Democrats Win Three Big Elections During Trump’s State of the Union

While President Trump ranted about tariffs, immigration, and hockey at his State of the Union address Tuesday night, Democrats were celebrating three local election victories in crucial swing states.

Ana Tiburcio of Alleghany County and Jennifer Mazzocco of Lehigh County were elected as Pennsylvania state representatives on Tuesday, securing a Democratic majority in the state legislature—a huge win for Governor Josh Shapiro.

“Congratulations to Representatives-Elect Ana Tiburcio and Jen Mazzocco on winning tonight and joining our House Democratic majority! I’ll see you both at the Capitol as we keep working to get stuff done and protect our freedoms and democracy here in Pennsylvania,” Shapiro wrote. “Folks are fired up across our Commonwealth—and ready to win up and down the ballot this November.”

And in Maine, Scott Harriman defeated Republican Janet Beaudoin and further cemented Democrats’ hold on the state House.

“Another Tuesday, another defiant round of wins for state legislative Democrats,” Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee President Heather Williams wrote in a press release. “The split screen tonight couldn’t be starker: As President Trump drones on and tries to cover up his agenda that’s left working families behind, Democrats are winning elections.”

The State of the Union address is an opportunity for all branches of government to convene over the most pressing issues of the year. But Republicans treated Donald Trump’s sophomoric performance more like a rowdy sports game than a presidential appearance.

Practically the entire caucus participated in the rah-rah, jeering and chanting “U-S-A.” But the fanboying was especially true for Texas Representative Troy Nehls, who soundly secured the most cringeworthy moment of the night by begging the president to sign his Trump-themed tie.

As Trump exited the lower chamber, he caught a glimpse of Nehls dutifully waiting in line to greet him—but more importantly, he spotted Nehls’s tie, an American flag print with several repeated images of Trump’s face.

“Oh, look at this guy, I like that tie, I want that tie,” Trump said, grabbing Nehl’s tie while addressing someone else. “Give me that tie!”

“Thank you! Initial, just an initial,” responded the 57-year-old lawmaker, hunched over as he offered a pen to the president.

Without speaking to Nehls directly, Trump obliged.

The moment did not play well with the American public, who used the moment to highlight how sycophantic and subservient conservatives in Congress have become to the party’s White House figurehead.

“Even the die hards in North Korea don’t grovel and beg for an autograph,” wrote a self-identified progressive on X.

Other critics derided the interaction as “grotesque” and “pathetic.”

“Definitely not a cult,” remarked another X user.

One account compared Nehls to Oliver Twist, sharing a meme of the impoverished Charles Dickens character trumpeting his famous line: “Please sir, may I have some more?”

“A 57 year old asking for an autograph of his favorite sexual predator?” posted another user. “Good God.”

Their opinions are immaterial for the Texas lawmaker, regardless of whether they live in his district, as Nehls is not seeking reelection at the end of his term. Trump has endorsed Nehls’s twin brother to replace him.

In his State of the Union Tuesday night, Donald Trump claimed that he had secured $18 trillion in foreign investments for the United States. But his own website says that isn’t true.

“I secured commitments for more than $18 trillion, pouring in from all over the globe,” Trump said in the speech, complete with a graphic on the official White House stream to drive home the point. NBC News was quick to point out that this wasn’t true, and produced proof that the White House itself had posted online.

“The commitments and investments the White House touted on its own website total $9.7 trillion,” the news outlet reported, noting that the investments Trump has bragged about are in line with previous announcements, or are only slight increases.

A Bloomberg analysis has found that $2.27 trillion of that can’t be considered actual investments, but only “vague promises to increase trade or bilateral economic relationships, or purchase commitments.” And $3.5 trillion would be from sovereign pledges, with $3.5 trillion being investments from corporations.

Of that $3.5 trillion, $2.9 trillion would go toward data centers, according to Bloomberg. On top of that, more than $250 billion of the pledges Trump is claiming as a big accomplishment were actually announced or planned before he was sworn in as president last year.

All of this was part of many embellishments and half-truths in the longest State of the Union address in presidential history. Trump used the address to claim how great he was doing despite most Americans disagreeing, and Democrats let him know during the speech. One claim by Trump was even too much for Republicans to applaud: his boasting about tariffs, which were struck down by the Supreme Court. That’s because most of them agree with the court’s ruling. Too bad most GOP lawmakers are fine with every other destructive decision from the president.

The only time Republicans weren’t clapping like seals during President Trump’s State of the Union address was when he spoke positively about his tariffs. 

“I used these tariffs, took in hundreds of billions of dollars to make great deals for our country, both economically and on a national security basis. Everything was working well, countries that were ripping us off for decades are now paying us hundreds of billions of dollars,” Trump said. “And yet these countries are happy, and so are we … and the big story was how Donald Trump called the economy correctly, and 22 Nobel Prize winners in economics didn’t. They got it totally wrong, they got it really wrong. And then just four days ago an unfortunate ruling from the United States Supreme Court, it just came down.” 

The room was deathly quiet for much of this awkward rant, a stark contrast given just how frequently the GOP did a standing ovation for something Trump said during his address. This is likely because many prominent Republicans actually agreed with the Supreme Court’s ruling, which stopped Trump from  further enacting his global, illegal “Liberation Day” tariffs. 

“Today, the Supreme Court reaffirmed authority that has rested with Congress for centuries. The American people already know that tariffs make building and buying here at home more expensive,” Senator Mitch McConnell said after the ruling on Friday. “And Kentuckians understand this painful reality better than most. But the use of IEEPA to circumvent Congress in the imposition of tariffs, already without precedent, isn’t just bad policy—it’s also illegal.”

President Donald Trump kept his bruised right hand out of view Tuesday night during his lengthy State of the Union address.

As Trump delivered his address, he grasped the podium with both hands, but kept his right hand out of sight.

Since July, the president has been repeatedly spotted with a large bruise on the back of his right hand—except for a few instances when it inexplicably switched to his left hand.

Trump has gotten good at hiding it from the public—either with makeup or careful hand placement—but the 79-year-old president can’t hide everything, and cameras don’t lie.

The White House has claimed that his seemingly permanent injuries were the result of too much handshaking and taking aspirin. But doctors have theorized that the president’s discolored hands could be a sign of something much worse.

Several Democratic representatives shouted at President Trump from their seats as he lied about protecting American citizens during his State of the Union speech on Tuesday.

“The first duty of the American government is to protect American citizens, not illegal aliens,” Trump said.

The Republican side erupted while Democrats heckled the president.

“You’re killing Americans,” Representative Rashida Tlaib yelled multiple times. “You have killed Americans,” Representative Ilhan Omar joined in.

Representative Gwen Moore called Trump a “tyrant” repeatedly. Representative Gil Cisneros yelled about how Trump is violating the Constitution.

Trump continued, smiling smugly. “You should be ashamed of yourself, not standing up. You should be ashamed.”

“You should be ashamed!” Omar responded, pointing at Trump. They were then drowned out by chants of “USA” by the Republican side of the aisle.

“These people are crazy, I tell you, they’re crazy,” Trump later said, referring to the Democrats as they continued to heckle him.

The Democrats’ response was necessary given the ease with which Trump was lying about protecting Americans, as his federal agents shot Renee Good and Alex Pretti—two “protected” American citizens—dead in the street in Minneapolis.

Texas Representative Al Green was once again escorted out of President Trump’s State of the Union—this time for holding up a sign that read “Black People Aren’t Apes.”

Green’s sign was a reference to Trump’s racist post on Truth Social earlier this month depicting former President Barack Obama and former first lady Michelle Obama as apes—summoning harsh condemnations from Democrats and Republicans alike. The president later deleted the post, claiming that it had been published by a staffer.

Green attempted to hold his sign up in front of Trump as the president entered the chamber, but was blocked by House Majority Leader Steve Scalise.

When Trump boarded the stage, the 78-year-old Houston-area congressman stood in the fourth row and held up his sign again.

As Trump began his address, Republican Representative Troy Nehls, also from Texas, reportedly approached Green about the sign. He was held back by Representative Pat Fallon as the sergeant of arms escorted Green out. Oklahoma Senator Markwayne Mullin also tried to pull the sign away from Green.

As Green was escorted out, the audience started shouting “USA!”

Last year, Green was removed from the chamber after he reportedly kept yelling at Trump, “You have no mandate to cut Medicaid!” The Texas Democrat waved his cane in the direction of the president and was warned to stop several times.

FBI Director Kash Patel’s personal reliance on the bureau’s jet fleet isn’t just costing taxpayers money—it’s also significantly interfering with the agency’s work.

A whistleblower revealed Tuesday that the FBI’s investigation into Charlie Kirk’s assassination was waylaid by at least a day because of a plane and pilot shortage caused by the director’s unofficial escapades, reported CBS News.

Patel’s poor management of resources continued for months, interfering with another FBI investigation on December 13, when the FBI’s shooting reconstruction team was unable to immediately respond to a shooting at Brown University due to a lack of available bureau planes at an airport in Richmond, Virginia, according to Senator Dick Durbin.

It’s a hypocritical development for Patel, a conspiracy podcaster turned government official who used to regularly chastise politicians for needless spending before he joined the ranks of the Trump administration. Patel relentlessly hounded the financial behavior of the man who previously filled his role—former FBI Director Chris Wray—even arguing in 2023 that the FBI should “ground” Wray’s private jet “that he pays for with taxpayer dollars to hop around the country.”

But these are far from the only examples in which Patel has used the bureau’s equipment as his personal play toys.

In December, top Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee opened an investigation into Patel after it became clear that he took multiple flights on a $60 million government jet in order to see his girlfriend, country singer Alexis Wilkins. The jet owner’s listed address, according to its FAA registration, was the FBI’s national headquarters in Washington. Days later, Patel reportedly took another FBI plane to Texas to visit some friends.

Patel has been riding on the country’s dime since he was sworn in as the face of America’s largest national law enforcement agency. Weeks after a Republican-controlled Senate gave Patel the green light to run the FBI, he took several jaunts to different areas of the country, including Las Vegas and Nashville, a lifestyle he hasn’t been shy to advertise amongst the rank and file of the federal bureau.

“If you have golf, hockey, fishing, or hunting and beautiful sights, you’re going to see a lot of me,” Patel once said, according to an internal source that shared the comments with Durbin.

Patel’s flight history became a subject of intense criticism again on Sunday, when a video was leaked of the FBI director celebrating the U.S. men’s hockey Olympic gold medal win. In the video, Patel is seen chugging beers inside the boy’s locker room in Milan, causing some Americans to question if Patel had spent more of their money to trek across the Atlantic for a wildly unnecessary excursion.

The 2028 presidential election could see a painfully familiar face return to the campaign trail.

Former Vice President Kamala Harris told podcaster Sharon McMahon on Tuesday that she has not yet ruled out the possibility of yet another presidential campaign.

“Will you run again?” asked McMahon, plainly.

“I haven’t decided,” Harris said.

“You’re still thinking about it?” McMahon pressed.

“I might,” Harris offered.

Harris served as California’s senator from 2017 to 2021, when she was sworn in as the first female vice president alongside Joe Biden.

She has failed twice to enter the White House on her own terms. She dropped her first presidential bid in late 2019 due to low polling numbers and dwindling financial resources. Harris’s luck changed drastically in 2024, when the Democratic National Committee formally backed her as their candidate of choice to face off against Donald Trump—though her campaign blitz, which was sabotaged in part by Biden’s reluctance to leave office, wasn’t enough. Harris ultimately lost that election by more than two million votes.

A secret postmortem of Harris’s performance by the DNC found that her major issue with voters stemmed from Biden’s poor handling of Israel’s massacre in Gaza and her own refusal to break with him on it, a policy choice that fundamentally soured support from progressives and young voters.

The DNC report has been under lock and key since the loss, but details of its findings became public on Sunday after staffers with the pro-Palestinian IMEU Policy Project met with the project’s authors in a closed-door meeting.

“The DNC shared with us that their own data also found that policy was, in their words, a ‘net-negative’ in the 2024 election,” Hamid Bendass, a spokesperson for the IMEU Policy Project, told Axios.

The Democratic Party further incensed Gaza’s sympathizers when it rejected a request to feature a pro-Palestinian speaker at the 2024 Democratic National Convention. In lieu of a dedicated activist to call for an end to the genocide, the DNC had major party figureheads, such as Biden and New York Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, make quick mention of the ongoing conflict, while efforts to cover up mass protests of the American-funded atrocities quietly took place behind the scenes.

Two years on, the scene is shaping up in an all too familiar way: Pro-Israel groups have already spent millions funding the 2026 Democratic primaries, while Trump and his allies chip away at a plan to redevelop Gaza into a Dubai-style luxury resort.

The Trump administration is considering requiring banks to track clients’ citizenship status in order to find more people to deport.

The Wall Street Journal reports that the White House is looking at signing an executive order or some other means to compel financial institutions to gather the data. Banks would likely have to ask for identifying documents, such as passports, from both new and existing customers who want a bank account in the U.S.

Banks are reportedly alarmed at such an executive order, according to the Journal. They already have legal requirements to collect certain information for law enforcement to fight against financial crimes, including money laundering. But those requirements don’t specifically include gathering citizenship information, and there’s no law against noncitizens opening bank accounts in the U.S.

A White House official told the publication that the new requirement hasn’t been approved and is only being discussed within the Treasury. A division of the Treasury Department that enforces laws against money laundering and counterterrorism financing could be used to collect the information, an unnamed source told the Journal.

Last year, the Department of Homeland Security forced the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services to turn over the personal information of immigrants enrolled in Medicaid, and the U.S. Postal Service has also been enlisted to identify targets. The goal seems to be not only increasing the number of deportations but also to force all immigrants, even those with legal status, to the fringes of American society by making them afraid that basic services, government or otherwise, can be used against them.