the UN.Trump said he had achieved what “probably no other” country ever has, “because we settled eight wars” in the space of a year.That claim is exaggerated, but Trump, who has made no secret of his desire for a Nobel Peace Prize, has repeated it often and he will probably emphasise it tonight.US-led efforts to normalise ties between Azerbaijan and Armenia — one of the wars Trump says he ended — are reshaping relations between the long-standing foes. Other conflicts on his list including in Gaza, between Israel and Iran, between the Democratic Republic of Congo and Rwanda and between Thailand and Cambodia have proven more complicated.Oliver Roeder in New YorkMany of the members of Congress who are attending Donald Trump’s address will be up for election in a few months.The upper and lower houses of Congress are currently controlled by Republicans, but traders on prediction markets see the Democrats as strong favourites to win back the House of Representatives in the midterm elections in November. Their odds in the Senate have been creeping up too. On the prediction market Kalshi, Democrats’ chances to win the chambers currently sit around 80 per cent and 40 per cent, respectively.Democrats are also increasing their lead in the generic congressional ballot; they are currently at 48 per cent compared with Republicans’ 42 per cent, according to an average of polls.Some content could not load. Check your internet connection or browser settings.Joe Biden used his State of the Union address in 2024 to deliver a “simple” message to Vladimir Putin, as the war between Russia and Ukraine entered its third year.“We will not walk away” from Ukraine or “bow down” to Putin, Biden said in a high-stakes speech intended to show the American public that he had the energy to win and serve a second presidential term.President Joe Biden opened his 2024 State of the Union rallying for American support for UkraineAmy Mackinnon in WashingtonDonald Trump’s State of the Union address falls on the fourth anniversary of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, a war that has persisted despite the US president’s campaign pledge to end it within 24 hours.A year into Trump’s second term, peace has evaded considerable US diplomatic efforts, with Russian President Vladimir Putin showing little interest in climbing down. The American leader has oscillated between blaming Ukraine and Russia for holding up the peace process.Trump is expected to speak tonight about his peacemaking efforts, which he and his administration see as one of his core foreign policy achievements.Eva Xiao in New YorkThe majority of Americans think the Trump administration’s deportation of undocumented immigrants is “going too far”, according to a recent poll by the Washington Post and ABC News.The poll, conducted mid-February, captures the decline in support for the president’s immigration policies after US citizens Alex Pretti and Renée Good were shot and killed by Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers in Minneapolis.Views on the president’s hardline immigration agenda remain highly partisan, with only 16 per cent of Republicans saying the White House has gone too far compared to 95 per cent of Democrats.Some content could not load. Check your internet connection or browser settings.In a further reflection of the polarisation around the State of the Union, then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi tore up a copy of Donald Trump’s speech following his 2020 address.The address took place a day before the end of Trump’s impeachment trial, though the issue did not receive a mention in the speech.During the applause as Trump concluded his speech, Pelosi began tearing up a few pages of the president’s speech in quiet protest.Nancy Pelosi rips up paper following Trump's 2020 addressLauren Fedor in WashingtonThe State of the Union has historically been a bipartisan event, but at least two dozen Democratic lawmakers have said they will not attend tonight’s speech in an act of protest against Donald Trump’s presidency.Hakeem Jeffries, the Democratic House minority leader, last week said his colleagues had two options: either “attend with silent defiance” or skip the speech and participate in a “variety of different alternate programming”, including a rally on the National Mall.Last year, several Democratic lawmakers staged a walkout during Trump’s address to a joint session of Congress, while others held up signs in protest.John Fetterman, the Democratic senator from Pennsylvania who has not shied away from criticising members of his own party, said there would be “no dignity” in yelling or waving signs during this year’s speech.“You can agree or disagree on things, but if you’re going to show up, just do it with dignity because, you know, really need to respect the office,” Fetterman told Fox News last week.Eva Xiao in New YorkAn anaemic labour market has plagued Donald Trump’s first year in office, with several months of yearly decline in employment that have prompted one top Federal Reserve official to suggest that the US shed jobs in 2025.Robust numbers in January — showing an increase of 130,000 jobs — raised hopes that the labour market is starting to stabilise, though most of last month’s job growth came from the healthcare sector.An improvement in job growth, however, means that rate cuts from the central bank are less likely in the short-term if price pressures do not subside. During January’s Fed meeting, staff noted that a “salient risk was that inflation would prove to be more persistent than . . . anticipated”.Some content could not load. Check your internet connection or browser settings.Lauren Fedor in WashingtonNovember’s midterm elections represent a critical test of Donald Trump’s second term as president.Control of both chambers of Congress will be up for grabs, and Democrats are determined to break Trump’s grip on the legislature, in effect ending his ability to push through legislation. If Democrats can take back the House, that will set the stage for likely impeachment proceedings against Trump and his top officials.Trump, who was impeached twice in his first term in office, has repeatedly warned he is likely to be censured again.“You got to win the midterms because if we don’t win the midterms, it’s just going to be, I mean, they’ll find a reason to impeach me,” Trump told Republican House members at a retreat last month.But the odds appear stacked against Trump and the Republicans. The latest Real Clear Politics polling average of the generic congressional ballot, a measure of which party voters prefer to control Congress, shows Democrats with a five-point advantage over Republicans.Lyndon Johnson used his 1964 State of the Union address to declare “unconditional war” on poverty.The president’s efforts were a response to poverty rates that had soared in the US. In the modern era, the cost of living crisis is a major concern for voters.Johnson’s address laid the groundwork for federal welfare programmes including Medicare, Medicaid and food stamps.Lyndon Johnson delivers his State of the Union address in 1964Eva Xiao in New YorkInflation remained stubbornly above the Federal Reserve’s target of 2 per cent last year, though after peaking at 3.1 per cent in September, it fell to 2.4 per cent last month.Sticky inflation is a major pain point for US voters, a growing number of who think President Donald Trump is not doing enough to tame price increases and address America’s affordability crisis. At the same time, early fears that tariffs could cause prices to soar have not yet borne out.Some content could not load. Check your internet connection or browser settings.Abigail Hauslohner in WashingtonSecretary of state Marco Rubio delivered a classified briefing on the administration’s Iran plans to congressional leaders on Tuesday, hours ahead of Donald Trump’s State of the Union address. Democrats left the meeting calling for clarity on Trump’s war aims.“The president made the representation that Iran’s nuclear programme was completely and totally obliterated last year as a result of actions that the administration had taken,” House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries told reporters after leaving the briefing. “So if that, in fact, was true, what is the urgency as of this moment? That’s an open question, and the American people need a real explanation.”Mark Warner, the top Democrat on the Senate intelligence committee, said he appreciated the “consultation” from the White House but said it was “incumbent upon the president to make the case of what our country’s goals are, what our country’s interests are and how we’re going to protect American interests in the region.”“Maybe we’ll hear that tonight, but if we don’t hear it tonight, we need to hear it very, very, very soon,” he added.