During President Donald Trump’s Tuesday night State of the Union address, he used a teen as a transphobic prop, urged the passage of a law that could keep millions of trans people from voting, and praised the leader of an anti-LGBTQ+ organization.

He also made numerous racist comments demonizing immigrants as deadly and fraudulent criminals while repeatedly blaming Democrats for the nation’s problems, even though Republicans have had full control of the government’s three branches since 2025.

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During his speech, Trump pointed out Sage Blair in attendance with their mother. Blair is a Virginia high school teen who began socially transitioning at age 14 by using male pronouns and facilities at their school (allegedly without her mother’s knowledge).

Blair’s mother sued the school district, alleging that the mental distress caused by the school’s policies and subsequently bullying from other students compelled her child to run away from home and fall victim to child sex traffickers. Virginia Republicans have since championed “Sage’s Law,” a bill that would require schools to forcibly out trans kids to their potentially unaccepting parents.

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Trump claimed that secret transitioning of students without their parents’ knowledge is “going on all over [in] numerous states,” and added, “We can all agree no state can be allowed to rip children from their parents arms and transition them to a new gender against the parents’ will.” In reality, no states have laws separating trans children from their parents, even if the parents disagree with their transition.

Trump then referred to Blair as a “wonderful young woman with a full ride scholarship to Liberty University,” a conservative Christian school in Lynchburg, Virginia that denies all recognition of trans students and has conduct policies that can lead to their expulsion.

Shortly after mentioning Blair, Trump pointed out another person in attendance: Erika Kirk, the wife of slain MAGA influencer Charlie Kirk. Kirk took over her husband’s anti-LGBTQ+ young conservative organization Turning Point USA after her husband’s death and used it to present a white country-rock alternative to Puerto Rican performer Bad Bunny’s queer-inclusive Super Bowl halftime show.

Early into his speech, Trump declared, “We ended DEI in America,” a reference to diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives in schools, businesses, and federally funded institutions. His administration has actively targeted these initiatives through illegal defunding and retaliatory investigations.

Despite his claim, on February 18, Trump’s U.S. Department of Education dropped its anti-DEI order targeting schools nationwide. Also, many of the country’s largest companies have not ended their DEI commitments during Trump’s second presidency.

About midway through his speech, Trump referenced “Somali pirates who ransacked Minnesota,” an allusion to Somali citizens who defrauded state welfare programs for hundreds of millions of dollars.

“They remind us that there are large parts of the world where bribery, corruption, and lawlessness are the norm, not the exception,” Trump said unironically, despite the fact that his presidency has personally enriched him with at least $4 billion in grifts while illegally violating constitutional law and due process rights for U.S. residents.

He then blamed immigrants for crime and murders — even though immigrants are less likely to commit crimes than American citizens are. He also blamed immigrants for high prices, adding, “Many, if not most, illegal aliens do not speak English,” even though an estimated about 44% of unauthorized immigrants in the U.S. speak English “well” or “very well,” according to the Pew Research Center.

He then claimed that Democratic officials are blocking the removal of criminal “drug lords and murderers,” even though nearly 74% of immigrants detained by federal authorities have no history of criminal convictions whatsoever.

During this section of the speech, Rep. Ilhan Omar (D), who is Somali, heckled Trump, calling him a liar and telling him, “You’re killing Americans.”

She wasn’t the only politician to criticize Trump’s racism. During the president’s entrance into the congressional chamber, Rep. Al Green (D-TX) held up a sign that said, “Black people aren’t apes,” a reference to a racist video Trump posted on social media at the beginning of Black History Month. House Majority Leader Steve Scalise tried to destroy Green’s sign. Republicans cheered as Green was later escorted from the chamber near the start of Trump’s address.

Trump then urged Congress to pass the SAVE America Act “to stop illegal aliens and others who are unpermitted persons from voting in our sacred American elections.” The act — which would require all Americans to prove their citizenship status through passports or their birth certificate, in-person, when registering to vote — could keep millions of transgender people and married woman from voting since their names may not match the aforementioned documents.

In a statement after the speech, Human Rights Campaign President Kelley Robinson said, “Whether it’s incoherent lies about his agenda, dangerously racist rhetoric about American communities, rambling grievances about past elections, or absurd and obsessive outbursts about transgender people, nobody knows what this President is talking about. The real state of our union is Trump-fueled chaos, division, and crisis. We’ve had enough – and he’ll hear that loud and clear in November.”

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