Welcome to the NewsHour. President Trump touted the economy and his immigration policies in a record-long State of the Union address, and he'll soon take those messages on the road. The White House is hoping President Trump can convince Americans to stay the course, as Democrats today slam the speech for being too partisan, divisive, and out of touch with people's economic hardships. To recap the big night and to fact-check the president's remarks, we start with our White House correspondent, Liz Landers. Members of Congress, I have the high privilege and distinct honor of presenting to you the President of the United States. President Trump, in a marathon address, praised his second term agenda as a transformation for America. It is indeed a turnaround for the ages. And promised in many ways to stay the course, even as his approval ratings have plummeted. The state of our union is strong. The longest State of the Union ever given, Mr. Trump spoke for an hour, 48 minutes. In front of likely his largest TV audience before the midterms, the president's speech was an opportunity for a much-needed reset. Our latest PBS NPR Marist poll shows 6 in 10 Americans say the country is in a worse place than a year ago. Addressing one of voters' greatest concerns right away, Trump put affordability front and center. Just hold on a little while. We're getting it down. and soon you will see numbers that few people would think were possible to achieve. He rattled off positive economic data on inflation, gas prices, mortgage rates, and the soaring stock market. And he put blame on Democrats. Suddenly used the word affordability. They knew their statements were a dirty, rotten lie. Their policies created the high prices. Our policies are rapidly ending them. One policy promise the president made last night, Trump said he would offer Americans a new type of retirement account that would resemble plans offered to federal workers, complete with matching government contributions. DONALD TRUMP, President of the United States, We will match your contribution with up to $1,000 each year as we ensure that all Americans can profit from a rising stock market. JANE FERGUSON, President of the United States, Four Supreme Court justices were seated in the front row. DONALD TRUMP, President of the United States, It just came down. Very unfortunate ruling. face to face with the president just days after the court handed him his term's biggest legal defeat on tariffs. Trump promised to soldier on with the cornerstone of his economic agenda. Congressional action will not be necessary It already time tested and approved On foreign policy the president addressed rising tensions with Iran ahead of talks expected in Geneva tomorrow My preference is to solve this problem through diplomacy But one thing is certain, I will never allow the world's number one sponsor of terror, which they are by far, to have a nuclear weapon. Can't let that happen. That moment drawing some of the biggest bipartisan applause of the night, as did some of the president's high-profile guests. Here with us tonight is a group of winners who just made the entire nation proud. The men's gold medal Olympic hockey team. Welcoming the team into the chamber, Mr. Trump promised to award the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the country's highest civilian honor, to Team USA goalie Connor Hellebuck. And there were more awards and made-for-TV moments, presenting two Congressional Medals of Honor to service members, as well as bestowing Purple Hearts to D.C. National Guardsman Andrew Wolfe and posthumously to fellow Guard member Sarah Beckstrom. Both were shot in D.C. last year. The speech was also marked by protests from Democrats. On Jeffrey Epstein, some members wore redacted pins calling for the Justice Department to release more of the files. And a number of the late sex offenders' own victims were guests of the Democrats in the chamber. The protests, mostly silent, but not all. The greatest contrast of the night, and possibly the most heated, came when the president defended his immigration crackdown. The first duty of the American government is to protect American citizens, not illegal aliens. Mr. Trump chastised Democrats while Republicans stood and applauded for more than a minute. You should be ashamed of yourself not standing up. He should be ashamed of you, sir. Democrats shouted back. Who wants the removal of criminal aliens? About the shooting deaths of two American citizens, Renee Goode and Alex Preddy, in Minneapolis last month. And notably, there were boycotts. More than two dozen fewer Democrats were in the chamber. Many of them were at a counter-protest outside the Capitol. In November, are you ready to finish the job? In November, are you ready to throw the bums out? And the official Democratic response. In his speech tonight, the president did what he always does. He lied, he scapegoated, and he distracted, and he offered no real solutions. New Virginia Governor Abigail Spanberger focused where the president also focused addressing Americans affordability concerns Is the president working to make life more affordable for you and your family We all know the answer is no Reaction today fell along partisan political lines. I think that we've got a lot of momentum here, but the president said this last night, we inherited a mess. Our ask to the American people is let us continue to fix this mess. So Donald Trump is lying and the American people can either believe what Donald Trump says or they can believe the monthly bills, but they cannot believe both. Presidents often hit the road after the speech to sell their policies directly to the American people. President Trump will push his economic message in Texas at the end of this week, Amna, ahead of that state's primary elections on Tuesday. Liz, as you just reported there, the president talked a lot about the strength of the economy. Two claims he made I want to ask you about. One, about the price of gas. and the other that getting rid of fraud would enable the U.S. to have a balanced budget, as he put it, overnight. What can you tell us about those? Let's start with the second part about balancing the budget. So that's implausible. We crunched some numbers. We looked at the math here. The federal deficit in 2025 was $1.8 trillion. The 2024 estimate of fraud in the U.S. Government Accountability Office had a range between $233 to $521 billion. That's a lot of fraud. But even if you eliminated all of the government fraud, the federal deficit would still only be reduced by a third there. And then on that second point of gas prices, we looked at gas prices all across the country. The president said that they are below $2.30 in most states. That is not true. Gas prices have fallen as he's been in office since he was inaugurated last year. The price of gas was around $3.11 a gallon. Now it's down to $2.97 a gallon today, as AAA says. But no state has an average of under $2.30 a gallon, again, per those AAA statistics. Same with GasBuddy. The state with the lowest average price of gas is in Oklahoma, which has $2.40 a gallon, according to AAA. The president also made a claim about reducing the number of Americans receiving food assistance. Take a listen to what he said. And in one year, we have lifted 2.4 million Americans, a record off of food stamps. Liz, what should we understand about that? So the data from the Agriculture Department found that a number of people who received these Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits or SNAP benefits as most people know them that did decline by 2 million people on those benefits from November of 2024 to November of last year. However, that 2.4 million person statistic, the figure that the president refers to, is likely Americans who are projected to lose those benefits following the passage of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act over the summer. So that's not necessarily people who were able to afford to get off of these SNAP benefits. That legislation expanded work requirements. So this analysis came from the Congressional Budget Office report, which is why at the time Democrats were concerned about people losing access to those SNAP benefits. We also heard the president continue to make false statements about the elections, including this claim will play for people here that many undocumented immigrants are voting in federal elections. Take a listen. To stop illegal aliens and others who are unpermitted persons from voting in our sacred American elections. That cheating is rampant in our elections. It's rampant. What do we know about that, Liz? That's an outright falsehood. This has been disproven over and over again by the president's own Department of Homeland Security and a number of other places that have looked at whether there are non-citizens voting in this country. It happens at an infinitesimally small level. For example, the Department of Homeland Security did a study after the 2024 election. 49.5 million voter registrations were checked. About 10,000 cases were referred for additional investigation of non-citizenship. Amna, that's 0.02 percent of the names that were processed. Another example, the Heritage Foundation, they looked at voter fraud cases that were brought by prosecutors. prosecutors. Only 85 cases involving allegations of non-citizen voting were found over a two-decade, 20-year period from 2002 to 2023. And also these states do these individual voter roll checks as well. One example, Georgia, a really important swing state. They did a 2024 audit. Their secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, found 20 non-citizens out of 8.2 million registered voters in that state. And, Amna, of course, Georgia in particular is a state that has the attention of the president. Right here, we're seeing there is not evidence of non-citizens voting in that state. All right. That is our White House correspondent, Liz Landers, reporting tonight. Liz, thank you. Of course.
