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by MARK POWELL
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The annual State of the Union address is as close as it gets to Hollywood on the Potomac. It’s usually the sole time all year when the entire Congress, the U.S. Supreme Court, plus the president, vice-president, and cabinet members gather under one roof. Of course there’s always the “designated survivor,” who is forced to watch the big show on television while eating pizza at an undisclosed “secure location” – ensuring continuity of government in case something God-awful happens. Veterans Affairs Secretary Doug Collins drew the short straw last year, for those of you keeping score.
On Tuesday evening (February 24, 2026), it will once again be “lights, camera, action!” on Capitol Hill as House Sergeant at Arms William P. McFarland bellows, “Mr. Speaker, the president of the United States!” – and the doors swing open to welcome Donald Trump into a chamber his party controls by the narrowest of margins.
At that point, the eyes of the nation – or at least an estimated 30-40 million people – will focus on the procession to the dais wondering to themselves “what fresh hell is about to break loose?”
That’s because this once highly respected occasion has undergone a dramatic — and unsettling — transformation in recent years.
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Woodrow Wilson revived the long-moribund tradition of delivering the president’s constitutionally required report to Congress via an in-person speech in 1913. Thomas Jefferson, a notoriously poor public speaker, had scrapped it over a century earlier. For a century after Wilson’s reboot of the big evening, this speech was delivered and received with solemnity and respect.
Then Trump made his famous trip down the golden escalator on June 16, 2015, and U.S. politics was turned upside down forever.
Today, the State of the Union address has been transformed into a cross between a Pentecostal tent revival and an overly exuberant high school pep rally on steroids. It’s accompanied by all the dignity and decorum found at World Federation of Wrestling matches.
Throughout Trump’s first term, the yearly address grew increasingly rancorous. Partisans on both sides kept ratcheting up tensions inside the chamber. Things reached an appalling low in 2020 when then Speaker Nancy Pelosi brazenly made a show of holding her copy of Trump’s speech over her head and ripping it in half as she stood behind him.
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That was a debutante ball compared to what happened during Joe Biden forgetful term in office. The annual address grew increasingly partisan until 2024 – when it morphed into an all-out Democrat campaign rally, complete with chants from Biden’s team and jeers and boos for the other side of the aisle.
Republican hands are equally dirty. Another low moment came last year, when now-former Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene was whooping and hollering to beat the band while wearing a spectacularly inappropriate red MAGA hat on the House floor.
For his part, Trump eggs on Democrats during his remarks every bit as much as Biden goaded Republicans during his addresses – and based on the current climate in our nation, Tuesday night’s speech is shaping up to be a perfect storm of bad behavior.
Let’s start with the GOP. Party leaders are clearly worried about losing control of one — or both — houses of Congress in November’s midterm elections. They fear Trump’s “why use a stiletto when a machete is available” approach has the potential to make a bad situation even worse.
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They have good reason to be afraid. Because when Trump takes the podium Tuesday, he’ll be looking directly into the faces of the very people he’s galactically pissed off at right now: including the six Supreme Court justices who struck down his cherished global trade tariffs (two of whom he appointed).
Tariffs are the very bedrock of his international economic policy – and he promptly reissued them via executive order.
“All it would take would be a look,” a D.C.-based political strategist told us. “A smirk, a sneer, the slightest trace of snideness from just one justice, and Trump could go off like a bomb. That’s the very last thing Republicans need right now.”
That’s particularly true given Trump’s polling numbers – which have been sliding precipitously in recent months and currently hover at or near record lows for his second term in office.
Things are equally high risk on the Democratic side. Minority Leader Hakeem Jefferies is reportedly laying down the law to the Democratic caucus, saying in no uncertain terms that he’ll tolerate no antics from his colleagues during the address – even as anger on the far left boils over following two fatal shootings in Minnesota involving Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers.
“He might as well be talking to the wind,” a national pollster in Washington opined to us. “Keeping progressives in line is like herding cats in the best of times. And given their seething fury at ICE and Trump’s immigration enforcement actions just now, Jefferies will need all the luck he can get to keep them in line.”
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Jefferies is highly motivated to do so because he has a lot riding on November’s outcome. If Democrats pick up a net gain of just four House seats this fall, he would be positioned to take the gavel from current speaker Mike Johnson.
Progressives, however, have an affinity for public protests. It’s their milieu. And with emotions on the left approaching flood level over illegal immigrants just now, keeping them in check will be a Herculean challenge for Jefferies.
So, everyone has skin in the game this time around. Who will prevail?
We should know soon after the words, “Mr. Speaker…” roar out from the House door. At which point things could quickly devolve into “Katy bar the door.”
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR…
J. Mark Powell is an award-winning former TV journalist, government communications veteran, and a political consultant. He is also an author and an avid Civil War enthusiast. Got a tip or a story idea for Mark? Email him at mark@fitsnews.com.
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4 comments
I mean, Trump doesn’t have to worry about himself anymore. He can’t legally run for a third term, and if he decides to shred another page of the Constitution and run anyways, why would he care about winning legally?
Of course Republicans are scared that even if he does the full dictator thing that he won’t also do the one party dictatorship thing, which means they will get washed away in a blue wave in the coming election.
They should also be worried that Trump’s cult of personality is non-transferable, proven by Pence, Vance, Bondi, Patel, Gabbard… oh, that list is quite long indeed. It seems the GOP is in short supply of other geese with extremely tacky golden eggs.
Way worse than Pelosi ripping the speech was the year Joe Wilson bellowed “You lie! at Obama. But this blahg is firmly entrenched in the taint of the Wilsons so there will be nary a mention of that.
Trump will alternate between whining and lying for a couple of hours. Hopefully he will be able to control his bowels for that length of time. They’ve probably already started doing makeup on his hands.
It should be very interesting!
Will it be 50% lying about accomplishments and 50% whining that people aren’t thanking him enough?