Today’s notice: 1 hour, 47ish minutes. What did we learn? Portland’s protest frogs take D.C. by storm. Some Republicans are softening on immigration — not Derrick Van Orden. Plus: A MAHA star takes the spotlight.
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What was new in the president’s speech: In a nearly two-hour State of the Union address to Congress — beating the record he set last year — Donald Trump rolled out a handful of new proposals and policy positions.
- Tariffs: The president said he believed revenue from his tariffs would supplant income tax, as he declared that he would not need Congress to keep his tariff agenda in place. He made the claim just feet away from several Supreme Court justices who recently ruled that his tariff power was not absolute.
- Affordability: Trump announced a new “rate payer protection pledge” that would place the burden on major tech companies to pay for their own power at AI data centers. An unnamed list of top tech companies have signed on, the president claimed.
- Insider trading: The president blessed the Stop Insider Trading Act, officially weighing in on the fight in Congress over whether members should be trading stocks.
- Striking shifts from past rhetoric: There were no threats of federal deployments to blue cities in the speech, and little focus on the kind of immigration enforcement surges that characterized Trump’s first year in office.
What was not new: Increasing distance from what SOTU night has traditionally been about.
- Protests on the floor: One Democratic lawmaker, Rep. Al Green, was removed from the chamber after he held up a sign that read “Black people aren’t apes,” a reference to Trump’s recent social media snafu. You may remember that Green was also removed from last year’s SOTU.
- Arguing with the crowd: There was a back-and-forth with Rep. Ilhan Omar over Trump’s rhetoric about Somalis in Minnesota. Rep. Rashida Tlaib also heckled the president, at one point yelling, “You’re shooting them,” while pointing a finger gun at Trump. “You’re killing Americans,” she added.
- “These people are crazy!” Trump yelled into the mic at one point, looking over at Democrats who didn’t join a standing ovation over the administration’s push against trans rights.
Trending
Open tabs: Hegseth Revives Effort to Demote Mark Kelly for ‘Illegal Orders’ Video (NOTUS); Trump administration considers requiring banks to collect citizenship information (WaPo); Pentagon Gives A.I. Company an Ultimatum (NYT); It Was Paradise for American Retirees—Until It Became the Center of a Drug War (WSJ)
From the opposition
“Is the president working to make life more affordable for you and your family?” Gov. Abigail Spanberger of Virginia asked as part of the official Democratic response to Trump’s address, delivered in front of a small and very well choreographed crowd in Williamsburg, Virginia. (“We all know the answer is no,” she said, in response to her own question.)
Spanberger is one of the party’s rock stars from the 2025 cycle, which earned her the response job last night — a gig known to really take the shine off a rock star now and again. Spanberger did not suffer that fate, delivering Democrats’ 2026 talking points without doing anything meme-able.