Blog Verité

President Donald Trump may walk into the Capitol like it’s a State of the Union. He may talk like it’s a State of the Union. But technically, the big speech he gives on Tuesday before a joint session of Congress is not a State of the Union address. 

[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]

That’s mostly due to tradition.

While Article II of the Constitution mandates Presidents to “from time to time” give Congress “Information of the State of the Union,” early reports varied in frequency and form. According to the Congressional Research Service (CRS): “Between 1801 and 1913, Presidents fulfilled their constitutional duty by sending their yearly report as a formal written letter to Congress.” It was President Woodrow Wilson who in 1913 revived the practice—started by George Washington in 1790—of delivering an oral address to Congress, though some subsequent Presidents still delivered a written message in addition or instead.

The report was referred to as an Annual Message until President Franklin D. Roosevelt, according to CRS, “applied the constitutional language ‘State of the Union,’ both to the message and the event, which became the popular nomenclature from his presidency forward.” The “State of the Union Address” title became official in 1947 during Harry Truman’s administration, according to the House Office of the Historian. That was also the first televised State of the Union.

Prior to the 20th Amendment, which in 1933 formalized the swearing in of new members of Congress to Jan. 3 and new Presidents from March 4 to Jan. 20, the Annual Message was typically delivered in December. Beginning in 1934, 10 months into Roosevelt’s first term, the State of the Union began to be delivered at the beginning of the year (usually January or February but recently as late as March). But the new timing created a question of whose responsibility it was to deliver the report in an inauguration year: the outgoing or incoming President?

According to another CRS report, some Presidents “have chosen not to deliver a State of the Union address in the last January before they depart from office, or in the year they were inaugurated.” But not in 1981. That year, outgoing President Jimmy Carter delivered a written message to Congress on Jan. 16, and newly-inaugurated President Ronald Reagan delivered an oral address to a joint session of Congress on Feb. 18. But Reagan started a new tradition: his inauguration-year speech to Congress explicitly was not a State of the Union address.

Presidents George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Barack Obama, Trump, and Joe Biden have all followed suit, delivering speeches that are not State of the Union addresses to a joint session of Congress in the weeks after their inauguration. (Reagan called his speech “Address Before a Joint Session of the Congress on the Program for Economic Recovery,” while the Bushes and Clinton called theirs addresses “on Administration Goals,” and Obama, Trump, and Biden simply called theirs “Address Before a Joint Session of the Congress.”)

But the fact that these speeches are technically not State of the Union addresses makes little difference, according to the American Presidency Project, which says the “impact of such a speech on public, media, and congressional perceptions of presidential leadership and power should be the same.”

For Trump’s part, the speech on Tuesday will be an opportunity for him to discuss the first six weeks of his second term that have upended Washington and the world and to outline his agenda for the weeks and years ahead. “TOMORROW NIGHT WILL BE BIG,” Trump posted on Truth Social on Monday. “I WILL TELL IT LIKE IT IS!”