Eight House Republicans are weighing in on what President Donald Trump should discuss tomorrow night during his State of the Union address. 

Lawmakers the Washington Reporter spoke with want Trump to emphasize the wins of his first year and his agenda for the next three years in office. “I’d like for him to talk about the big wins in the most historic year of a president in the history of America,” Rep. Mark Alford (R., Mo.) said. “The biggest wins for the American people to secure our economy, border, nation, deporting illegal aliens, it’s the whole kit and kaboodle. He’s restored our place as the prominent world power.”

Last year, White House Deputy Press Secretary Anna Kelly told the Reporter that Trump’s joint address to Congress was a “Golden Speech for the Golden Age.” Expectations are equally high this year.

House Republican leaders, like Rep. Kevin Hern (R., Okla.), the Republican Policy Committee Chairman, are eager to hear about the transition between Trump and President Joe Biden. “It’s important to talk about where he came from in the first year,” Hern told the Reporter. “He should talk about why it’s so important to keep the House and Senate Republican. Look at border policy, look at the U.S. military. Look at Venezuela and Greenland, how we’re combatting Russia and China. All these things really matter. I know the American people don’t see these as important, but if we don’t have national security, then we don’t have a nation.”

Republicans also want Trump to focus on inflation, which Hern said is “declining in spite of all the Ivy League experts. I’m sure he’ll have some comedic relief as he always does, and he’ll make sure the Democrats will show how crazy they are.”

Some House and Senate Democrats have made plans to attend the “People’s State of the Union” instead of the State of the Union. Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D., N.Y.) was reportedly frustrated by House Democrats holding up placards during last year’s joint address to Congress, so several are planning to skip Trump’s speech altogether. 

Veteran Rep. Darrell Issa (R., Calif.) has seen his fair share of State of the Union addresses. During Biden’s final State of the Union address, Issa even helped bail Gold Star Father Steve Nikoui out of jail, after he was arrested for disrupting Biden’s speech. During the speech Nikoui heckled Biden over his administration’s Afghanistan withdrawl, during which Steve’s son, Kareem, was killed by a suicide terrorist at Hamid Karzai International Airport’s Abbey Gate.

This year, Issa told the Reporter, “the state of the union is good and it is good because of the work he has done already.” In his speech, Issa wants Trump to “take that vision and expand it.”

“Before he came back,” Issa said, “we hadn’t focused on the fact that there’s a deal to be had on Joint Operation Greenland. There’s a real opportunity now to follow through on decapitating the drug trade that has been a menace to this country. That includes letting Colombia and Mexico know they need to change their behavior. But most importantly I want him to take a victory lap and say what we can do better. Inflation is down but it is still too high. Productivity and wages are outpacing inflation, and 4.3 percent GDP growth is remarkable, but we can do better. What he says is what happens, a little like when Babe Ruth points at the outfield and predicts that he’s going to score a home run.”

Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks (R., Iowa) told the Reporter that she wants Trump’s accomplishments in the GOP’s One Big, Beautiful Bill (OBBB)  to be a focus of his remarks.

Miller-Meeks hopes Trump will “remind the nation of what we have done with the One Big, Beautiful Bill to help lower costs for everyone, what we’re doing to lower health care costs and also to increase economic growth.”

Another lawmaker, Rep. Rudy Yakym (R., Ind.), added the Reporter that he wants the president “to start by acknowledging all the successes from 2025; we delivered on his agenda with the largest tax cut in American history, we increased the child tax credit, and we enacted the largest spending cut in American history. He should talk about how he secured the southern border on day one and stopped the record flow of illegal immigrants. Then he should lay out a vision for what we all hope to do this year.”

One of those goals for this year has been economic growth, including making home ownership more affordable; that is something that Rep. John McGuire (R., Va.), who has been working on affordability in his district, wants Trump to hone in on.

McGuire, a former Navy SEAL, wants Trump to emphasize “the American Dream.”

“Twenty percent of home ownership in America used to be people under 32, now it’s closer to 1 percent,” McGuire noted. “It’s hard being a socialist if you own property…I [recently] spent three months going around, and every time I ran into a young person in my district, I asked them if they or their friends owned a house, and none of them did. How can you have the American Dream if it’s out of reach?”

Like Miller-Meeks, McGuire wants the OBBB to be a focus. “We’ve had more success in one year than most presidents have had in four years,” he said. “The One Big, Beautiful Bill added jet fuel to our economy. But sometimes you have to tell people something ten times in ten different ways to get the message across…This year, cost of living is going to be a big issue, like law and order. Murder rates, especially here, are way lower. And look abroad. By going after Maduro, the world is safer. Fairness is important, we’re going to go after that big time this year. We’ve identified $9 billion in fraud in Minnesota; there’s a lot more to do.”

Rep. Pat Harrigan (R., N.C.) was another lawmaker who wants Trump to “spend a lot of time addressing the wins we got in 2025. The One Big, Beautiful Bill transformed the economy for the middle class,” he said. 

The GOP’s signature bill, Harrigan explained, “said the government reaching into their pockets went too far. It was the largest spending cut, the largest tax cut in history, and simultaneously we achieved so many of Trump’s campaign promises. No taxes on tips, Social Security, and overtime, we firmed up funding for our southern border, and we created an environment where we could do peace through strength as we saw with Venezuela.”

Trump, Harrigan added, “should spend a healthy amount of time looking backwards talking about how transformational these wins are, and also how that policy is built on great principle, and how that yields great outcomes, and we’re starting to see those outcomes trickle in. Four-point-six percent GDP growth last quarter, prices are down. The American people will see these wins when they file their taxes.”

Another cost of living issue that Republicans want Trump to discuss is energy. “Pricing and how energy prices are at some of the lowest we’ve seen in years,” Rep. Beth Van Duyne (R., Texas) told the Reporter. She added that Trump has also overseen “huge wins with lower rental rates and how successful immigration has been. They’ve had 2.6 million folks who have deported. We’ve seen five straight months of rent rates going down because there is so much more availability.”

Van Duyne, who helped craft the OBBB as a member of the House Ways and Means Committee, added to the Reporter that “there are also regulatory reforms, and he should talk about how that’s having a direct impact on businesses. He’s going to talk about trade deals he’s made that make American businesses more competitive, his tariff strategy, and address his critics of that strategy to show how it’s boosted our GDP growth. He should also talk about the effects of the One Big, Beautiful Bill, and how working families are experiencing a massive tax rebate because of his agenda.”

Republicans in Congress are so eager for Trump to incorporate their feedback that they even are willing to help him with the big speech. “Maybe I’ll help him write it, although I don’t know how much of it he’d read,” Alford said.

Below are transcripts of our interviews with eight House Republicans, lightly edited for clarity.