WASHINGTON, D.C. — President Donald Trump touted his policies related to the gender transitions of minors and his ongoing mass deportations efforts, but avoided the subject of abortion during his State of the Union address Tuesday night, Feb. 24.
“Our nation’s back: bigger, better, richer, and stronger than ever before,” Trump said, about one year and one month into his second non-consecutive term in office.
The president also asserted there “has been a tremendous renewal in religion, faith, Christianity, and belief in God.” He credited “my great friend Charlie Kirk” with contributing to the trend. Kirk’s widow, Erika Kirk, was one of the guests in attendance.
“In Charlie’s memory, we must all come together to reaffirm that America is one nation, under God, and we must totally reject political violence of any kind,” Trump said. “…We love religion and we love bringing it back and it’s coming back at levels that nobody actually thought possible. It’s really a beautiful thing to see.”
The gender transition of minors
Some of Trump’s first actions as president focused on what he called “gender ideology,” such as policies that restrict hospitals from providing gender transition drugs and surgeries for minors, and restricting women’s high school and college sports to only biological women and girls.
One guest at the State of the Union was Sage Blair, a woman from Virginia who underwent a social transition when she was 14 years old in 2021. The public high school did not inform her parents when she began to identify as a boy.
Blair ran away from home and was lured into a sex trafficking operation in Washington, D.C. and Maryland. A judge withheld her parents’ custody after the public defender accused them of “misgendering her” and she was put in a children’s home in Texas, from which she also ran away and was again sex trafficked. She eventually returned home and she stopped identifying as male.
“A confused Sage ran away from home,” Trump said. “After she was found in a horrific situation in Maryland, a left-wing judge refused to return Sage to her parents because they did not immediately state that their daughter was their son.”
Trump said in his speech that lawmakers should agree “no state can be allowed to rip children from their parents’ arms and transition them to a new gender against the parents’ will,” adding: “we must ban it and we must ban it immediately.”
Trump asked lawmakers to stand up and applaud if they agree. Republicans stood, but most Democrats remained sitting, after which the president said: “Nobody stands up. These people are crazy, I’m telling you, they’re crazy.”
Mary Rice Hasson, the director of the Person and Identity Project at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, told EWTN after the address that “it was hugely significant for the president to blast this evil aspect of gender ideology, which is much more pervasive than parents realize.”
“Many public schools continue to facilitate a child’s rejection of his or her sex and hide it from the child’s parents, often with tragic consequences,” she said.
Susan Hanssen, a history professor at the University of Dallas — a Catholic institution — said the president’s reaction to Blair’s story “seemed very genuine.”
“He expressed surprise that gender transitioning even needed to be brought up as an issue,” she said. “This has been an issue that he moved on immediately upon entering the White House, clarifying by executive order that there are only male and female.”
Mass deportations and immigration
Trump doubled down on mass deportation efforts during his address, derided immigrants from Somalia, took credit for stronger border security, and accused Democrats of supporting “open borders.”
“After four years in which millions and millions of illegal aliens poured across our borders totally unvetted and unchecked, we now have the strongest and most secure border in American history by far,” Trump said.
The president added that the United States “will always allow people to come in legally, people that will love our country and work hard to maintain our country.”
Trump recalled specific crimes committed by immigrants who were in the country illegally and called on Congress to ban sanctuary cities, which refuse to assist in deportations and impose penalties on public officials who block immigration enforcement.
The president also called on Congress to pass a law that bans states from providing driver’s licenses to immigrants who are residing in the country illegally.
“Many, if not most, illegal aliens, do not speak English and cannot read even the most basic road signs as to directions, speed, danger, and location,” he said after referencing the injuries suffered by Dalilah Coleman, a child who was struck by an 18-wheeler driven by an immigrant who was in the country illegally.
Trump reserved his most aggressive rhetoric for Somali immigrants. The federal government is currently investigating fraud schemes in Minnesota, which the administration alleges was done primarily by Somalis.
“The Somali pirates who ransacked Minnesota remind us that there are large parts of the world where bribery, corruption, and lawlessness are the norm, not the exception,” the president said.
“Importing these cultures through unrestricted immigration and open borders brings those problems right here to the USA and it is the American people who pay the price in higher medical bills, car insurance rates, rent, taxes, and perhaps most importantly crime,” he said. “We will take care of this problem. We’re going to take care of this problem. We are not playing games.”
Virginia Gov. Abigail Spanberger, who provided the Democrats’ response to the State of the Union, criticized Trump for his rhetoric and policies on immigration.
“They have arrested and detained American citizens and people who aspire to be Americans and they have done it without a warrant,” she said. “They have ripped nursing mothers away from their babies. They have sent children … to far off detention centers and they have killed American citizens in our streets and they have done it all with their faces masked from accountability.”
John White, a professor emeritus of politics at The Catholic University of America, also criticized the president’s rhetoric on Somalis, telling EWTN “he is demeaning a group of Americans many of whom supported him in 2024.”
In November 2025, the USCCB issued a special message that opposed “the indiscriminate mass deportation of people” and called for an end to “dehumanizing rhetoric and violence, whether directed at immigrants or at law enforcement.” The message was approved by a vote of 216-5.
