"Our message to every child in America is that you are perfect exactly the way God made you," said President Trump. As he honored American heroes and "proclaimed the dawn of the Golden Age of America," he urged US citizens to "take up the righteous cause of American liberty" and make their nation stronger and freer "with God's help."

Trump's 100-minute-long speech Tuesday night earned the record for the longest address to a joint session of Congress in US history. He became only the second president in US history to deliver two addresses to a joint session of Congress, because the American people elected only him and Grover Cleveland to two non-consecutive terms.

During the record-setting event, which was frequently punctuated with outbursts of Democratic disapproval, the president hailed America's founders and their modern-day ancestors, while opposing open borders, weak criminal enforcement, censorship, government waste, and politicization of the government for political purposes.

'You Are Perfect Exactly the Way God Made You'

President Trump highlighted the victims of extreme gender ideology while invoking biological reality and the divine design of gender.

He introduced January Littlejohn, who sued Deerlake Middle School after learning public school officials had secretly socially transitioned their 13-year-old daughter to a nonbinary identity using they/them pronouns.

"I signed an order making the official policy of the United States government that there are only two genders, male and female," said Trump. "Stories like this are why, shortly after taking office, I signed an executive order banning public schools from indoctrinating our children with transgender ideology. I also signed an order to cut off all taxpayer funding to any institution that engages in the sexual mutilation of our youth."

"I want Congress to pass a bill permanently banning and criminalizing sex changes on children and forever ending the lie that any child is trapped in the wrong body. This is a big lie. And our message to every child in America is that you are perfect exactly the way God made you," Trump remarked.

While claiming to "affirm" the minor's self-identity, Littlejohn said public school officials tremendously harmed her child. "They affirmed my daughter's self-hate. They affirmed in her mind that something was wrong with her body," said Littlejohn in a video posted by the White House on social media. "We are really grateful to President Trump and his entire administration for the strong stance they are taking on parental rights, because no one loves their children more than their parents do. And it's our fundamental right to direct the upbringing of our children, and that includes mental and physical health care." Trump hailed Littlejohn as "a courageous advocate against this form of child abuse."

The president also drew attention to the plight of Payton McNabb, a former high school volleyball player from Murphy, North Carolina, who suffered lifelong injuries after a teenage boy who identified as female spiked the ball into her head during a September 2022 match. "A male posing as a woman ... hit me so severely that it knocked me unconscious" and left her with "partial paralysis, vision impairment, [and] cognitive issues" stemming from her "brain injury," remembered McNabb in a White House video.

Trump signed an executive order protecting women's sports, as well as their privacy in the locker room. "From now on, schools will kick the men off the girls team or they will lose all federal funding," he said.

The president's defense of biology cheered those victimized by transgender ideology. "We finally have an administration that was willing to stand up and hear us ... and really champion woman," said McNabb. "I'm so thankful for President Trump. Detranisitoner Chloe Cole declared, "Gender ideology and child gender transitions are so over." In his own bow to gender sanity, Senator Josh Hawley (R-MO) invited Dr. Eithan Haim, a whistleblower whom the Biden administration prosecuting after he exposed illegal transgender surgeries on minors, as his guest.

Deputizing 13-year-old D.J. Daniel

The emotional highlight of Trump's address came when he introduced D.J. Daniel, a 13-year-old boy diagnosed with brain cancer in 2018 and given five months to live. Daniel, who wants to be a police officer, has been sworn in as an honorary member of police forces—but President Trump recognized him in front of the entire nation. "Tonight, D.J., we're going to do you the biggest honor of them all. I am asking our new Secret Service director, Sean Curran, to officially make you an agent of the United States Secret Service," said Trump. D.J.'s face broke into a spontaneous smile before he hugged Curran and held his credentials aloft for a weeping world to see. (Screengrab image: via Fox9 Minneapolis-St Paul)

"I'm gonna keep on going until my gas tank runs out," Daniel promised in a video posted by the White House to social media. "You never know when God's going to call you home." "I'd like to thank President Trump, because if it wasn't for him, I wouldn't be here today."

Trump also lightened the countenance of 18-year-old Jason Hartley, whom he announced had achieved his lifelong dream of being admitted to West Point.

President Trump commemorated angel families—those who had lost a family member to the acts of a criminal illegal immigrant. He held up the executive order he signed honoring Jocelyn Nungary, a 12-year-old girl kidnapped, sexually assaulted, and murdered by an illegal immigrant. The president named "a pristine, peaceful, 34,000-acre sanctuary for all of God's creatures on the edge of the Gulf of America" in her honor, as her mother, Alexis Nungaray, wept.

He took pride in signing the Laken Riley Act before her mother, Allyson, and her sister, Lauren. "America will never forget Laken Hope Riley," he said.

Trump turned introspective for a moment, saying God saved his life to preserve America, before commemorating those who lost their lives in the July 13 attempt on his life in Butler, Pennsylvania.

"My life was saved by a fraction of an inch, but some were not so lucky. Corey Comperatore was a firefighter, a veteran, a Christian, a husband, a devoted father, and above all, a protector," as he gestured to Comperatore's wife, Helen, and their daughters, Allison and Kaylee.

'America Is Back'

The president's address combined optimism at a rejuvenated, patriotic America with caution over the depths from which the nation needs to recover.

"America is back," Trump began his speech. "The American Dream is surging bigger and better than ever before. The American Dream is unstoppable, and our country is on the verge of a comeback the likes of which the world has never witnessed."

He further emphasized the previous administration's weaponization of government. "Many jurisdictions virtually ceased enforcing the law against dangerous repeat offenders while weaponizing law enforcement against political opponents, like me," said the president, who faced numerous investigations and trials at the hands of Democratic prosecutors, including current or former officials in the Biden Justice Department. "My administration has acted swiftly and decisively to restore fair, equal and impartial justice under the constitutional rule of law."

Democrats regularly disturbed the proceedings, most especially Rep. Al Green (D-Texas), whose continual outbursts required Speaker of the House Mike Johnson (R-LA) to have him removed from the chamber. "If they want to make a 77-year-old heckling congressman the face of their resistance, if that's the Democrat Party, so be it," said Johnson, noting Congress may introduce a measure to censure Green. The Democrat's actions proved too much even for some Democrats. "I think what Al Green did was despicable," said longtime Obama advisor and CNN commentator David Axelrod.

The president briefly acknowledged their intransigence. "I look at the Democrats in front of me, and I realize there is absolutely nothing I can say to make them happy or to make them stand or smile or applaud, nothing I can do. I could find a cure to the most devastating disease, a disease that would wipe out entire nations, or announce the answers to the greatest economy in history, or the stoppage of crime to the lowest levels ever recorded, and these people sitting right here will not clap, will not stand, and certainly will not cheer for these astronomical achievements," lamented Trump. "It just shouldn't be this way."

He further noted, just six weeks into his presidency, border crossings had fallen 98% from their peak under the Biden-Harris administration. "The media and our friends in the Democrat Party kept saying we needed new legislation, we must have legislation to secure the border," he said. "But it turned out that all we really needed was a new president."

He vowed to take the fight to human traffickers, terrorists, and drug smugglers at both US borders. "The cartels are waging war in America, and it's time for America to wage war on the cartels," he said. (Screengrab image: via Fox9 Minneapolis-St Paul)

President Trump previewed the creation of a new Alaskan oil pipeline, one step toward supercharging US energy exploration and the mining of rare earth minerals.

He praised Elon Musk's work in the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), reciting a laundry list of wasteful or ideological grants designed to promote critical theory and the LGBTQ agenda overseas. He vowed to cut unnecessary spending and reel in the unelected, administrative state. "For nearly 100 years the federal bureaucracy has grown until it has crushed our freedoms, ballooned our deficits, and held back America's potential in every possible way," he said.

He vowed to impose reciprocal tariffs investments, saying they have played an historic role in preserving the national character and US jobs. "Tariffs are not just about protecting American jobs. They're about protecting the soul of our country. Tariffs are about making America rich again and making America great again," said Trump.

The president also mentioned non-consensual pornography, asking congressional leaders to pass the Take It Down Act (S. 146). The bill, introduced by Senator Ted Cruz (R-Texas), would make it illegal to share pornographic images of people without their consent, as well as ban computer-generated AI deepfakes (styled as "non-consensual intimate imagery"), which falsely make it appear an individual has engaged in pornographic acts.

Although the speech said nothing about abortion—a perennial disposition of the second Trump administration—Trump singled out Haley Ferguson for participating in First Lady Melania Trump's Fostering the Future initiative and praised steelworker Jeff Denard and his wife, Nicole, for serving as foster parents to 40 children.

Rebuilding the military, and restoring US military might, played a prominent part in the speech. The president announced US soldiers had "just apprehended the top terrorist responsible" for the bombing of Abbey Gate in Afghanistan, which killed 13 US armed service members, "and he is right now on his way here to face the swift sword of American justice." He noted the US military recruitment boost and called for America to create a "Golden Dome" missile defense shield, a form of the Strategic Defense Initiative dreamed of since President Ronald Reagan in 1983.

President Trump also looked to revitalize the US economy by making his tax cuts permanent. He noted that he had ended all Green New Deal initiatives, including the Biden-Harris administration's "insane electric vehicle mandate," and signed an executive order requiring administrators to remove 10 regulations for every new one introduced into the federal code. He asked lawmakers to make car loans tax-deductible for vehicles made in America and to end taxation of tips, overtime, or Social Security payments to the elderly—the last of which effectively undercuts Democratic talking points that the president plans to cut services to the elderly when, in fact, Trump has opposed entitlement reform his entire political career.

Advancing 'the Righteous Cause of American Liberty,' 'with God's Help'

In his speech to Congress, Trump saw his own survival of multiple, near-fatal assassination attempts as part of a divine plan to revive patriotism and return America to her historic quest for greatness. "I believe that my life was saved that day in Butler for a very good reason. I was saved by God to make America great again," he told an approving Congress.

"Now it is our time to take up the righteous cause of American liberty, and it is our turn to take America's destiny into our own hands and begin the most thrilling days in the history of our country. This will be our greatest era. With God's help, over the next four years, we are going to lead this nation even higher, and we are going to forge the freest, most advanced, most dynamic, and most dominant civilization ever to exist on the face of this Earth," he promised.

To that end, he reeled in far-Left ideology and withdrew the US from supranational, global governance bodies that encroach on American sovereignty. "We've ended the tyranny of so-called diversity, equity, and inclusion policies all across the entire federal government and indeed the private sector and our military. And our country will be woke no longer," proclaimed Trump. "We have removed the poison of critical race theory from our public schools, and I signed an order making the official policy of the United States government that there are only two genders, male and female."

The 47th president noted with pride that he "withdrew from the corrupt World Health Organization, and I also withdrew from the anti-American UN Human Rights Council," as well as the Paris Climate Accord. "Despite the best efforts of those who would try to censor us, silence us, break us, destroy us, Americans are today a proud, free, sovereign, and independent nation that will always be free, and we will fight for it 'til death," vowed the president, who hailed the determination of "doers, dreamers, fighters, and survivors."

In all, he signed "nearly 100 executive orders and taken more than 400 executive actions," including an order making English the official language of the United States of America, as well as renaming the Gulf of America and Mount McKinley.

US citizens, Trump said, seek to be heroes, not villains, and American politicians have believed in that exceptional American character until recent times. "That same strength, faith, love, and spirit is still alive and thriving in the hearts of the American people," he remarked.

"We have accomplished more in 43 days than most administrations accomplished in four years, eight years," said President Trump, "and we are just getting started." Subscribe for free to Breaking Christian News here

Ben Johnson is senior reporter and editor at The Washington Stand.

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