Trump touts ‘winning’ in State of the Union address as Washington Democrats decry ‘costs, chaos and corruption’ of his administration

WASHINGTON – In his first official State of the Union address since returning to office a little more than a year ago, President Donald Trump touted his administration’s accomplishments on Tuesday while Washington state Democrats accused him of being responsible for chaos, rising costs and unprecedented corruption.

In an era marked by deep partisan division, Democrats and Republicans reacted predictably to a speech that alternated between unifying moments highlighting American greatness – including an appearance by the gold medal-winning U.S. men’s Olympic hockey team – and Trump taking shots at the opposition party. The president spoke for nearly two hours, breaking the record he set a year earlier for the longest address to a joint session of Congress in recorded history.

“A short time ago, we were a dead country,” Trump said. “Now, we are the hottest country anywhere in the world. The hottest.”

The address offered little in the way of new policy revelations, nor explanation of the dramatic military buildup in recent days around Iran as Trump demands capitulation from the country’s embattled government. He mocked Democrats for talking about a crisis of affordability in the country while blaming them for causing high prices.

Days after the Supreme Court overturned the tariffs that have been the centerpiece of his economic policy and a key foreign-policy tool, Trump called the court’s ruling “unfortunate” while Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Elena Kagan, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett sat stone-faced in the front row.

“I used these tariffs – took in hundreds of billions of dollars – to make great deals for our country,” Trump said,

Rep. Michael Baumgartner, a Spokane Republican, said after leaving the chamber that he was especially moved by Trump awarding the Medal of Honor to an Army pilot who was wounded during the January operation that removed Venezuela’s president and a 100-year-old Navy pilot who engaged seven Soviet pilots in a Korean War dogfight.

“I thought it was a great celebration of America,” Baumgartner said. “The highlights were having the gold medal-winning hockey team there. And then, of course, two very deserving Medal of Honor winners, and just a lot of pride in our country. It was fun to celebrate that success.”

Sen. Patty Murray, of Washington, was among dozens of Democrats who skipped the address, a year after their party’s response to Trump’s previous address was widely panned by their own supporters as incoherent. In her own livestreamed address to Washingtonians before the president spoke, Murray warned that “the state of our democracy is under attack from the inside.”

“Right now, under President Trump, the state of our union is diminished,” she said. “But here’s the most important thing to remember in this moment: The future of our union is up to all of us. I truly believe that, and it’s what keeps me going every day.”

Trump began the address by touting the success of the U.S. economy and his administration’s crackdown on illegal border crossings. Between pauses to acknowledge Americans in the gallery who illustrated his policies, he took jabs at Democrats, whom he called “crazy.”

“Our country is winning again,” the president said, drawing laughs and applause from Republicans as he reused an old line. “In fact, we’re winning so much that we really don’t know what to do about it.”

Rep. Dan Newhouse, a Republican from Sunnyside who is retiring at the end of the year, touted his party’s efforts to “reduce government spending, keep taxes low, and establish energy dominance.”

“Tonight, President Trump delivered a lengthy speech that emphasized the state of our union is strong,” Newhouse said in a prepared statement. “As I wind down my tenure in Congress, I remain committed to working with this administration to advance policies that benefit my constituents throughout Central Washington.”

According to Treasury Department data, the U.S. government has spent more since the start of the current fiscal year in October than it did during the same period a year earlier.

The State of the Union has traditionally been a president’s biggest annual opportunity to speak to Americans about his administration’s accomplishments and priorities for the year ahead. That platform may be less important for Trump, who spends hours talking publicly nearly every day, but it nevertheless represents an important stage to explain the actions he has taken at a breakneck pace over the first 13 months of his term.

For more than 100 years, presidents have delivered a speech to a joint session of the House and Senate in the first few months of each year. The first address of a president’s term technically isn’t called a State of the Union.

Tuesday’s address came as Americans have a less favorable view of Trump than they have since the aftermath of the Capitol riot in January 2021, according to polling averages maintained by the New York Times, Silver Bulletin and other aggregators. As of Tuesday, the president’s average approval rating stood at 41%, down from a high of nearly 52% when he began his second term in office.

Each member of Congress gets to invite a guest to watch the address from the gallery above the House floor, and lawmakers typically use that opportunity to make a statement.

For the second consecutive year, Baumgartner used his ticket to invite an Eastern Washington teacher to the Capitol. His guest, Bill Plucker, of Walla Walla High School, told reporters before the address he was grateful to his students for nominating him. When asked how he assessed the state of the union, the teacher declined to comment directly on Trump’s policies.

“I’m proud to be a United States citizen,” Plucker said. “I think America is the greatest country in the world.”

Newhouse invited state Sen. Matt Boehnke, a Tri-Cities Republican running for the seat Newhouse is vacating. That choice was notable after Newhouse invited Yakima County Commissioner Amanda McKinney to Trump’s 2025 address. Although she twice endorsed Newhouse for re-election despite his vote to impeach Trump for inciting the Capitol riot, McKinney has quickly distanced herself from the congressman since she announced a campaign for his seat and secured the president’s endorsement.

One of the most raucous moments of the address came when Trump called on the Senate to pass the SAVE America Act, a sweeping election reform bill passed by House Republicans on Feb. 11 that would require Americans to show proof of citizenship when they register to vote and would virtually eliminate mail-in voting, among other changes. Some Northwest Republicans have admitted that the bill could disenfranchise Americans because of challenges states would face in implementing it before November’s general election.

In a news conference before the address, Sen. Maria Cantwell, of Washington, and her guest, Washington Secretary of State Steve Hobbs, warned of the chaos that the legislation would cause if Senate Republicans change the filibuster rule to allow them to send the bill to Trump’s desk to become law.

“Millions of Americans will have to pay to prove their citizenship if they want to vote,” Cantwell said, pointing to the cost of getting a passport or a copy of a birth certificate, the two most common documents that prove citizenship.

Referring to the bill’s name, Hobbs said it “doesn’t save anything” and pointed out that the Trump administration has fired employees at agencies in charge of protecting the nation’s voting systems from cyberattacks and other threats.

“The bill disenfranchises voters and leaves our democracy even more vulnerable,” Hobbs said. “The administration is more focused on tilting of windmills, on a myth that has already been disproven many times.”

According to a database of voter fraud cases maintained by the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, there were 99 cases of noncitizens illegally voting in U.S. elections between 1982 and 2025 – including zero in either Washington or Idaho.

Some Washington Democrats skipped the event in favor of other ways to get their message to voters. Reps. Pramila Jayapal of Seattle and Emily Randall of Bremerton attended a rally on the National Mall organized by the progressive media company MeidasTouch and MoveOn, a left-wing advocacy group.

“Working and poor Americans who watch while Donald Trump makes billions for himself and his billionaire buddies using grift and corruption and stealing from the American people, all the while stripping health care and housing from tens of millions of Americans and driving up costs everywhere: not on our watch,” Jayapal said at the event.

After her livestreamed remarks, Murray introduced three women who spoke about the impact of the Trump administration’s policies in Washington state – an immigration lawyer, a dockworker and a hospital commissioner from Okanogan County.

Leslie McNamara, a commissioner for Three Rivers Hospital in Brewster, Washington, talked about how the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which Republicans passed in July, threatens rural hospitals like hers by cutting Medicaid spending to offset tax cuts that largely benefit large companies and the wealthy. She added that her husband’s health insurance premiums quadrupled after the GOP declined to extend costly subsidies that Democrats created.

“When our communities lose access to local hospitals, it hurts our economies and will likely result in actual death,” McNamara said. “Ultimately, everyone suffers and we all pay the price. Life is unpredictable enough without this new day-to-day reality. And why? Because we refuse to compromise, to meet somewhere in the middle. Please find other places to cut the budget. Health care should be our No. 1 priority.”

Sarah Esch, a dispatcher for dockworkers and a member of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union, said Trump’s erratic use of import taxes have resulted in lost jobs for her colleagues at the port of Seattle.

“What is most frustrating about the current tariff situation is the uncertainty,” Esch said. “The constant up-and-down, on-and-off program is frustrating. Shippers and manufacturers don’t know how to plan, costs will rise and fall so consumers don’t know how to plan, and certainly the members of the ILWU don’t know what to expect. And never mind that we have yet to see an increase in U.S. manufacturing like we were promised.”

Immigration attorney Olia Catala told the story of her client, 28-year-old Wilmer Toledo-Martinez, an unauthorized immigrant living in Vancouver, Washington, who was brought into the country from Mexico at age 15 and was mauled by a dog handled by federal immigration agents when they arrested him in November. In contrast to Trump’s claim that his administration is deporting “the worst of the worst,” she said, “There are many good people in immigration detention today.”

“Many have committed no crime at all, and many were just simply following our asylum laws – laws that Congress explicitly designed to protect people who are present in the United States, including those who cross the border seeking safety,” said Catala, an immigrant from Ukraine. “Others are detained for no reason other than entering the country without proper documentation, often as children, often many decades ago.”