Ahead of tonight’s State of the Union, House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries sharply criticized the first year of Donald Trump’s presidency, focusing on rising living costs, job creation and immigration enforcement.

“The state of our union under the presidency of Donald Trump is a complete and total disaster,” said Jeffries.

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Jeffries said the cost of living has “gone up,” that job creation remains a concern, and that “ICE is totally out of control.”

Addressing how Democrats are approaching the president’s speech, Jeffries said members are divided over whether to attend.

“Some members will attend in silent defiance, and some members will choose not to attend,” Jeffries said. Meanwhile, Sen. Mark Kelly told The Pavlovic Today he plans to attend the State of the Union despite political tensions, casting his appearance as both constitutional and symbolic.

The Democratic leader also pushed back on criticism from Republicans over decorum, saying House Speaker Mike Johnson and GOP lawmakers “are not in a position to lecture anyone about decorum.”

He added, “Not with this president who is completely and totally out of control in every way possible, has broken every norm, is corrupting his office and is running a Trump cartel.”

Jeffries accused Republicans of abandoning their role as a coequal branch of government.

“House Republicans have decided that rather than be a separate and coequal branch of government, they just run around focusing their attention on being a reckless rubber stamp for Donald Trump’s extreme agenda. So we definitely aren’t going to be lectured by any of our Republican colleagues about anything, anytime, anywhere,” Jeffries said.

The New York congressman said Trump should use his speech to address what he described as broken promises.

“Donald Trump should use this opportunity to apologize to the American people for breaking every single promise that he made, particularly his promise to lower the high cost of living on day one.”

He added that “too many people are struggling to live paycheck to paycheck.”

Jeffries also pointed to polling he said reflects declining support for the president.

He described the approval numbers as an “extinction-level” event, adding that Trump “is losing independents, that Latino voters are leaving him, young voters are leaving him.”

However, Jeffries said he does not expect a change in course in Trump’s agenda.

“In this presidency, any normal person would realize we better change course, because this is not working. Republicans have lost elections for 14 consecutive months with no sign of improvement, but unfortunately, it doesn’t appear that Donald Trump is going to show up learning the lesson of perhaps it’s better to actually change course. No, we think he’s going to double and triple down on his lies. It’s not going to be persuasive to the American people, and they’ll probably be worse off after this speech,” Jeffries said.

SOTU

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