This is an edition of The Atlantic Daily, a newsletter that guides you through the biggest stories of the day, helps you discover new ideas, and recommends the best in culture. Sign up for it here.When Donald Trump last addressed Congress, in March 2025, he was triumphant. He’d stormed back into the White House after surviving two assassination attempts, and his first 100 days in office were on track to be historically productive.Now, as he prepares for his State of the Union speech, he’s on far less stable ground. According to CNN, 68 percent of Americans say Trump hasn’t paid attention to the country’s most important problems—up from 52 percent this time last year. Trump ran on affordability issues, but 57 percent of Americans now disapprove of the president’s handling of the economy, per a Washington Post / ABC News / Ipsos poll. And his recent backtracking on the immigration-enforcement crackdown in Minnesota suggests that he’s acutely aware of the negative response to some of his most aggressive policies, even within his own party.In today’s Daily, I speak with the staff writer Jonathan Lemire, whose latest story argues that tonight’s address could be a chance for the president to turn things around—if he doesn’t get in his own way.Will Gottsegen: How do you think the president will use tonight’s speech to defend some of the most divisive aspects of his governance over the past year—like, say, tariffs, which have raised costs for Americans, and hard-line immigration policies, which have resulted in civilian deaths?Jonathan Lemire: His advisers want him to stay on message, particularly on the economy, by saying that we’ve had job growth and that inflation has cooled (although not by as much as many had hoped). He’ll surely point to the Dow hitting 50,000 in recent days. He’ll talk about his trade deals and the like. But the speech comes at a vulnerable moment. His sweeping tariff policy was overturned by the Supreme Court just a few days ago. He’s been raging about it ever since. Also his signature immigration policy, these mass deportations, has become broadly unpopular, especially after the two killings in Minneapolis and these scenes of federal agents seemingly terrorizing people.My sense is he might just claim a broad victory, and that’s not going to land well with some Americans. He has repeatedly played down the affordability crisis, deeming it a “hoax.” That will be a hard thing for him to sell in an economy that is clearly doing really well for people who are rich and less so for those who aren’t.The other issue I return to is immigration. His two biggest strengths in the 2024 campaign were his vow to be a strong steward of the economy and his immigration promises. Americans seem to like that he closed the southern border. They decidedly don’t like this supercharged expansion of ICE operations when it’s targeting, in some cases, people who have lived here for years, if not decades—people who are known as friends, neighbors, classmates, and co-workers.Will: What’s the best-case outcome for Trump tonight? And what’s the worst?Jonathan: I think that the best-case scenario would be if he were to—suspend your disbelief here—stay on track, even appear somewhat bipartisan, and extol his successes while also suggesting that he understands there’s more to be done. He needs to acknowledge there are plenty of Americans out there whose lives have not gotten better, or who want to see him do more. The worst-case scenario would be, frankly, typical Trump bluster. If he says affordability is a hoax again, if he says the economy has never been better for everybody—well, a lot of Americans are going to disagree with that. If he’s going to claim that his immigration policies are popular or are targeting only the so-called worst of the worst, none of that is going to fly either.Will: Republicans are starting to worry about this year’s midterms. What are the risks for the party if tonight doesn’t go well?Jonathan: Republicans have been on a losing streak. Their polls started to sink even last summer, when the One Big Beautiful Bill Act was passed and Americans learned more about it, including how it slashes services for the less well-off, while benefiting the rich with tax cuts. We saw, this fall, a number of Democratic victories in November elections. And even in recent weeks, two deep-red districts, one in Texas, one in Louisiana—districts that Trump won by 10-plus points just 15 months ago—swung to the Democrats. Republicans see these losses as alarms going off.It is customary for the party that does not control the White House to do well in the midterm elections. Some swing toward Democrats is to be expected. But right now, some GOP strategists are telling me that they fear it could be a blue wave. The margin in the House is so slim that even a bit of a tilt toward the Democrats would probably put the House in their hands. But if it is going to be a rout, the Democrats could open up a pretty significant margin in the House and even have a shot at controlling the Senate.If Trump does have a big night and delivers a strong speech, I think Republicans will start to feel better about things, and that could lead to more fundraising and more optimism in the party. However, if it’s a divisive speech, you’ll hear Democrats condemn it as such, and say, Look, we can’t have more of this.Will: At a time when television viewership is declining and many people are siloed in echo chambers online, how much of an effect can a State of the Union really have?Jonathan: No one speech is going to alter the course of a presidency, and I think there’s no question that State of the Union addresses are less important than they used to be. But this will be the biggest audience who watches Trump all year. I think it matters in Washington, in terms of setting political momentum. This is likely not going to be a defining moment of the presidency, but it is, for a party staring at the midterms with faltering poll numbers, a moment for Trump to at least have a little bit of a reset or stem the bleeding.Related:Trump’s suddenly high-stakes State of the UnionHow the Supreme Court spared AmericaHere are three new stories from The Atlantic:The White House urges Republicans to ignore Trump’s diversions.Alexandra Petri: Tales from Kash Patel’s FBIThe deaths doctors never thought they’d see in the U.S.Today’s NewsMore than a dozen House Democrats have invited survivors in the Jeffrey Epstein case to attend President Trump’s State of the Union address tonight as their guests.A new 10 percent tariff on most global imports took effect just after midnight today, despite Trump’s weekend pledge to raise the rate to 15 percent after the Supreme Court struck down many of his previous tariffs. The White House said the higher rate is still being developed and would require additional presidential action.Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth met with Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei over a reported dispute about the limits that the company placed on its AI tools for military use. The Pentagon wants fewer restrictions under its $200 million contract and has warned Anthropic that it could be blacklisted by the government if they can’t reach a deal.DispatchesThe Unfinished Revolution: Introducing a newsletter course in which Atlantic writers and editors explore 250 years of the American experiment.Explore all of our newsletters here.Evening ReadIllustration by Ben Kothe / The AtlanticThe Meme From 2016 That Explains 2026By Megan GarberAll times are interesting times, but the summer of 2016 was especially interesting. That July, as a Twitter user named Katie Loewy tried to make sense of mass shootings and Brexit and the rising political power of the host of The Celebrity Apprentice, she proposed a theory. “I’m not saying that David Bowie”—who had died earlier that year—“was holding the fabric of the universe together,” she wrote, “but *gestures broadly at everything*” …Recent years have been boom times for language that is inarticulate on purpose. Vibe has become a diagnosis; chaos has become an all-purpose condition. Dictionaries have highlighted, as their words of the year, brain rot and post-truth and an emoji caught between laughter and tears. But [gestures around] might be the term of the decade.Read the full article.More From The AtlanticGavin Newsom’s father issues“I genuinely am upset that your kids are vaccinated.”Matteo Wong: Sam Altman is losing his grip on humanity.The edge of mathematicsWhat the Roberts Court is actually trying to accomplishCulture BreakArchives Charmet / Bridgeman ImagesRead. Michael Pollan’s new book, about the mystery of consciousness, strengthens the case that technology will never truly replicate humans, Charles Finch writes.Explore. Charli XCX believes that music isn’t the point of pop stardom, Spencer Kornhaber writes. Is she right?Play our daily crossword.Rafaela Jinich contributed to this newsletter.When you buy a book using a link in this newsletter, we receive a commission. Thank you for supporting The Atlantic.