In a lengthy speech before both houses of the United States Congress, President Donald Trump claimed that his return to office marked the “most successful era in the history of our country”.
Addressing the House of Representatives and the Senate on Tuesday, Trump said his administration had “accomplished more in 43 days than most administrations accomplish in four years or eight years”.
“And we are just getting started,” he said.
His remarks touched on many familiar themes: calls for a massive crackdown on undocumented immigrants, whom he attacked as criminals and rapists, praise of “beautiful” tariffs that Trump says will bring balance to US trade relations, and attacks on transgender people and diversity initiatives.
Here are a few of the main takeaways from Trump’s address, which drew loud cheers from supportive Republicans and protests from some Democrats, pointing to the deep political divisions in the country.
Here are the key takeaways from his speech.
Trump declares war on the federal workforce
Touting the work of Elon Musk and the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), Trump rattled off a list of statistics purporting to show cases of government waste and fraud.
Many of his administration’s most ambitious claims about unearthing wasteful projects have been quietly rolled back or debunked later on, but Trump used a series of data points and projects to paint a picture of a federal bureaucracy fixated on diversity initiatives and misguided projects in foreign nations.
Wasteful spending in agencies more aligned with Trump’s political priorities, such as immigration enforcement and the massive US military, has largely evaded similar scrutiny.
Return to nativist themes and attacks on immigrants
As he has frequently done in the past, Trump leaned into rhetoric that portrays immigrants as vectors for crime, disease and disorder, as he pushed Congress for a massive spending package that will help facilitate his mass deportation campaign.
On several occasions, he addressed guests in the audience — family members of several people killed by immigrants in the US without authorisation — to portray a country under siege by dangerous foreigners, although immigrants, undocumented and otherwise, commit violent crimes at a lower rate than native-born people in the US.
Ukraine and Gaza get brief mention
Trump promised to end a series of wars and conflicts around the world during his time on the campaign trail, and his first few weeks in office have seen him upend longstanding partnerships, injecting tension into ties with Europe, neighbours Canada and Mexico, and Ukraine.
But on Tuesday night, he touched on events in Ukraine and the Middle East relatively briefly.
After a fiery exchange with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in the White House last week that shocked European allies, Trump said he wanted to see the war brought to an end and that Zelenskyy had sent him a letter underscoring his desire for peace.
On Israel and Gaza, Trump praised the Abraham Accords — a series of agreements where Arab countries normalised ties with Israel, often in return for generous concessions or aid packages from the US — and said he hoped to secure further agreements.
He said he had helped secure the release of US citizens held captive by Hamas in Gaza, but the suffering and futures of millions of Palestinians who have returned home to neighbourhoods turned to rubble by Israel’s devastating bombing campaign were not mentioned.
Trump, however, said he hoped to build an Israel-style missile defence shield over the US and repeated his desire to take control of Greenland and the Panama Canal.
Democrats struggle to muster a response
While the early minutes of Trump’s speech were met with a chorus of boos from Democratic members of Congress and the expulsion of Democratic Representative Al Green, the opposition’s response was mostly tepid.
Most Democrat members remained seated for the duration of the speech, declining to stand and applaud and sometimes holding up placards calling Trump’s statements false or reading “Musk steals”.
But a sense remains that the Democrats, still stinging from their loss in the 2024 election, have yet to coalesce around a message that could take the fight to Trump.
In a social media post, the conservative commentator Laura Ingraham quipped that Democrats holding signs while sitting down looked like they were “bidding at an auction”.
Trump continues his love affair with ‘beautiful’ tariffs
One of Trump’s most longstanding political beliefs is that the US has been taken advantage of in its economic relations with other countries, and he has promised to use tariffs to bring “balance” to foreign trade and bend countries to his will on a series of other issues.
In his speech on Tuesday, Trump doubled down on his faith in what he previously called “the most beautiful word in the English language: tariff”. This, even as new tariffs on Canada, Mexico and China that came into effect on Tuesday, attracted retaliatory measures, drawing the US deeper into trade wars with neighbours and rivals alike.
“Whatever they tariff us, we tariff them. Whatever they tax us, we tax them,” Trump said. He sought to ease concerns about price increases as a result of tariffs, saying, “There’ll be a little disturbance, but we’re OK with that. It won’t be much.”
Trump promised to bring manufacturing operations for everything from cars to ships to semiconductors to the US through the use of tariffs.
“If you don’t make your product in America … you will pay a tariff and, in some cases, a rather large one. Other countries have used tariffs against us for decades, and now it’s our turn to start using them against those other countries,” Trump said.
Trump claims he is tackling inflation
Trump said one of his top priorities was to fix the economy and help working families. He promised to cut costs on eggs and energy by reorganising the federal government, blaming former President Joe Biden for the problem.
“Joe Biden especially let the price of eggs get out of control. The egg prices [are] out of control, and we’re working hard to get it back down,” Trump said.
Trump’s Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins told The Wall Street Journal in late February that the administration was planning to invest $1bn in trying to control egg prices — using a combination of payouts to struggling farmers, increased egg imports, and no scientific research into avian flu to better tackle its effects.
Egg prices started soaring amid the mass culling of chickens in recent years because of avian flu. That practice has continued under Trump, and egg prices have continued to rise under the current administration.
In late February, eggs on average cost $4.95 a dozen — double what they cost a year ago under Biden, according to the Bureau of Labour Statistics.
US has caught person behind 2021 Kabul airport bombing
Trump announced that the US has captured “the top terrorist responsible” for the suicide bombing that killed 13 soldiers during the 2021 withdrawal of its forces from Afghanistan.
“Tonight, I am pleased to announce that we have just apprehended the top terrorist responsible for that atrocity,” Trump said during his address. “And he is right now on his way here to face the swift sword of American justice.”
The White House said the man, identified as Muhammed Sharifullah, was being brought to the US.
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