President Trump on Tuesday will address a bitterly divided Congress that Republicans have turned into a virtual rubber stamp for his agenda, with lawmakers increasingly focused on how his policies and tactics are shaping midterm elections that will determine control of Congress next year.
With primary voting in some states beginning next week, Republicans and Democrats remain sharply split over the president’s handling of major issues such as immigration and the economy. That gulf has been highlighted by the fact the Department of Homeland Security remains without funding because of a stalemate over the president’s immigration crackdown. The lapse in funding comes after a record-breaking full government shutdown this past fall in a fight over health insurance subsidies.
Many Democrats have declared that they intend to boycott the speech altogether in protest of the president’s policies and stage competing events outside the Capitol. Many have invited victims of the convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein or people adversely affected by Mr. Trump’s aggressive immigration crackdown in efforts to highlight issues where polls show the president and Republicans have grown vulnerable.
“These are not normal times, and they demand a new response,” Representative April McClain Delaney, Democrat of Maryland, said in a statement. “Over the past year, President Trump has attacked the Maryland working families I represent, including farmers, federal workers, small business owners, flood victims and legal immigrants while failing to deliver on his promise to lower the cost of living.”
The speech also comes as Republicans, after nearly a year of bowing to Mr. Trump’s every proposal, have begun to reassert themselves as they try to get some political distance from unpopular elements of his agenda. A handful of them have joined Democrats in recent weeks on votes to limit his authority on tariffs and war powers, though the actions have been mostly symbolic since they lack the widespread G.O.P. support necessary to defy the president. The break could become more pronounced as the primary elections pass and the threat of a Trump endorsement of a Republican opponent fades while lawmakers focus more on appealing to the independents who will decide the general election.
But Republicans for the most part have remained firmly allied with the president despite a drop in his public approval, unwilling to risk backlash from Mr. Trump. They are hoping that he stays on message and emphasizes efforts to lower prices and the benefits of the tax cut and domestic policy bill passed last year. They claim that Democrats are no longer the party of the middle class, providing Republicans an opening to seize that mantle.
“Democrats today are the party of the environmental lunatics, the transgender lunatics, the ones that think that we should be giving everything to foreign countries and not doing anything for our nation,” Senator Bernie Moreno, Republican of Ohio, told reporters Monday. “If you boil it all down, this is the issue: Are we going to fight for our working class in America?”
Democrats say that Mr. Trump has failed to deliver on his campaign promise to make consumer goods more affordable, blaming tariffs that the president is pushing to keep in place despite the Supreme Court decision last week declaring that he had acted unconstitutionally in imposing wide-ranging levies.
“Donald Trump, who is in a bubble, has no understanding of what the American people feel, need or want,” Senator Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York and the minority leader, said Monday. “Now Americans are in the same position they were in before the court decision: Higher prices, more inflation, harder to afford things, harder to pay the bills.”
The president’s speech will take place as the midterm elections that will have a huge impact on the final two years of his term are about to get underway. Voting will take place next Tuesday in multiple states, including Texas, where both Republicans and Democrats have closely watched primaries for the Senate seat now held by Senator John Cornyn, the Republican incumbent who is seeking re-election.
Democrats say their strong showing in last year’s off-year elections and a handful of special congressional and state legislative contests has shown that they have momentum and could win control of the House and Senate. That could provide a new check on the Trump administration for the final two years of the president’s term.
In response, embattled Republicans have stepped up their push for stricter voter registration and identification laws, though the outlook in the Senate for House-passed legislation imposing new standards remains unclear. The speech will allow Mr. Trump to take his case for that legislation — and the false claims of widespread voter fraud that he cites as grounds for pushing it — directly to the lawmakers gathered in the House chamber.
Carl Hulse is the chief Washington correspondent for The Times, primarily writing about Congress and national political races and issues. He has nearly four decades of experience reporting in the nation’s capital.
The post Trump to Address a Complacent Congress Badly Split Over His Agenda appeared first on New York Times.
