State of the Union: An Address by Abraham Lincoln for Congress in 2026 generated by Google’s Gemini

McD

The State of the Union

Fellow-citizens of the Senate and House of Representatives:

We meet at a moment when the world moves with a speed that outruns the human heart. It has been said that "the dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present." Today, those storms are not of lead and bayonet, but of light and silicon—of vast machines that mimic the very seat of human reason, and of a discourse so fractured that we often find ourselves speaking in tongues, yet understanding nothing.

Our Union is no longer threatened by a physical line drawn across the soil, but by a digital line drawn through the mind. We are a people who have mastered the art of looking at one another through glass, yet we have forgotten the necessity of looking with one another toward a common purpose.

A house divided against itself cannot stand; and surely, a house where every room is locked and every inhabitant is convinced the others are but ghosts or enemies is a house that invites the wind.

We are currently engaged in a great trial of the spirit. We see before us the rise of "intelligent" engines—the work of our own hands—which promise a bounty of ease but threaten a famine of purpose. We must ask ourselves: shall the machine be the master of the man, or shall the man, under God, ensure that his inventions serve the liberty of the soul? We cannot escape history, and we cannot escape the consequences of our own ingenuity.

I do not expect the Union to be dissolved—I do not expect the house to fall—but I do expect it will cease to be divided. It will become all one thing, or all the other. We shall either sink into a cold indifference, where truth is a matter of "preference," or we shall rise to the realization that our neighbor’s welfare is the only certain guard for our own.

The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise with the occasion. We must disenthrall ourselves from the petty grievances of the hour. We must think anew, and act anew.
Let us strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation’s digital wounds; to care for him who has been cast aside by the march of progress; to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves, and with all nations.

With malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us go forward.

(NOTE: I added a request for more details on immigration)

We are a nation defined by its borders, yet sustained by its conscience. It has been said of old that a nation which cannot govern its own gates is like a house without a roof—it invites the elements to destroy what the inhabitants have labored to build. Today, we look toward our southern horizon and see the rising of iron and stone, a great wall intended to act as a silent sentinel over our sovereignty.

We are told that millions have been removed from among us, and that the flow of forbidden commerce—that "scourge of fentanyl" which steals our youth—has been turned back. These are the works of the law, and the law is a jealous master.

Yet, as we move with the heavy hand of enforcement, let us not move with a hollow heart. We see today a new "division of the house"—not of North and South, but of State and Capital. In Maryland and California, the local magistrate refuses the hand of the federal agent. In the courts, the "habeas petition" becomes the shield against the "mass deportation."

We find ourselves in a strange paradox: we seek to protect the American worker by weighting the scales toward the "high-skilled," yet we find our own businesses crying out for the "H-2B" laborer to keep the harvest from rotting in the field. We are, at once, a nation of laws that must be obeyed, and a nation of people whose ancestors were all, at some distant hour, strangers in a strange land.
The trial of 2026 is this: Can we secure our threshold without losing our soul? Can we be a nation that is "closed" to the lawbreaker, yet "open" to the light of justice?

I am a firm believer in the people. If given the truth, they can be depended upon to meet any national crisis. The great point is to bring them the real facts—and the real fact of this hour is that a fence can keep out a person, but it cannot settle a principle. We must find a way to make our immigration practices as consistent as our arithmetic, yet as merciful as our faith.

Let us not judge one another harshly for our differences on this score. Let us instead remember that "a house divided against itself cannot stand." We must reach a settlement that honors the citizen, respects the law, and does not cause the heavens to weep at our indifference to the "least among us."

(Gemini provided some details on the context of this section on immigration)

Key Contextual Elements used from 2026:
• The "One Big Beautiful Bill" Act: The massive funding vehicle for the border wall and enforcement.
• Mass Deportations: The ongoing federal effort to remove millions of unauthorized individuals.
• State Resistance: Legislation in states like Maryland and California that restricts cooperation with ICE.
• The H-1B & H-2B Duality: The shift toward high-skilled visa prioritization while simultaneously increasing supplemental seasonal worker visas to prevent economic "irreparable harm."