Trump airs familiar grievances, charts MAGA plan in address before bitterly divided Congress

The House Freedom Caucus warned Tuesday they will move to censure any Democrats who disrupt or protest Trump’s speech tonight.

"We expect the Sergeant at Arms and Capitol Police to take appropriate action against any Members of Congress or other persons violating House rule," the caucus said in an X post.

At President Joe Biden’s 2022 State of the Union, Republicans including Georgia GOP Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene and Colorado GOP Rep. Lauren Boebert repeatedly interrupted the speech. Neither were censured.

-ABC News' Lauren Peller and Lalee Ibssa

The annual presidential speeches have produced some memorable moments.

During President Joe Biden's last State of the Union in 2024, he came face to face with Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene dressed in "Make America Great Again" regalia.

In 2020, Nancy Pelosi, from her perch behind the president, dramatically ripped Trump's speech in half just after he finished.

In 2010, during President Barack Obama's second State of the Union address, Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito was seen mouthing the words "not true" after Obama criticized the court's "Citizens United" decision on corporate political contributions.

Addressing the ongoing war in Gaza, now entering its 17th month, has been a key component of Trump’s foreign policy so far. As Trump has doubled down on his support for Israel in the conflict and even called for a forced relocation of Palestinians and acquisition of Gaza by the U.S., a ceasefire deal reached at the end of Biden’s presidency appears to be falling apart, and last week Israel sent tanks into the West Bank for the first time in 20 years. So, do Americans back Trump on this?

We dug into recent polling to see how Americans feel about U.S. involvement in the conflict, and found that polls suggest a plurality of Americans still support Israel in the conflict with Hamas, as they have throughout the war: A Fox News poll from Jan. 10-13 found that 54 percent of registered voters sided more with the Israelis than the Palestinians, while 32 percent sided with the Palestinians. Another late January poll from Echelon Insights found that 43 percent sided with Israel in the conflict, while 18 percent sided with the Palestinians and 39 percent were unsure.

However, an increasing share of Americans over the course of the war have thought Israel’s response to the October 2023 terrorist attacks were too harsh, while American sympathy for Palestinians has grown. In a YouGov/The Economist poll from Feb. 9-11, 21 percent said they sympathized more with the Palestinians over the Israelis in the conflict, the highest percentage at any point since 2017. While that’s still fewer than those who sympathized more with the Israelis (31 percent), it represents a continued shift in opinion since the start of the conflict.

As for what policies Americans want to see, the YouGov/The Economist survey found that a plurality, 35 percent, supported decreasing military aid to Israel, while 27 percent supported maintaining the same amount of aid and only 15 percent supported increasing aid (a new low since the start of the conflict). And Americans are fairly united in disagreeing with Trump that the U.S. should take over Gaza. In a YouGov poll from Feb. 4-6, 54 percent of American adults opposed the U.S. taking control of Gaza, while 24 percent said they would support the move (only 7 percent if it involved using military force). A Data for Progress poll from Feb. 8-9 found that 62 percent of likely voters opposed the idea and 23 percent supported it.

Overall, Americans may be worried about global stability under Trump. In a YouGov/CBS News poll from Feb. 5-7, 45 percent of Americans thought Trump’s policies would decrease peace and stability in the world, while 40 percent thought he would increase it and the rest thought he would have no effect either way. We’ll see if Trump’s speech tonight does anything to allay or inflame those concerns.

—Monica Potts, 538

The State of the Union -- and similar joint addresses -- are important because they serve as the most public expression of the president's aims, allowing them to highlight key challenges and measures to counter those challenges for both Congress and the public. Tonight's event comes just ahead of a key federal funding deadline on March 14; Trump has called for the GOP-led Congress to adopt a stopgap funding measure to keep the government open, which could be his leading legislative request.

Yet Trump's focus since retaking office has been not on legislation but on a flurry of executive activity that his supporters broadly back as a necessary shake-up of government -- and his critics oppose as constitutional overreach -- so a speech light on legislative asks wouldn't be too surprising from him.

In fact, Trump already has a history of making fewer such asks than other modern presidents. During his first term, his addresses never surpassed 24 requests for congressional action, according to data collected by political scientists Donna Hoffman and Alison Howard. That mark ranked below the median of 31 asks per speech among all presidential addresses from 1965 to 2024.

By comparison, Obama made at least 31 appeals for congressional action in half of his eight addresses, while President Joe Biden regularly surpassed that figure during his four years. President George W. Bush, the last Republican to hold the office before Trump, made at least 31 requests five times in eight tries.

Granted, making a request doesn't mean Congress took action -- especially if the other party held power, based on Hoffman and Howard's research. Since Lyndon Johnson made the first evening State of the Union address in 1965, presidents have achieved full or partial success on about 2 in 5 of congressional requests when their party had full control of government, while they've only seen success on around 1 in 3 requests under divided government.

-Geoffrey Skelley, 538