President Donald Trump delivered a sweeping to-do list to Congress during his State of the Union address on Tuesday, urging lawmakers seven separate times to take action on priorities ranging from drug pricing and border security to crime and housing policy.
Trump urged Congress to enshrine his “Most-Favored-Nation” drug pricing policy into law as part of his “Trump Rx” initiative. The policy aims to tie U.S. prescription drug prices to the lowest prices paid by other developed nations.
Earlier this month, his administration launched the TrumpRx website, a federal platform designed to allow Americans to search for select brand-name medications and access lower negotiated prices.
The site stems from agreements the White House said in December it reached with nine major pharmaceutical companies, including Amgen, Merck, Novartis, Sanofi and Bristol Myers Squibb. It lists dozens of high-cost drugs offered at discount prices to treat conditions such as diabetes, asthma, HIV, hepatitis C, multiple sclerosis and cardiovascular disease.
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Despite suggesting it would be politically difficult to reverse the policy, Trump told lawmakers to “codify it anyway.”
After highlighting the story of a Houston mother outbid on 20 homes by investment firms, Trump asked Congress to make permanent his executive order banning large Wall Street-backed firms from buying single-family homes in bulk. “We want homes for people, not for corporations,” he said.
While outlining retirement policy changes and pledging to protect Social Security and Medicare, Trump pivoted to ethics reform, calling on lawmakers to “pass the ‘Stop Insider Trading Act’ without delay.”
The measure would ban members of Congress from buying individual stocks and require advance public notice before sales.
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Rep. Bryan Steil, R-Wis., who introduced the bill, told FOX Business in January, “If you want to trade stocks you should go to Wall Street, not to Capitol Hill. I think we have an opportunity here to dramatically improve America’s trust in Congress.”
Following the story of a young girl seriously injured in a crash involving an illegal immigrant truck driver, Trump called on Congress to pass what he dubbed the “Dalilah Law,” barring states from issuing commercial driver’s licenses to people in the country illegally.
“Dalilah Coleman was only 5 years old in June 2024 when an 18-wheel tractor-trailer plowed into her stopped car, traveling at 60 miles an hour or more,” Trump said. “The driver was an illegal alien let in by Joe Biden and given a commercial driver’s license by open borders politicians in California.”
Coleman’s father said the crash left her in a coma for three weeks and required six months of hospital treatment before her family could bring her home.
Trump accused Democrats of cutting off funding for the Department of Homeland Security, which is currently operating under a partial shutdown after lawmakers failed to reach an agreement on a funding bill.
He demanded the “full and immediate restoration” of border and homeland security funding, framing it as essential to protecting Americans from crime and terrorism.
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The president also urged lawmakers to end so-called sanctuary city policies, calling for “serious penalties” against public officials who block the removal of criminal illegal immigrants.
“They’re blocking the removal of these people out of our country. And you should be ashamed of yourself,” Trump told Democrats to loud Republican cheers.
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Closing his legislative appeals, Trump asked Congress to pass stricter sentencing laws to ensure “violent and dangerous repeat offenders are put behind bars — and, importantly, that they stay there.”
He cited the death of 23-year-old Iryna Zarutska, a Ukrainian refugee, who was stabbed to death on a train in Charlotte, North Carolina, in August.
“Iryna was riding home on the train when a deranged monster who had been arrested over a dozen times and was released through no cash bail, stood up and viciously slashed a knife through her neck and body. No one will ever forget there were people on that train,” Trump said. “No one will ever forget the expression of terror on Iryna’s face as she looked up at her attacker in the last seconds of her life. She died instantly. She had escaped a brutal war, only to be slain by a hardened criminal set free to kill in America.”
