MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:
President Trump will deliver a major speech to a joint session of Congress tonight.
LEILA FADEL, HOST:
Yeah, it's the first such address of his term. So it's not formally called the State of the Union, but it will have all the pomp and gravity of that kind of speech. This is one of the president's most visible moments of the year. It usually has a big, prime-time television audience, and it comes as Trump has been upending long-standing norms of American government and diplomacy.
MARTIN: For more on what we might expect, we have White House correspondent Danielle Kurtzleben here with us. Good morning, Danielle.
DANIELLE KURTZLEBEN, BYLINE: Good morning, Michel.
MARTIN: Has the White House said anything about what the president will talk about tonight?
KURTZLEBEN: Not a lot. We know broad strokes, but the White House hasn't given reporters the kind of preview information that they often do ahead of these speeches. Now, they have said the theme is the renewal of the American dream. And one thing you can definitely expect is to hear Trump talk about what he counts as his accomplishments - for example, the steps he's taken in the past six weeks to get rid of Joe Biden's policies and also just to do what Trump told his base he would do during the campaign. Now, a lot of those moves are aggressive, to put it mildly. And there are things that are being challenged in the courts, so moving immigrants to Guantanamo Bay, diminishing transgender people's rights and not to mention bringing on an unelected billionaire, Elon Musk, to gut federal agencies.
MARTIN: Danielle, I'm thinking about my time as a White House correspondent. And my recollection is that the presidents usually ask Congress to do something. And I recognize what you said, that there hasn't been the kind of preview we're used to getting. But do we have a sense of what kind of legislation President Trump might be looking for?
KURTZLEBEN: Yes, we do know he's going to ask Congress to spend more money on border security. We also expect him to ask for another top legislative priority, which is extending tax cuts passed in his first term. But one thing that I would add is there's a pretty unusual dynamic hanging over this speech. This Congress, which is narrowly controlled by Republicans, they have been remarkably acquiescent to Trump's norm-shattering moves. And that acquiescence has come even as Trump has consolidated wide-ranging governmental powers into the executive branch, including powers that Congress historically has had, things like imposing tariffs.
MARTIN: And this speech is also coming on the heels of that just remarkable, you know, contentious meeting last week with Ukraine's president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, you know, that fight in the Oval Office that we've talked so much about.
KURTZLEBEN: Of course.
MARTIN: Do you have a sense of whether Trump is going to address that in these remarks tonight?
KURTZLEBEN: Well, he has said he will be talking about that proposal under which the U.S. would get some revenue from Ukraine's mineral resources. It's part of how Trump wants to broker a peace deal between Ukraine and Russia, that mineral deal. Now, a reporter asked Trump yesterday if the mineral deal is dead after that fight, and Trump seemed to leave the door open.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Well, I'll let you know. We're making a speech - you probably heard about it - tomorrow night. So I'll let you know tomorrow night. But, no, I don't think so.
KURTZLEBEN: Now, Democrats, for their part, their response to the speech will be from Michigan Senator Elissa Slotkin, who worked at the CIA prior to holding office. And she's been attacking Trump on Ukraine a lot in recent weeks.
MARTIN: One of the things that I think a lot of people look for - including, you know, not the political professionals, but just people in the audience - is, what's the mood in the room? What are the theatrics of the speech? Any sense of what we might expect there?
KURTZLEBEN: Well, you'll see Democrats continuing to try to figure out how to respond to Trump, and this will be an opportunity to do that. They'll have guests like fired federal workers and Medicaid recipients, the latter presumably to highlight the possibility that Republicans cut that program. Now, President Trump, we don't know who his guests are yet. But Melania Trump will have a guest who was a victim of revenge porn, and that's part of the first lady's push to combat that type of online abuse.
MARTIN: That is NPR's Danielle Kurtzleben. Danielle, thank you.
KURTZLEBEN: Thank you. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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