In an address to the nation, Trump will have difficulty convincing Americans that the country is heading in the right direction

Supreme Court imposes ‘immense’ defeat on Trump In an extremely troubled moment for the government, four days after being humiliated with the defeat of his tariff agenda in the Supreme Court, the President of the United States, Donald Trump, faces the nation, from the pulpit of the Capitol, in the first formal speech on the State of the Union of this second term on Tuesday night (24). In a decisive election year, in order for him to maintain control of the House and the Senate, a barrage of negative indicators leaves the president struggling to sell the message to Americans that the country is better than it was 13 months ago, when he returned to the White House. The hostile environment in Congress transcends Trump’s relationship with Democratic opponents. In the front row of the plenary, the nine judges of the Supreme Court will be sitting this evening. Six of them – two of whom were appointed by Trump – considered that the president exceeded his authority by imposing, through an emergency law, broad and global tariffs, one of the pillars of his economic policy. After describing the judges as fools and lackeys and considering the decision wrong and disastrous for the country, Trump reacted with a challenge, reissuing new 10% tariffs, later increased to 15%. In several posts on his social network, the president reiterated that he does not need Congressional approval to implement tariffs. Trump talks about tariffs Kevin Lamarque/Reuters Polls show that the president’s prestige has been falling and is at around 36%. In a recent CNN poll, 68% of respondents said Trump did not prioritize the country’s most important problems. In another, carried out by NPR/PBS News/Marist, 78% considered that American democracy faces a serious threat and 68% believe that the system of checks and balances between the president, Congress and the Judiciary is not working. This reality indicates that Trump has left his comfort zone and will find himself facing a skeptical nation tonight. Contrary to what he tries to convince Americans, economic growth is in decline: in the last quarter of last year, GDP slowed to 1.4% and was below the 3% forecast. The brutal policy of mass deportation of immigrants suffered a serious setback with the deaths of two Americans in Minneapolis by federal agents and violent scenes conducted by masked agents, such as that of a 5-year-old boy being arrested at the door of his home. Political exhaustion made the government retreat and withdraw a large part of the contingent of three thousand agents sent to Minnesota. Trump will arrive at Congress this evening amid the impasse over the partial shutdown of the Department of Homeland Security, which conducts its immigration policy. The Democratic opposition refuses to approve funding for immigration reforms proposed by the White House. The Jeffrey Epstein scandal and doubts about the direction of the investigations have a bad impact on his electoral base. And, finally, the imminence of a new attack on Iran helps to fuel the dissatisfaction of many Americans who do not want to see the country involved in a new external conflict. Trump anticipated that his prime-time speech will be long, another sign that he will have work to convince Americans that the country is heading in the right direction.

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