Trump doesn’t give Congress much to do before the midterms

Tuesday’s State of the Union address is unlikely to make more than a ripple in the congressional agenda.

“I've got effectively a zero-vote margin at the point that we are now," Speaker Mike Johnson said Wednesday. | Alex Kent for POLITICO

President Donald Trump sketched out his vision Tuesday night of Republican governance heading into the midterms. Congress is barely in the picture.

From a legislative perspective, Trump’s State of the Union address was notable for what it didn’t include. He gave Republicans a pass on trying to revive his global tariff campaign after a major Supreme Court setback. He didn’t demand another party-line domestic policy bill before November, and he even skipped a jab at one of his favorite punching bags, the Senate filibuster.

Instead, Trump used the bulk of the speech to lean into red-meat issues like illegal immigration and gender-affirming health care, while encouraging lawmakers to tackle a few relatively minor topics — many of which have already been churning behind the scenes for months.

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