The history and characteristic features of the State of the Union address, to be delivered by President Obama on January 25, were reviewed in a recent report (pdf) from the Congressional Research Service.
“Presidents often acknowledge the difficult nature of the goals they set, but such acknowledgment is qualified by a strong statement that Americans will always fulfill their destiny, solve intractable problems, and ultimately ‘establish a more perfect Union’. ”
“No President has ever reported that the crisis facing the nation was insurmountable.”
See “The President’s State of the Union Address: Tradition, Function, and Policy Implications,” November 17, 2010.
Over the past few months, the Trump administration has been laying the foundation to expand the use of the Defense Production Act (DPA) for energy infrastructure and supply chains.
Get it right, and pooled hiring becomes a model for how the federal government decides what to do together and what to do apart. That’s a bigger prize than faster hiring. It’s a more functional government.
As of March 2026, there were at least nine documented U.S. wrongful arrests tied to face recognition misidentification. Errors like these are as much human as machine.
No one will be surprised if we end up with a continuing resolution to push our shutdown deadline out past the midterms, so the real question is what else will they get done this summer?