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Delivering the 2026 State of the Union address at the Capitol on February 24 night, President Donald Trump listed stopping a nuclear war between India and Pakistan as one of the major achievements of his first year in office in his second term. On the controversial issue of immigration, President Trump again laid out his policy position in clear terms. He said his administration will continue to allow legal immigrants as he presented the Republican agenda ahead of the crucial midterm elections.
Speaking for one hour and 48 minutes, the president claimed credit for stopping the war between India and Pakistan in May last year. President Trump said, “Pakistan and India would have been in a nuclear war. 35 million people. The prime minister of Pakistan said he would have died if it were not for my involvement.” He once again claimed to have ended eight wars in his first 10 months in office.
He also mentioned ending wars between Kosovo and Serbia, Israel and Iran, Egypt and Ethiopia, Armenia and Azerbaijan, and the Congo and Rwanda. He also acknowledged that the war in Gaza still continues, though at a very low level. He said his administration is “working hard” to end “the killing and slaughter between Russia and Ukraine, where 25,000 soldiers are dying each and every month.” Trump called it “a war which would have never happened if I were president.” Interestingly, Feb. 24 also marked four years since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
On several occasions during his speech, President Trump spoke about the immigrant issue, but made his administration’s policy position clear as he told Congress, “We will always allow people to come in legally, people that will love our country and will work hard to maintain our country.”
Blaming his predecessor for an open-border policy, he said, “I hosted a ceremony with Americans who lost their treasured loved ones to the scourge of illegal immigration. People came into our country. How we allowed this to happen with our open borders. These are the Angel Moms and Families that for decades our government betrayed and our media totally ignored, totally.”
Raising the issue of Delilah Coleman, he said she was only five years old in June 2024 when an 18-wheel tractor-trailer ploughed into her stopped car while traveling at 60 miles an hour or more. Trump said the driver was an illegal alien let in by Joe Biden and given a commercial driver’s license by open-border politicians in California.
He also added, “Many, if not most, illegal aliens do not speak English and cannot read even the most basic road signs as to direction, speed, danger or location. That’s why tonight I’m calling on Congress to pass what we will call the Delilah Law, barring any state from granting commercial driver’s licenses to illegal aliens.”
The president further criticized blue states, saying many are rampant with fraud and corruption. He said “members of the Somali community have pillaged” what belongs to U.S. taxpayers in Minnesota. Trump announced that Vice President JD Vance will lead a “war on fraud” and “get it done.” “If we’re able to find enough of that fraud, we will actually have a balanced budget overnight,” he said. “It’ll go very quickly,” he added.
He also took on Democratic leaders present in the Congress over the issue accusing them of cutting off all funding for the Department of Homeland Security. “They have instituted another Democrat shutdown, the first one costing us two points on GDP. Two points we lost on GDP, which probably made them quite happy actually. Now they have closed the agency responsible for protecting Americans from terrorists and murderers.”
“Tonight, I’m demanding the full and immediate restoration of all funding for border security, homeland security of the United States, and also for helping people clean up their snow,” he added.
Turning early in his speech to the issue of tariffs, President Trump said he believes tariffs will replace the income tax, just days after the Supreme Court struck down a large swath of his tariff authority. “As time goes by, I believe that tariffs, paid for by foreign countries, will, like in the past, substantially replace the modern-day system of income tax, taking a great financial burden off the people that I love,” the president said.
President Trump reassured citizens that his government’s encouragement to tech companies to build massive data centers will not strain the power grid. He said he has secured a pledge from technology companies that they will provide their own power for artificial intelligence data centers. “They can build their own power plants as part of their factory so that no one’s prices will go up,” the president said. “In many cases, prices of electricity will go down for the community, and very substantially down,” he said.
Trump accused Iran of “again pursuing their sinister ambitions.” Trump left all options on the table regarding Iran, saying it has long been U.S. policy to never allow Iran to obtain a nuclear weapon. Trump said Tehran wants “to make a deal, but we haven’t heard those secret words, ‘We will never build a nuclear weapon.’” “They have already developed missiles that can threaten Europe and our bases overseas, and they are working to build missiles that will soon reach the United States of America,” he said.
On Tuesday, he reiterated that the U.S. military had “obliterated Iran’s nuclear weapons program.” Trump said Iran was warned over the summer “to make no future attempts to rebuild” its nuclear weapons program, “yet they continue, starting it all over.” “We wiped it out and they want to start all over again,” he said, adding that Iran is “again pursuing their sinister ambitions.” “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 happen,” he added.
Republicans offered raucous applause throughout the speech, while Democrats mostly sat in silence. The speech was the longest State of the Union address on record. Trump honored many servicemembers and guests in the gallery, including the gold medal-winning U.S. men’s hockey team, who received a bipartisan standing ovation. He presented Medals of Honor to two individuals, including a 100-year-old Korean War veteran.
