Why Trump’s speech to Congress won’t be a ‘State of the Union’ address

Sign up for the daily Inside Washington email for exclusive US coverage and analysis sent to your inbox

Get our free Inside Washington email

Get our free Inside Washington email

SIGN UP

I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy policy

It will look like the State of the Union, and will be broadcast on live television, but it’s called something else entirely: a joint address to Congress.

President Donald Trump will stand at the front of the U.S. House chamber to address a joint session of Congress, the first of his second term in office, on Tuesday night.

The joint address has its origins in the first term of President Ronald Reagan.

The U.S. Constitution requires that the president updates Congress and recommends policies, although the founding document doesn’t specify precisely when that address should take place.

Usually, presidents will deliver those remarks in January or February, reflecting on events of the previous year and outlining their policy priorities for the coming one. The message used to be known as “the President’s Annual Message to Congress.”

In 1934, President Franklin D. Roosevelt began referring to it as the “Annual Message to Congress on the State of the Union.”

Shortly after he was sworn in for his first term in 1981, Reagan addressed a joint session of Congress, remarks that were called “Address Before a Joint Session of the Congress on the Program for Economic Recovery,” according to The American Presidency Project, at the University of California at Santa Barbara.

open image in gallery

Presidents George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton followed suit in their own first years in office, with 1989 and 1993 messages both entitled “Administration Goals.”

In 2001, President George W. Bush’s speech was his “Budget Message.”

According to the American Presidency Project, the impacts of these first-year speeches should be considered to have the same heft as the State of the Union addresses that follow in subsequent years.

And, just like the State of the Union address, the opposing party to the one that occupies the White House gives a brief speech in response, which, like the president’s remarks, is televised. This year’s will be delivered by Democratic Sen. Elissa Slotkin of Michigan.