(Daily Signal)—President Donald Trump highlighted the successful raid in Venezuela, the U.S. triumph at the Olympics, and new plans for tariffs and affordability in his first official State of the Union address of his second term.
Here are five highlights from his speech on Tuesday night.
1. Honoring a Hero of Raid to Capture Maduro
Trump put a spotlight on Chinook helicopter pilot Chief Warrant Officer Eric Slover, who was injured in the raid to capture Venezuelan President Nicholas Maduro.
Slover was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor for his role in the operation.
While piloting the helicopter, Slover was hit in the leg and hip by enemy machine gun fire but continued to carry out the mission.
“He absorbed four agonizing shots, shredding his leg into numerous pieces,” Trump said. “And yet, despite the fact that the use of his legs was vital to a successful helicopter flight, flying a helicopter to deliver the many commandos who would capture and detain Maduro was the only thing Eric was thinking about.”
“Even as he was gushing blood which was flowing down the aisle, the helicopter landed at a steep angle,” Trump said.
Trump also reunited a former Venezuelan prisoner of war with his niece for the first time.
“I’m pleased to inform you that not only has your uncle been released, but he is here tonight,” Trump said. “We brought him over to celebrate his freedom with you in person.”
2. Calling for the SAVE America Act
“We have to stop it, John,” Trump said to Republican Senate Majority Leader John Thune about illegal immigrants voting in America.
Trump called on the Senate to pass the SAVE America Act, which requires proof of citizenship to register to vote and a photo ID to vote in federal elections.
“Why would anybody not want a voter ID?” Trump asked. “One reason is because they want to cheat.”
“They want to cheat,” he said. “They have cheated, and their policy is so bad that the only way they can get elected is to cheat, and we’re going to stop it.”
Trump called out Democrats for refusing to put American citizens ahead of illegal aliens.
“If you agree with this statement, please stand up,” Trump said. “The first duty of the American government is to protect American citizens and not illegal aliens.”
Many Democrats did not stand.
3. Hockey Player Gets Medal of Freedom
Trump announced that Connor Hellebuyck, the U.S. men’s hockey team’s goaltender, will receive the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
After the U.S. beat Canada in the 2026 Winter Olympics finals on Sunday, Trump welcomed the team to his first State of the Union address.
Trump described the medal as “the highest civilian honor.”
The hockey team received a standing ovation from the crowd as they entered the chamber, with the exception of some Democrats who refused to stand.
4. New Retirement Plans
Trump announced a new initiative to create retirement savings plans for workers who don’t have one provided by their employer.
“Since I took office, the typical 401(k) balance is up by at least $30,000 million because the stock market has done so well, setting all those records, your 401(k)s are way up, yet half of all working Americans still do not have access to a retirement plan with matching contributions from an employer,” Trump said.
“To remedy this gross disparity, I’m announcing that next year, my administration will give these often forgotten American workers, great people, people that built our country,” Trump said, “access to the same type of retirement plan offered to every federal worker. We will match your contribution with up to $1,000.”
Trump also highlighted his executive order to stop large institutional investment firms from buying single-family homes.
Trump promised to always protect Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid.
He renewed his call for Congress to pass his “Great Health Care Plan” to lower health care prices for Americans.
🚨FLIPPING THE SCRIPT ON AFFORDABILITY
President Trump flips the script on affordability—blaming Democrats for inflation📈 and noting that the increase in prices has cooled.
Then he slams the "Unaffordable Care Act." pic.twitter.com/rXgFV7Fj7V
— Tyler O'Neil (@Tyler2ONeil) February 25, 2026
“I want to stop all payments to big insurance companies and instead give that money directly to the people so they can buy their own health care, which will be better health care at a much lower price,” Trump said.
“My plan requires maximum price transparency,” Trump added. “That’s a big deal.”
5. The Future of Tariffs
Trump addressed the Supreme Court’s “unfortunate ruling” against his tariffs last week, pivoting to his next plan.
Trump said the Supreme Court on Friday “got it really wrong.”
“But the good news is that almost all countries and corporations want to keep the deal that they already made,” Trump said, “knowing that the legal power that I as president have to make a new deal could be far worse for them, and therefore they will continue to work along the same successful path that we had negotiated before the Supreme Court’s unfortunate ruling.”
Trump attributed the wars he helped end partially to the tariffs.
“I used these tariffs, hundreds of billions of dollars, to make great deals for our country, both economically and on a national security basis, everything was working well, countries,” Trump said, “they were ripping us off for decades and now paying us hundreds of billions of dollars they were ripping us so badly all know that everybody knows it, even the Democrats.”
Two Storms, One Harvest
Every food crisis in living memory has been a one-shock event. The 2008 price spike was a commodity bubble. The 2020 shortages were a logistics failure. The 2022 grain scare was a war on one exporter’s ports. Each time, the system bent, adjusted, and recovered, and each time the experts assured us afterward that global markets are simply too big and too diversified to fail.
What nobody in Washington seems eager to discuss is that 2026 is shaping up to be something the modern food system has never actually faced. Two independent shocks, one climatic and one geopolitical, are converging on the same harvest cycle at the same time. Not sequentially. Simultaneously.
Start with the weather. The Pacific Ocean is currently building toward what forecasters now openly call a record event. NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center puts the odds of at least a strong El Niño near 88 percent, with roughly two in three odds it reaches “very strong” status, the tier reserved for perhaps three or four events in the entire satellite era. Every major global model now projects a median peak in Super El Niño territory, and most of them project it exceeding the 2015-16 event, which until now held the modern record. Sea surface anomalies were already brushing the super threshold in mid-July, months before these events normally peak. The atmosphere has already shifted into El Niño mode, and the event is forecast to crest in late fall and early winter.
This is not about “climate change.” It’s about the standard cycles of weather, and the cycle we’re currently in is one that has likely devastated societies in the past. We’re better prepared as a society today, but not all Americans are equally prepared.
Serious households have started doing the quiet math on their own. Grocery bills tell part of the story, and the forecast maps tell the rest, which is why long-term food storage has moved from fringe hobby to mainstream line item in the family budget, with established suppliers like Heaven’s Harvest seeing demand from people who five years ago would have rolled their eyes at the idea. That instinct is not paranoia. It is pattern recognition, and the pattern is worth walking through carefully.
Editor’s Note: Heaven’s Harvest IS a sponsor, but the warnings of this article are real and would be written even if we didn’t have a survival food sponsor. With that said, those who take advantage of what they offer can use promo code “Patriot” for 15% off.
The Fertilizer Clock Is Already Running
While the Pacific warms, the second shock has been unfolding in the Strait of Hormuz. The conflict with Iran turned the world’s most important energy chokepoint into a contested waterway, and the consequences reach far beyond the gas pump. Roughly a third of global fertilizer trade moves through Hormuz, and the disruption sent urea prices up 86 percent year over year by March, with a 53 percent jump in a single month.
The World Bank projects energy prices rising about 24 percent in 2026 and fertilizer about 31 percent. By its own accounting, fertilizer prices ran 35 percent higher in the first five months of this year than the same period last year.
Here is the mechanism the nightly news will not explain. Fertilizer is not a grocery item. It is a time-delayed input. The nitrogen a farmer in Iowa or Punjab could not afford to apply this spring does not show up as a problem this spring. It shows up as a thinner harvest six to twelve months later.
The World Bank’s own food security brief concedes that the effects of reduced applications earlier this season “are likely to become visible only later in harvest outcomes.” Translate that from institutional language into plain English and it means this. The damage is already done, it is already in the ground, and we are simply waiting for it to arrive on the shelf.
Now check the calendar. Six to twelve months from the spring planting season lands us squarely in late 2026 and early 2027. Which is precisely when the strongest El Niño in the instrumental record is forecast to peak, bringing its signature droughts to Southeast Asia, Australia, southern Africa, northern Brazil, and South Asia, the very regions that grow the world’s rice, sugar, and oilseeds.
The World Bank warns openly that a strong El Niño “could disrupt multiple crop belts simultaneously” on top of the conflict-driven input costs. Their baseline projection assumes the Middle East disruptions ease by autumn. What in the last two years of Middle East history suggests that assumption is safe?
The System Has No Slack Left
The comfortable answer is that global markets always adjust. But adjustment requires slack, and the slack is gone. Global cereal production is expected to decline from last year’s records even before El Niño does its work. The UN World Food Programme, hardly a den of right-wing preppers, is calling this the most significant disruption to its supply chains since Covid and the invasion of Ukraine, and its supply chain director put the stakes bluntly.
Today’s supply chain challenges are tomorrow’s hunger crisis.
There is also a political dimension that markets cannot price. When food gets scarce, governments do not behave like economists. They behave like politicians. Export bans, hoarding mandates, and panic buying at the national level turned the modest rice shortfall of 2008 into a global crisis, and analysts are already warning that import-dependent nations are the first dominoes.
The 2015-16 Super El Niño, a far weaker event than what is now forecast, threw tens of millions into food stress across Africa and Asia. This one is projected to be stronger, and it arrives with fertilizer already rationed by price and shipping lanes already contested by missiles.
What Joseph Knew
Scripture does not treat preparation for lean years as faithlessness. It treats it as wisdom delivered in advance to those willing to act on it.
Behold, there come seven years of great plenty throughout all the land of Egypt: And there shall arise after them seven years of famine; and all the plenty shall be forgotten in the land of Egypt.
Joseph did not respond to that warning with a hashtag or a committee. He stored grain during the years of abundance, and when the famine came, Egypt stood while its neighbors begged. The lesson is not that famine is certain. It is that the time to prepare is precisely when preparation still looks optional.
Nobody who filled a pantry in a year of plenty has ever regretted it, and nobody standing in an empty aisle has ever been glad he waited for certainty.
None of this calls for panic, and panic is the enemy of sound judgment anyway. It calls for the same unglamorous prudence our grandparents considered ordinary. Keep some cash margin, know your local growers, and put real food in deep storage while it is cheap and available, because the entire arc of this story is that cheap and available is a closing window.
Families looking for a straightforward place to start can visit Heaven’s Harvest and use promo code Patriot for 15 percent off long-term storable food. The forecasts may yet soften, the strait may yet reopen, and we should pray they do. But hope is a fine thing to hold and a foolish thing to eat.
