President Biden’s 2023 State of the Union address

Our live coverage of President Biden’s State of the Union has ended, but if you want to read and see more of how the night unfolded, you can…

President Joe Biden delivers his State of the Union address during a joint meeting of Congress in the House Chamber.

When President Joe Biden took to the House Chamber on Tuesday for his annual State of the Union address, his message was one of unadulterated optimism – even in the face of open hostility.

The spectacle of Biden smiling and offering a pointed riposte through multiple rounds of heckling from some House Republicans was, in many ways, an apt illustration of his presidency and a useful preview of his likely 2024 candidacy.

A majority of Americans say he hasn’t accomplished much, many Democrats aren’t thrilled at the prospect of him running for reelection and he faces clear disdain from most Republicans. But Biden powered through. Delivering what was widely viewed as a test run for his reelection announcement, Biden claimed credit for progress made during his first two years in office while stressing the job isn’t finished.

He faced sometimes-unruly Republicans, with whom he spiritedly sparred from the podium on spending cuts. The feisty display drew cheers inside the White House and offered the best preview to date of the energy Biden hopes to bring to the campaign trail soon.

The speech carried a strain of populism rooted in strengthening the middle class – vintage Biden, but delivered at a pivotal moment for his political future.

No president enters his State of the Union wanting to recite a laundry list of accomplishments and proposals, but – almost inevitably – the speech often veers in that direction. Biden’s was no different, even as the president sought to tie everything together with a refrain of “finish the job” – a phrase that appeared 12 times in his prepared text.

Here are some of the key takeaways:

Connecting with Americans: If there is one political conundrum Biden’s advisers are urgently working to solve, it is why so many Americans seem to believe he has accomplished so little. By all accounts, Biden has passed large, historic pieces of legislation that could have transformational effects on the US economy. But polls show large majorities aren’t feeling them.

Biden hoped in his speech to bridge that gap, to demonstrate he cares about what Americans care about and to identify the problems he’s looking to fix.

Bipartisanship: Working across the aisle was a theme throughout Biden’s speech. He started the address by acknowledging Congressional leaders from both parties, saying he is looking forward to working with Republican House Speaker Kevin McCarthy.

“Mr. Speaker, I don’t want to ruin your reputation but I look forward to working together,” Biden said as he launched into his speech.

He acknowledged that over the first years of his presidency, “we disagreed plenty.” But he appealed to his political rivals for cooperation.

“To my Republican friends, if we could work together in the last Congress, there is no reason we can’t work together in this Congress as well,” he said. “I signed over 300 bipartisan laws since becoming President,” the president added.

China: The country was included in the text of Biden’s speech well before a suspected spy balloon slipped into American airspace. But the incursion, which has generated a diplomatic backlash from China and drawn second-guessing from Republicans, lent new urgency to Biden’s message about competing with Beijing.

Biden and his aides believe steps to counter China are one of the rare areas where he could find bipartisan support. He saw some success on that front with the passage of a law boosting US semiconductor production last year.

Spars with Republicans: For the first 45 minutes of Biden’s address, that appeared to be the play for both sides. But when Biden began castigating Republicans for plans that would slash Social Security and Medicare, the decorum dropped. His accusations seemed to provoke Republicans, who lobbed accusations of “liar” from their seats in the chamber.

As lawmakers like Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene interrupted Biden, McCarthy was silent – but his glare into the crowd spoke for itself. Later he found himself shushing his conference multiple times at outbursts interrupting the president.

Republicans look to “new generation”: The GOP’s choice to deliver their response to Biden’s speech, Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders, is – at 40 years old – the nation’s youngest governor. Half the president’s age, her selection was a clear choice to contrast a different generation of leaders.

While she cited her tenure as White House press secretary to Donald Trump, she did not rely heavily on her association with the former president. Instead, she appeared to call for a changing of the guard – an appeal for generational change that could apply as much to Democrats and Biden as it could to Republicans and Trump. “It’s time for a new generation to lead. This is our moment. This is our opportunity,” she said.

Watch CNN White House reporter Maegan Vazquez break down the speech on TikTok.

CNN tracked approximately how many minutes President Joe Biden spent talking about different topics during his second State of the Union address.

Here is a breakdown of the time Biden spent on each:

President Joe Biden’s State of the Union address hit on themes of bipartisanship and economic reform. It was widely viewed as a test run for his reelection announcement.

See photos from the speech:

President Biden delivers his State of the Union address on Tuesday night.

Biden delivers remarks in front of a full House chamber on Tuesday.

Rodney and RowVaugh Wells, the parents of Tyre Nichols, receive a standing ovation during Biden's speech.

Biden shakes hands with House Speaker Kevin McCarthy.

From left, Supreme Court Justices Brett Kavanaugh, Amy Coney Barrett and Ketanji Brown Jackson stand next to Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley.

Vice President Kamala Harris and Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy clap as people enter the House chamber ahead of Biden's speech.

Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders delivers the Republican response to the State of the Union address by President Joe Biden on February 7 in Little Rock, Arkansas.

Arkansas’ GOP Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders claimed that after former President Donald Trump left office, President Joe Biden inherited a “world that was stable and at peace.” 

Facts First: It’s obviously ridiculous to claim that there was world peace when Trump’s tenure ended, and calling the world “stable” is a subjective claim. 

When Trump left the White House in 2021, there were still plenty of wars ongoing around the world — albeit not as many as under previous presidents, and very few of those conflicts directly involved American armed forces.  

For instance, Trump did not end the war in Afghanistan, which was still ongoing when Biden took office. There were thousands of US troops in the country when Biden was sworn in, before he withdrew them all in 2021.  

The long-running Yemeni civil war was still happening when Trump left office. (Under Trump and Obama, the US supported Saudi Arabia’s military intervention in the war through arms sales. Biden ended that policy in 2021.) 

The Syrian civil war was also ongoing, though at a more isolated level than in past years. And a war in Ethiopia’s Tigray region was in full swing. The drug war in Mexico was still leading to deaths and disappearances. 

Additionally, the war in Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region was still unresolved. The war began in 2014, but had settled into a “frozen conflict,” with Russian proxies occupying a large chunk of the eastern Donbas region, and Ukrainian troops dug into trenches. It escalated into a full-blown war when Russia invaded in February 2022, after Biden had already taken office. 

In the official Republican rebuttal to the State of the Union, Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders suggested the Biden administration and Democrats have largely called to defund the police.  

“After years of Democratic attacks on law enforcement, and calls to defund the police, violent criminals room free,” she said.  

Facts First: While some Democrats have joined calls for a radical shift in police policy, including a reduction in police budgets, Biden and top congressional Democrats have not supported and even rejected calls to “defund the police.” 

It’s worth noting that the slogan “defund the police” means different things to different activists — from the dissolution of police forces to partial reductions in funding.  

That being said, Biden in particular has explicitly stated his opposition to abolishing or defunding the police several times. 

During the 2020 presidential campaign, Biden told CBS, “No, I don’t support defunding the police.” Rather, he said, “I support conditioning federal aid to police based on whether or not they meet certain basic standards of decency and honorableness. And, in fact, are able to demonstrate they can protect the community and everybody in the community.” 

Attacking Biden and Democrats on police funding is not a new tactic from Republicans. Ahead of the 2022 midterm elections, several ads from Republican candidates attempted to create the inaccurate impression that the Democratic candidates they were targeting supported defunding the police. Some of the Republican ads simply made things up. Other ads falsely described bills the Democratic candidates have supported. Still other ads tried guilt by association, noting that the candidates have supporters who have called to defund the police but not mentioning that the candidates themselves rejected defunding the police.

Both Republicans and Democrats sounded off after a tense address from President Biden that included heckling from Republican members, who called him a “liar” at some points during the speech.

Democrat Rep. Mark Takano told CNN’s Manu Raju that the outbursts were “disgraceful.”

“It’s the decline in decorum. I’ve been in this Congress for 10 years, and that was uncalled for, the level of disrespect,” he added, noting it was a “new low.”

“This cannot be normalized. It’s troubling,” he added.  

Democratic Sen. Amy Klobuchar said she was “not surprised” by the heckling “after what we saw in the speaker’s race,” but praised President Biden for his handling of the situation. “Joe Biden owned that room. No matter what they did, he responded with a twinkle in his eye,” she said. “He used humor when appropriate, he pushed back, he showed strength. And so it didn’t matter what they yelled at him, he won that night in a big way.”

Republican Rep. Mark Alford told CNN’s Manu Raju, “I’m not into calling names. I grew up with three brothers and I always knew that when you’re calling names, you’re losing the argument.”

“I prefer personally to debate someone on intelligent thought and try to win them over through great argumentation. But I’m not going to judge my fellow Republicans on their actions, so I’ll leave that up to them,” he said.

Republican Rep. Anthony D’Esposito did not go so far as to call the president a liar, instead saying that “he was definitely misunderstood.”

“I think that there were definitely some instances where he did not have the facts, and he didn’t understand or wasn’t sure of the facts, but the facts are what we said – people are not better off today than they were when he took office,” he told CNN.

Eggs are displayed on shelves at a store in Portland, Maine, on January 27, 2023.

President Joe Biden said that “food inflation is coming down, not fast enough, but coming down. Inflation has fallen every month for the last six months, while take-home pay has gone up.” 

Facts first: Biden’s claims are true if he was comparing year-over-year growth rates to each other, but not if he was measuring inflation itself.

Food prices were up 10.4% in December 2022 from the year-before period, according to the latest available Consumer Price Index (CPI) report released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Food price inflation, as measured by the CPI, has slowly declined since hitting a 40-year high of 11.4% in August 2022.  

Overall inflation, as measured by the CPI, was 6.5% in December 2022. The headline inflation rate has declined for six consecutive months since hitting a 40-year high of 9.1% in June 2022.  

The CPI, which measures the average change in the prices over time of a basket of consumer goods, is one of several closely watched inflation barometers that also have showed price increases to have moderated in recent months. Within CPI and other indexes, there are various measures to gauge inflation. Most notably, “core” inflation measures that exclude items with more volatile price increases.  

Biden’s claim that take-home pay has gone up is true if you start the calculation seven months ago; “real” wages, which take inflation into account, started rising in mid-2022 as inflation slowed.

However, real wages are lower today than they were both a full year ago and at the beginning of Biden’s presidency in Jan. 2021. That’s because inflation was so high in 2021 and the beginning of 2022.  

There are various ways to measure real wages. Real average hourly earnings declined 1.7% between December 2021 and December 2022, while real average weekly earnings (which factors in the number of hours people worked) declined 3.1% over that period. 

A 72% majority of Americans who watched President Joe Biden’s State of the Union address had a positive reaction to the speech, according to a CNN Poll conducted by SSRS, with a smaller 34% reacting very positively.

That pattern of broad but tempered enthusiasm is similar to the reception for Biden’s speech last year. In 2022, 71% of speech-watchers reacted positively to his address, with 41% saying their reaction was very positive.

Good marks from speech-watchers are typical for presidential addresses to Congress – in past years, most viewers reported positive reactions to third-year addresses from former presidents Donald Trump (76% positive), Barack Obama (84% positive) and George W. Bush (84% positive). The 34% who reacted very positively to Biden’s speech is the lowest in CNN’s speech reaction polls dating back to 1998.

Biden’s speech received a particularly warm reception from Democrats (62% had a very positive reaction), liberals (57% very positive) and older speech-watchers (52% very positive among those age 65 or older). Among those younger than 45, though, just 21% reported a very positive reaction, even as speech-watchers in this age group were just as likely as those age 65 or older to say that Biden’s policies would move the country in the right direction (75% younger than 45 said so, as did 76% of those age 65 or older). 

State of the Union addresses rarely have major, lasting impact on presidents’ approval numbers, particularly in recent years. But Biden’s speech did bolster confidence in his policies among some who tuned in. Following the speech, 71% of speech watchers said they felt the policies Biden proposed would move the country in the right direction, versus 29% who said they would move things in the wrong direction. In a survey conducted before the speech, those same people were closer to evenly split (52% right direction, 47% wrong direction).

The biggest movement came among those who were skeptical of Biden to begin with. Among those who said in the pre-speech survey that they disapproved of the way Biden is handling his presidency, just 7% said before the speech that they thought Biden’s proposed policies would move the country in the right direction, rising to 45% post-speech. And among political independents, the share saying Biden’s policies would move the country in the right direction rose from 40% pre-speech to 66% afterwards.

Overall, 66% who watched the address said that Biden’s policies would move the country in the right direction on the economy – that’s in comparison to 62% of speech-watchers who said the same about his economic policies following his speech last year, and 72% following Biden’s first presidential address to Congress in 2021. The share of viewers this year who felt Biden’s economic policies would mark a shift in the right direction rose 16 percentage points following his speech. That shift was also heavily concentrated among independents, who went from 38% saying his economic proposals would move things in the right direction pre-speech to 64% post-speech. 

A two-thirds majority also said that Biden’s policies would move the country in the right direction on foreign affairs (67%) with somewhat more modest majorities saying the same of his policies on gun laws (63%), government spending (59%) and immigration (55%). The share of viewers who said Biden’s immigration policies would move the country in the right direction rose 14 points post-speech. 

Roughly half of Americans who tuned in for the speech, 52%, said that Biden’s proposals struck the right balance ideologically, with 38% calling them too liberal and 11% not liberal enough. Most Biden disapprovers, 68%, called his proposals too liberal.

About two-thirds of all speech watchers, 67%, said Biden did enough to address racial injustice in his speech, though that was notably lower among people of color (58% said he did enough) than among White speech watchers (72%). Majorities overall said he did not do enough to address the US relationship with China (59%) or inflation (55%). 

Slightly over 6 in 10 speech watchers, 62%, said they had at least some confidence in Biden’s ability to provide real leadership for the country, with 28% expressing a lot of confidence. Another 38% said they had no real confidence.

More on the poll: Surveys were conducted by text message with 552 US adults who said they watched the State of the Union on Tuesday, and are representative of the views of speech-watchers only. Respondents were recruited to participate before the speech, and were selected by a survey of members of the SSRS Opinion Panel, a nationally representative panel recruited using probability-based sampling techniques. Results for the full sample of speech-watchers have a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 5.7 percentage points. 

Former U.N. Ambassador and former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley speaks during the Iowa Republican Party's Lincoln Dinner, on June 24, 2021, in West Des Moines, Iowa.

Former UN ambassador Nikki Haley, who plans to announce her 2024 presidential campaign next week, criticized President Joe Biden’s border and economic policies as he delivered his State of the Union address.  

“Joe Biden spin: My economic plan is working. Reality: Americans still can’t afford groceries,” she said in the first of 15 tweets posted during the speech. 

The former South Carolina governor then tweeted a video that included news coverage of the record inflation seen under the Biden administration and her commentary on Fox News saying inflation is “the number one issue that American families are talking about.” 

She also focused her attacks on Biden’s border policies and posted a separate video showing media coverage of migrants crossing the US-Mexico border. 

“Joe Biden spent two years refusing to tackle the border crisis he created. Mr. President, stop spinning and start doing your job,” Haley tweeted. 

She also attacked Biden over his policies related to China, claimed Russia was “emboldened” because of Biden and argued schools shouldn’t have closed during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Former House speaker Nancy Pelosi told CNN’s Jake Tapper that Republicans were “protesting too much” during President Joe Biden’s State of the Union Address.

“I think they were protesting too much,” she said about Republicans jeering at Biden when he mentioned during his speech that some Republicans considered making cuts to Medicare and Social Security to avoid hitting the debt ceiling.

The former House speaker famously tore up her copy of former President Donald Trump’s 2020 State of the Union speech while sitting directly behind him. The act of protest happened at the conclusion of Trump’s address, which began with the former president refusing to shake Pelosi’s hand.

Watch Pelosi’s comments on CNN:

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President Biden said, “We’ve already created, with your help, 800,000 good-paying manufacturing jobs, the fastest growth in 40 years.” 

Facts First: Biden’s figures are correct; however, the “good-paying” qualifier is subjective and can’t be independently verified for each of those 800,000-plus positions.  

The US economy added 803,000 manufacturing jobs from Biden’s first full month in office, February 2021, through January 2023, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The job growth rate during Biden’s first two years in office was 6.58%. The last time a comparable growth rate was higher was in 1979. 

The average hourly wage in the manufacturing industry was $31.57 for all employees and $25.84 for production and non-supervisory positions in January, preliminary BLS data shows. Nationally, the average hourly wage was a projected $33.03. 

Former President Donald Trump released a video message recorded before president Joe Biden’s State of the Union address where he criticized the current administration for inflation, the ongoing border crisis and rising crime rates.  

“Here’s the real State of the Union,” Trump opened.

He accused Biden’s administration of “waging war on free speech,” “leading us to the brink of World War III” and weaponizing the Department of Justice.

“On top of all of that, he’s the most corrupt president in American history,” he said. “And it’s not even close.”

At the end of his two-minute video, Trump reminded viewers that he intends to run for president “to end the destruction of our country and to complete the unfinished business of making America great again.”

Senator Joe Manchin is seen in Statuary Hall ahead of U.S. President Joe Biden’s State of the Union Address.

Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin strongly criticized the Republican representatives who heckled President Joe Biden during his State of the Union address, saying it was “awful, childish” and “distasteful.”

“No matter who does that, it’s just not acceptable, awful, childish, it’s not who we are as a country,” Manchin said. He also said he “hopes” Speaker Kevin McCarthy “says something about it.” 

Democratic Sen. Dick Durbin also added it was “really unbefitting.”

McCarthy didn’t comment to CNN when asked about the heckling from Republicans.

House Majority Leader Steve Scalise wouldn’t criticize his members, instead calling on Biden to stop his rhetoric about a GOP push to cut entitlements.

Some context: The yelling started when the president accused some Republicans of wanting to cut Social Security and Medicare.

The White House has repeatedly accused Republicans of wanting to make cuts to the programs, but McCarthy explicitly said recently that those cuts were off the table. 

Former vice president and potential 2024 presidential candidate Mike Pence said on Twitter that President Biden’s State of the Union shows that it’s “time for new Republican leadership” to get back to the Trump-Pence administration’s “strength and prosperity.” 

“Tonight’s #SOTU showed one thing: That it is time for new Republican leadership to get our Nation back to the strength and prosperity we had under the Trump-Pence Administration,” Pence wrote on Twitter.

He then went on to list what he called “Biden’s failed leadership at home,” noting high inflation and gas prices, and Biden’s “failed leadership abroad,” pointing to Russia’s war in Ukraine and the “disastrous” Afghanistan withdrawal.

Pence also argued that Biden’s police reform bill “would be a disaster for law enforcement and the American people they serve. It would leave an under-equipped, underfunded, and demoralized police force even worse off,” he said in another tweet.

“If we want to improve policing in America, we can’t kneecap police in America. That will only make police more afraid to do their job and more likely to make a bad decision in the moment,” he added.

Rep. George Santos watches as Biden arrives to deliver his State of the Union address.

Republican Sen. Mitt Romney recounted a heated interaction during State of the Union with GOP Rep. George Santos. Romney said he told Santos that he doesn’t belong in Congress.

He strongly criticized Santos for standing in the front aisle “trying to shake hands” with President Joe Biden and senators “given the fact that he’s under ethics investigation.”

He also told CNN’s Manu Raju that “yes” he’s disappointed House Speaker Kevin McCarthy hasn’t called on Santos to resign. 

Romney, a Republican from Utah, continued to blast Santos saying: “He says he, you know, that he embellished his record. Look, embellishing is saying you got an A when you got an A-. Lying is saying you graduated from a college that you didn’t even attend and he shouldn’t be in Congress. And they’re gonna go through the process and hopefully get him out … But he shouldn’t be there and if he had any shame at all, he wouldn’t be there.”

Rep. Juan Ciscomani from Arizona delivered the Republican Spanish-language response to the State of the Union address and said the country is at a “critical point” in its history.

More on Ciscomani: When he was elected in November 2022, Ciscomani became the first Latino Republican elected to Congress from Arizona. He was born in Mexico and immigrated to the US with his family as a child, previously worked at the Tucson Hispanic Chamber of Commerce and was a senior adviser to Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey.

The tradition of a Spanish-language response started in 2004. This year will be the first Spanish response to the address since 2020. 

Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders delivered the GOP response in English.

Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders waits to deliver the Republican response to President Biden's State of the Union address.

Arkansas’ Republican Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders called for a new generation of GOP leadership in her party’s response to President Joe Biden’s State of the Union address Tuesday night.

She pointed to the economy and inflation, seeking to draw a generational contrast with Biden.

“At 40 I’m the youngest governor in the country. At 80 he is the oldest president in American history,” she added.

Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders criticized President Joe Biden’s foreign policies in dealing with China and US border security.

“The Biden administration refuses to secure the border and save American lives. And after years of Democrat attacks on law enforcement and calls to defund the police, violent criminals roam free while law-abiding families live in fear,” she said Tuesday in the Republican response to Biden’s State of the Union address. 

“Beyond our border, from Afghanistan to Ukraine, from North Korea to Iran, President Biden’s weakness puts our nation and the world at risk,” she said. “And the president’s refusal to stand up to China, our most formidable adversary, is dangerous and unacceptable.

“President Biden is unwilling to defend our border, defend our skies and defend our people. He is simply unfit to serve as commander-in-chief,” she added.

In calling to revive the Democrats’ enhancement of the child tax credit in 2021, President Biden pointed to the fact that the provision helped slash the child poverty rate that year. 

“Let’s restore the full child tax credit, which gave tens of millions of parents some breathing room and cut child poverty in half, to the lowest level in history,” he said. 

Facts First: This is true. The child poverty rate was cut nearly in half in 2021, and the expanded child tax credit was the major factor. The enhancement accounted for the bulk of the reduction.  

The child poverty rate fell from 9.7% in 2020 to 5.2% in 2021, according to the US Census Bureau’s Supplemental Poverty Measure, which takes into account certain non-cash government assistance, tax credits and needed expenses.  

That’s a reduction of 46%, sending the rate to the lowest level since the supplemental measure began in 2009. 

The child tax credit – both the traditional credit and the enhancement – reduced the child poverty rate from 9.2% to 5.2%, or 43%, according to the Census Bureau. Without the beefed-up credit, the rate would have only fallen from 9.2% to 8.1%, or 12%. 

As part of the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan Act that passed in March 2021, Congress enhanced the child tax credit for one year, beefing up payments to $3,600 for each child up to age 6 and $3,000 for each one ages 6 through 17, for lower- and middle-income families. For the first time, half the credit was paid in monthly installments from July through December, while parents could claim the other half when they filed their 2021 taxes this year. 

Also, more low-income parents became eligible for the full amount because lawmakers made it fully refundable. 

President Joe Biden called for an assault weapons ban during his State of the Union address.

Biden made an impassioned plea to renew the assault weapons ban as he recognized heroic efforts by Brandon Tsay, who disarmed the Monterey Park shooting suspect last month in California and was invited to attend the address.

Watch his remarks on gun violence, below:  

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While touting his efforts to stand up to authoritarian leaders in China and Russia, President Biden painted himself as a champion of freedom and inaccurately claimed that democracy was spreading under his watch.  

“In the past two years, democracies have become stronger, not weaker,” Biden said. “Autocracies have grown weaker, not stronger.”  

Facts First: This claim is at odds with data from Freedom House, a leading nonprofit that tracks democracy and human rights around the world. They say democracy has been in global decline over the past few years.  

The group’s most recent annual report on the state of global democracy, released in February 2022, was aptly titled, “The Global Expansion of Authoritarian Rule.” Their 2021 report was called, “Democracy under Siege.”  

Getting into the data, Freedom House says 60 countries experienced democratic backsliding in the previous year, while only 25 countries improved their position. The group highlighted backsliding in Sudan, Nicaragua and Afghanistan, where the Taliban reclaimed power when Biden withdrew all American troops from the country.  

Freedom House’s most recent report is one year old, with a new report likely coming out soon. And to be fair, Biden could merely be expressing his view that autocratic regimes have lost prestige on the world stage.  

But the trends appear to be holding. For instance, after Russian President Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine last year, he initiated a domestic crackdown that rolled back the few remaining civil liberties that existed in Russia.  

Freedom House is largely funded by grants from the US government.  

Sarah Huckabee Sanders, governor of Arkansas, waits to deliver the Republican response to President Biden's State of the Union address in Little Rock, Arkansas.

Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders rebuked President Joe Biden’s State of the Union address and agenda in her GOP response.

“Being a mom to three young children taught me not to believe every story I hear. So forgive me for not believing much of anything I heard tonight from President Biden,” Sanders said.

GOP Rep. Bob Good told CNN that he was one of the hecklers who called out President Joe Biden as a “liar” — and said Biden deserved it for his comments about Republicans saying they want cuts to Social Security and Medicare.

“I think the greater offense is for the president to lie to the American people about something so important,” Good said on the optics of Republicans heckling the president.

Freshman Rep. Andy Ogles, a Tennessee Republican, also defended his comments in the chamber. Ogles shouted “it’s your fault” when Biden brought up fentanyl deaths.

Asked whether he thought it was appropriate to heckle Biden during his speech, Ogles said it was just a “visceral response” and that a number of his GOP colleagues had also vocally pushed back on Biden.

“It just so happened, as they were getting quiet, I got louder, so my timing, cadence might have been slightly off,” he said.

McCarthy, who had urged his Republican members to be mindful of their behavior during the speech, was seen trying to shush members during that moment in the chamber.

Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders speaks while delivering the Republican response to President Biden's State of the Union address in Little Rock, Arkansas.

Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders is now delivering the Republican response to President Joe Biden’s State of the Union address.

In a statement announcing that Sanders will give the response, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy said Sanders was a representative for a new generation of Republicans.

She gained national prominence when she served as White House press secretary under former President Donald Trump, but she was no stranger to politics with her father, Republican Mike Huckabee, serving as governor of Arkansas from 1996 to 2007.

Sanders worked for two years in the George W. Bush administration and later ran her father’s 2008 campaign for the Republican presidential nomination and then was campaign manager for his 2016 White House bid.

She made history last year as the first woman elected as governor of Arkansas.

Within 48 hours of being sworn in as governor, Sanders signed a flurry of executive orders, with one targeting critical race theory “to prohibit indoctrination” in schools and another banning the use of the term “Latinx” in official state documents.

RowVaughn Wells, center, mother of Tyre Nichols, who died after being beaten by Memphis police officers, and her husband Rodney Wells, second left, are recognized by President Joe Biden as he delivers his State of the Union speech.

The parents of Tyre Nichols received an extended standing ovation during the State of the Union address, marking an emotional moment for police reform during the president’s prime-time address. 

“Public safety depends on public trust. But too often that trust is violated,” Biden said. “Joining us tonight are the parents of Tyre Nichols, who had to bury him just last week.”

RowVaughn and Rodney Wells, who came as first lady Jill Biden’s guests, stood up and received bipartisan applause.

“There are no words to describe the heartbreak and grief of losing a child. But imagine what it’s like to lose a child at the hands of the law,” he added. 

Biden sought to use his remarks to make the case for police reform, using the bully pulpit as his advisers said he would, to pressure Congress into getting something passed though reform faces an uncertain path.

The president spoke of his own privilege of not needing to have “the talk,” with his children, that “so many Black and Brown families have had with their children.

Bipartisan support for his remarks began building when Biden touched on the shared values members have for public safety.

“What happened to Tyre in Memphis happens too often. We have to do better. Give law enforcement the real training they need,” he said. “Hold on to higher standards. Help them succeed in keeping us safe.”

Biden received another standing ovation when he said, “cops are good people.”

Nichols’ parents stood up to applaud when Biden said, “when police officers or police departments violate the public trust, they must be held accountable.” A tear was visible on RowVaughn Wells’ face.

Biden erroneously called Tyre “Tyler,” but called on Congress to commit themselves to making her words come true: “Something good must come from this.”

In a statement after the president’s speech, the NAACP said Black Americans need “more than words.”

Rep. Majorie Taylor Greene listens and reacts as President Joe Biden delivers his State of the Union speech.

Marjorie Taylor Greene repeatedly yelled back at President Joe Biden throughout the speech — on everything from his comments on fentanyl to entitlement cuts.

She yelled out “liar” at Biden over suggesting some Republicans wanted cuts to Medicare to Social Security.

She also stayed seated when Biden introduced Tyre Nichols’ parents and the Ukraine ambassador.

White House officials are thrilled by the off-script back and forth between President Joe Biden and Republicans. 

“Couldn’t have written a better moment,” one official said.

More than the substantive back and forth, one official notes how it appeared to animate Biden in real time

But to watch it happen during the speech, on the biggest prime-time stage of the year, was a moment White House officials are basking in right now.

Some background: The president was speaking about the national debt – a debt he said took “200 years to accumulate,” but was increased by 25% under the last administration. 

“Those are the facts, check it out,” Biden said, as boos and chatter started in the chamber. “Check it out!” he continued over the ruckus. 

Democrats cheered while Republicans quieted. But when the president accused some Republicans of wanting to cut Social Security and Medicare, the protests erupted again.  Rep. Marjorie Taylor Green appeared to stand and shout, “you lie.” 

The White House has repeatedly accused Republicans of wanting to make cuts to Social Security and Medicare, but McCarthy explicitly said recently that those cuts were off the table. 

The president said he was “glad to see” the reaction, adding, “I enjoy conversion.”

People had doubts about President Joe Biden going into the State of the Union address and the president proved himself, according to CNN political commentator Van Jones.

He described Biden as “strong-minded” and relatable in the speech.

“I thought Joe Biden did really well tonight relating to the American people and if you had doubts about him, look, he was as sharp tonight as he could be,” he said. “I thought he did a great job.”

But the most powerful aspect of Biden’s speech, Jones said, was his ability to invoke reactions out of Democrats and Republicans.

“He got both parties on their feet, not once but twice, on police reform,” he said. “The open wound on this country is police reform and Republicans and Democrats stood together twice to honor the family and also to honor policies that would make a difference. That was unexpected.”

President Joe Biden’s State of the Union address drew mixed reactions from the lawmakers in the room.

Here are some scenes from the inside of the House Chamber:

President Biden points as he delivers his State of the Union address.

Members of Congress cheer as Biden speaks.

House Speaker Kevin McCarthy and many Republican lawmakers sit as others stand to applaud during Biden's address.

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene makes a thumbs down gesture as Biden speaks.

Vice President Kamala Harris stands and applauds as House Speaker Kevin McCarthy remains seated.

Republican Rep. Beth Van Duyne gestures during Biden’s speech.

We tracked the approximate length of President Joe Biden’s second State of the Union speech. By CNN’s tally, the president was about 15 minutes shy of Bill Clinton’s 2000 address, the longest in recent history.

Here is how Biden’s address compares to past presidents:

President Joe Biden concluded his second State of the Union address with a message about the current state of the country.

During the more than hourlong speech, Biden appealed to bipartisanship, telling Republicans he wants to work together instead of “fighting for the sake of fighting.”

President Joe Biden addressed US-China relations following last week’s incident involving a suspected Chinese spy balloon — and he gave Beijing a warning.

More background: US military fighter jets shot down the suspected Chinese surveillance balloon over the Atlantic Ocean off the Eastern Seaboard of the United States, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin confirmed Saturday.

The operation ended a remarkable public drama that prompted a diplomatic fallout between Washington and Beijing, as the American public tracked the balloon from Montana all the way to the Carolinas.

Biden approved the downing of the balloon, Austin said in a statement, which a US official previously told CNN was a plan that was presented and supported by US military leaders.

CNN’s Zachary Cohen, Kevin Liptak, Oren Liebermann and Phil Mattingly contributed reporting to this post. 

Attendees, including US First Lady Jill Biden and US Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff, applaud Paul Pelosi, husband of US Representative Nancy Pelosi as President Joe Biden delivers the State of the Union address.

President Joe Biden reiterated his calls for Americans to bolster democracy and speak out against extremism, discussing how a recent politically motivated attack against Paul Pelosi, the husband of former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, “never should have happened.”

In the room where he was speaking, Biden recalled, democracy “has been threatened and attacked, put at risk,” when insurrectionists stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

Just a few months ago, Biden said, an assailant “unleashed political violence” in Pelosi’s home, using “the very same language the insurrectionists used as they stalked these halls and chanted on January 6th.”

The attack “never should have happened,” Biden said.

Pelosi, who was severely injured during the attack, sat above the House chamber as a guest in the first lady’s box during the State of the Union.

“We must all speak out. There is no place for political violence in America,” the president continued, later adding that “we must give hate and extremism in any form no safe harbor.”

President Biden claimed that a new law, the bipartisan CHIPS and Science Act, will produce hundreds of thousands of new jobs. He said, “That’s going to come from companies that have announced more than $300 billion in investment in American manufacturing over the next few years.” 

Facts First: Biden’s prediction about future job creation is obviously beyond the scope of a fact check. But his claim about companies having announced $300 billion in manufacturing investments during his presidency is accurate; the White House provided CNN with a list of these publicly announced investments. (It’s worth noting that companies sometimes end up investing less than they initially announce.)    

The majority of the manufacturing investments that have been publicly announced under Biden to date have been investments in semiconductor facilities. The Biden administration has emphasized the importance of US semiconductor manufacturing, and Biden signed a bill in August that has helped to generate major investment.  

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene yells in the chambers as President Joe Biden speaks during the State of the Union address.

President Joe Biden regained control of an increasingly rowdy House chamber – and even managed to quickly turn heckles into a standing ovation from most Republicans, including House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy – during his State of the Union speech Tuesday night. 

The president was speaking about the national debt – a debt he said took “200 years to accumulate,” but was increased by 25% under the last administration. 

“Those are the facts, check it out,” Biden said, as boos and chatter started in the chamber. “Check it out!,” he continued over the ruckus. 

Democrats cheered while Republicans quieted. But when the president accused some Republicans of wanting to cut Social Security and Medicare, the protests erupted again. 

“Anybody who doubts it, contact my office, I’ll give you a copy of the proposal.” 

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Green appeared to stand and shout, “you lie.” 

The White House has repeatedly accused Republicans of wanting to make cuts to Social Security and Medicare, but McCarthy explicitly said recently that those cuts were off the table. 

The president said he was “glad to see” the reaction, adding, “I enjoy conversion.”

McCarthy shook his head and appeared to shush his members. 

The president continued, saying he wasn’t going to “be moved into being threatened to default on the debt if we don’t respond.”

He added: “if anyone tries to cut Social Security – which apparently no one is going to do – I’ll stop them. I’ll veto it.”  

“Apparently it’s not going to be a problem,” he said. 

Biden then said when he brings his budget proposal to Congress, he wanted to “sit down together and discuss our mutual plans together. Let’s do that.” McCarthy stood and clapped.

President Joe Biden delivers his State of the Union address.

The new House Republican majority has constructed a figurative wall in front of President Joe Biden’s legislative priorities.

But White House officials made a point of including the most politically salient of them in his State of the Union address anyway.

Junk fees. Non-compete agreements. Labor organizing. Paid family leave and an expanded Child Tax Credit. Expanding the cap on insulin prices to all Americans after enacting a cap for Medicare recipients last year.

Each of these policies is viewed inside the White House as widely popular across the country. They have reams of polling data to prove it. They rally Democrats and elevate the party’s close union allies.

They also have little to no prospects of getting to Biden’s desk to be signed into law in the 118th Congress.

But they mark a clear contrast for Biden to highlight, even as he seeks to underscore his desire to extend an olive branch of bipartisanship to his Republican counterparts.

White House officials are well aware of the aspirational nature of the proposals. But they view the contrast as critical for the months ahead. There is, after all, another election coming up in 2024. And it won’t just be lawmakers in the chamber up for reelection.  

All signs point to Biden’s name being on the ballot as well.

President Joe Biden said there is “near record unemployment for Black and Hispanic workers.” 

Facts First: Biden’s claims are accurate.  

The Black or African American unemployment rate was 5.4% in January 2023, just above the record low of 5.3% set in August 2019. (This data series goes back to 1972.) The rate was 9.2% in January 2021, the month Biden took office.   

The Hispanic or Latino unemployment rate was 4.5% in January 2023, not too far from the record low of 4.0% that was set in September 2019 — though the 4.5% rate in January 2023 was a jump from the 4.1% rate in December 2022. (This data series goes back to 1973.) The rate was 8.5% in January 2021. 

President Biden criticized the fiscal management of former President Donald Trump’s administration — saying that “nearly 25% of the entire national debt, a debt that took 200 years to accumulate, was added by just one administration alone – the last one.” 

Facts First: Biden’s claim is correct. The national debt, now more than $31 trillion, increased by just under $8 trillion during Trump’s four years in office, in part because of Trump’s major tax cuts. It’s important to note, though, that some of the increase in the debt during the Trump era was because of the trillions in emergency Covid-19 pandemic relief spending that passed with bipartisan support. The national debt spiked in the first half of 2020 after increasing gradually during Trump’s first three years in office, and because of spending required by safety-net programs that were created by previous presidents. A significant amount of spending under any president is the result of decisions made by their predecessors.  

Charles Blahous, a researcher at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University who authored the 2021 paper “Why We Have Federal Deficits,” wrote that the impact of recent legislation on the long-term structural fiscal imbalance is dwarfed by the creation of Medicare and Medicaid and increases to Social Security, all of which occurred between 1965 and 1972.   

“Despite all the political rhetoric expended today to cast blame for skyrocketing federal deficits on either the Joseph R. Biden Jr. administration or the Donald J. Trump administration, on either congressional Democrats or congressional Republicans, the largest drivers of the structural federal fiscal imbalance were enacted roughly a half-century ago,” Blahous wrote.  

President Joe Biden delivers the State of the Union address to a joint session of Congress.

President Joe Biden emphasized the United States’ support for Ukraine in the face of Russia’s invasion as the war approaches its one-year anniversary.

In this file photo, President Joe Biden welcomes Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskyy at the White House in Washington, DC, in December 2022.

President Joe Biden is talking about the war in Ukraine during his State of the Union address — a cause the US has pledged more than $29 billion dollars since it began, according to the Pentagon.

Biden announced the latest package worth more than $2.17 billion Friday that includes longer-range missiles for the first time.

Last month, the US committed to provide Ukraine with 31 advanced M-1 Abrams tanks, a decision made in concert with European countries providing German-made Leopard 2 tanks. It was a reversal of a red line previously held by the US and other Western countries, like Germany. The tanks are powerful new tools, allowing Ukraine to go on the offensive and retake territory seized by Russia.

At the time of the announcement, Biden insisted the tanks should not be viewed by Moscow as an “offensive threat.” However, last week, Russian President Vladimir Putin said that the West was threatening Moscow “again” with German-made Leopard fighter tanks.

One thing that still remains off the table for the US is fighter jets. Biden previously answered “no,” he would send jets to Ukraine. US and allied officials say jets would be impractical, both because they require considerable training and because Russia has extensive anti-aircraft systems that could easily shoot them down.

All this comes as Kyiv has ramped up pressure on allies to send more aid and weapons — especially fighter jets — ahead of a possible Russian offensive in the spring. Even now, heavy fighting continues in eastern Ukraine, with Russian attacks often targeting civilian targets.

CNN has reported that US and Western officials are urging Ukraine to shift its focus from the brutal, months-long fight in the eastern city of Bakhmut and prioritize instead a potential offensive in the south, using a different style of fighting that takes advantage of the billions of dollars in new military hardware recently committed by Western allies, 

One year of war: Biden is considering making a trip to Europe around the one-year anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine next month, two senior administration officials tell CNN. One of the officials said that one stop under consideration is Poland, a key NATO ally currently housing thousands of American troops that also serves as a hub for Western weapons transfers to Ukraine. US service members are also training Ukrainian troops there.

It is highly unlikely that Biden would travel to Ukraine as part of this trip, however, one of the officials said, given the ongoing security concerns.

George Santos waits on the floor before President Joe Biden during the State of the Union address.

As he walked into the chamber for the State of the Union address, Republican Sen. Mitt Romney told embattled GOP Rep. George Santos: “You don’t belong here,” according to a member who witnessed the tense exchange.

The moment happened as members of Congress began entering the chamber for President Joe Biden’s address.

Rodney Wells and RowVaughn Wells, parents of Tyre Nichols, and Brandon Tsay, hero of the Monterey, California, shooting, wait for the start of President Joe Biden's State of the Union address.

President Joe Biden said Tuesday discussions of policing differ along racial lines in America, admitting he’s never had to have “the talk” – how to conduct oneself around police – that many Black and brown families have to have with their children.

“If a police officer pulls you over, turn on your interior lights. Don’t reach for your license. Keep your hands on the steering wheel. Imagine having to worry like that every single time your kid got in a car,” he said.

The mother of Tyre Nichols, the unarmed Black man killed by police in Memphis, was in attendance at the State of the Union address and told the president how she continues to find the courage to carry on and speak out, Biden said.

The president added, “Equal protection under the law is a covenant we have with each other in America. We know police officers put their lives on the line every single night and day and we know we asked them in many cases to do too much, counselors, social workers, cycle ecologists responding to mental health crises and so much more, in one sense we ask too much of them.”

“I know most cops and their families are good, decent, honorable people, the vast majority,” he said.

Rodney Wells and RowVaughn Wells, the stepfather and mother of Tyre Nichols, a Black motorist who died after being beaten by Memphis police following a traffic stop wait with are applauded in the first lady's box of the House visitors gallery as President Joe Biden talks about Tyre Nichols and police violence during his State of the Union address.

President Biden just recognized the mother and stepfather of Tyre Nichols, RowVaughn and Rodney Wells, who are among the first lady’s guests at the State of the Union address. They stood up during the speech and received a standing ovation.

Nichols’ death days after being beaten by police in Memphis last month has renewed calls for police reform and reignited a national conversation on justice in policing. Biden hosted members of the Congressional Black Caucus at the White House last week to discuss police reform, which has stalled in Congress multiple times and faces an uncertain path forward.

Nichols’ parents have been among those calling for the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act to be passed to change policing on a federal level. But, Biden has a long way to go in term of police reform legislation, especially now with a divided Congress.

The George Floyd Justice in Policing, originally introduced in 2020 and again in 2021, would set up a national registry of police misconduct to stop officers from evading consequences for their actions by moving to another jurisdiction.

The bill twice cleared the House under Democratic control – in 2020 and 2021 – largely along party lines. But it never went anywhere in the Senate, even after Democrats won control in 2021, in part, because of disagreements about qualified immunity, which protects police officers from being sued in civil court.

What the president can do: After the bill failed, Biden signed a more limited executive order to overhaul policing on the second anniversary of Floyd’s death. It took several actions that can be applied to federal officers, including efforts to ban chokeholds, expand the use of body-worn cameras and restrict no-knock warrants, among other things.

But the president cannot mandate that local law enforcement adopt the measures in his order; the executive action lays out levers the federal government can use, such as federal grants and technical assistance, to incentivize local law enforcement to get on board.

Now, the road for police reform has only become more challenging in the new Congress now that House Republicans, who have placed their priorities elsewhere, are in the majority.

Watch:

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04:36 - Source: CNN

We’re tracking the approximate length of President Joe Biden’s remarks. Here’s how it compares to the longest and shortest State of the Union addresses since 1964. So far he’s doubled President Richard Nixon’s 1972 address, which is the shortest in recent history.

President Joe Biden zeroed in on the economy and infrastructure in the first 25 minutes.

Here’s how many minutes Biden spent talking about different topics during the first part of his State of the Union speech:

President Joe Biden said that “over the last two years, a record 10 million Americans applied to start new businesses.”  

Facts First: This is true. There were about 5.4 million business applications in 2021, the highest number since 2005 (the first year for which the federal government released this data for a full year), and about 5.1 million business applications in 2022. Not every application turns into a real business, but the number of “high-propensity” business applications — those deemed to have a high likelihood of turning into a business with a payroll — also hit a record in 2021 and saw its second-highest total in 2022.  

Former President Donald Trump’s last full year in office, 2020, also set a then-record for total and high-propensity applications. There are various reasons for the pandemic-era boom in entrepreneurship, which began after millions of Americans lost their jobs in early 2020. Among them: some newly unemployed workers seized the moment to start their own enterprises; Americans had extra money from stimulus bills signed by Trump and Biden; interest rates were particularly low until a series of rate hikes that began in the spring of 2022. 

For weeks the White House has claimed Republicans want to cut Social Security and Medicare. 

For weeks Republicans have said that’s not true. 

House Speaker Kevin McCarthy explicitly said entitlement cuts or changes were not on the table in exchange for a debt ceiling increase. His colleagues agreed. 

But White House officials, keenly aware Republicans hadn’t laid out their own plan, elevated the issue anyway. 

The conditions were set for a State of the Union clash — one Biden’s advisers quietly hoped would come to fruition. 

Mission accomplished. 

Biden made a point of caveating his claim Republicans wanted to cut Medicare and Social Security, noting it only applied to “some” Republicans. 

But the Republican response was immediate — and fierce, with several, including Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, seen on camera yelling “liar.” 

Far from offended, Biden played along with the backlash. 

“So folks, as we all apparently agree, Social Security, Medicare is off the books now, right?… Alright. We got unanimity,” Biden ad-libbed.

Reflecting on the pandemic, and the country’s recovery from the virus, President Joe Biden paused to remember the human toll of Covid-19.

Still, the president touted his administration’s ability to re-open up the country.

“While the virus is not gone, thanks to the resilience of the American people and the ingenuity of medicine, we’ve broken the Covid grip on us,” Biden said.

The administration has said it will end the public health emergency this spring, but the president said Congress still needs to “remain vigilant” and fund some efforts to “monitor dozens of variants and support new vaccines and treatments.”

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene reacts as President Joe Biden delivers the State of the Union address.

The mood shifted markedly in the room as President Joe Biden attacked the GOP over the debt ceiling standoff before singling out some unnamed Republicans, contending they are looking to slash and sunset Medicare and Social Security.

“Liar!” at least Republican blurted out but it was unclear who yelled out at him.

When Biden he said some Republicans want to end the programs after five years, Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene and Troy Nehls jumped to their feet and yelled back, but it was unclear what they said.

Many shook their heads no.

It’s been a tense mood since Biden has been touting all the provisions in the Inflation Reduction Act.

In this file photo, then-Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden speaks about on the third plank of his Build Back Better economic recovery plan for working families, on July 21, 2020, in New Castle, Delaware.

As President Joe Biden’s transformative legislative agenda looked all but dead, White House officials made a strategic decision to ditch its well-worn moniker: Build Back Better.

It was banned inside the West Wing. Not a joke, as Biden himself might say. 

It worked. Maybe the correlation wasn’t exactly a straight line, but Biden and his team resuscitated a scaled back version of the economic and climate proposals that served as the cornerstone of the proposal. 

Flash forward to Tuesday night, and Biden had a new frame for what that agenda created: “We’re building back pride.” 

At the heart of Biden’s economic theory of the case is reconnecting communities hollowed out by decades of international trade and technology.

Industrial policy, once considered a pejorative, sits at the heart of many of major legislative wins. Rebuilding those communities – and reconnecting their residents to the pride in their individual hometowns — may seem trite or idealistic in its intent. 

Yet it’s central to Biden’s agenda and tonight, central to his State of the Union address.

President Joe Biden delivers his State of the Union speech.

President Joe Biden has a series of go-to sayings that his advisers acknowledge people might not understand.

Yet those sayings are an animating feature of his conversations privately – and every once in a while they make an appearance in a public setting.

That’s exactly what happened when Biden went off script as he described the push by some Republicans to undo his cornerstone economic and climate law known as the Inflation Reduction Act.

“As my football coach used to say, ‘Lots of luck in your senior year,” Biden said veering off his prepared remarks with a grin.

He translated the line a moment later.

A shorter version of a saying he brings out every few months: “Good luck, guys. You have no shot. Lots of luck in your senior year.”

President Joe Biden delivers his State of the Union address.

President Joe Biden said, “In the last two years, my administration has cut the deficit by more than $1.7 trillion — the largest deficit reduction in American history.” 

Facts First: Biden’s boast leaves out important context. It is true that the federal deficit fell by $1.7 trillion under Biden in the 2021 and 2022 fiscal years, including a record $1.4 trillion drop in 2022 — but it is highly questionable how much credit Biden deserves for this reduction. Biden did not mention that the primary reason the deficit fell so substantially was that it had skyrocketed to a record high under then-President Donald Trump in 2020 because of bipartisan emergency pandemic relief spending, then fell as expected when the spending expired as planned. Independent analysts say Biden’s own actions, including his laws and executive orders, have had the overall effect of adding to current and projected future deficits, not reducing those deficits. 

Dan White, senior director of economic research at Moody’s Analytics — an economics firm whose assessments Biden has repeatedly cited during his presidency — told CNN’s Matt Egan in October: “On net, the policies of the administration have increased the deficit, not reduced it.” The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, an advocacy group, wrote in September that Biden’s actions will add more than $4.8 trillion to deficits from 2021 through 2031, or $2.5 trillion if you don’t count the American Rescue Plan pandemic relief bill of 2021. 

National Economic Council director Brian Deese wrote on the White House website in January that the American Rescue Plan pandemic relief bill “facilitated a strong economic recovery and enabled the responsible wind-down of emergency spending programs,” thereby reducing the deficit; David Kelly, chief global strategist at J.P. Morgan Funds, told CNN in October that the Biden administration does deserve credit for the recovery that has pushed the deficit downward. And Deese correctly noted that Biden’s signature legislation, last year’s Inflation Reduction Act, is expected to bring down deficits by more than $200 billion over the next decade. 

Still, the deficit-reducing impact of that one bill is expected to be swamped by the deficit-increasing impact of various additional bills and policies Biden has approved. 

Just moments after issuing a call to unity with Republicans to work together, President Biden called out members of the GOP who voted against the bipartisan infrastructure law when it was being considered by Congress.

After highlighting the progress that’s been made to fund projects around the country through the infrastructure law, the president jabbed Republicans who voted against the bill but continue to ask to have their projects funded through the law’s provisions.

“I want to thank my Republican friends who voted for the law and my Republican friends who voted against it as well. But I still get asked to fund the projects in those districts as well,” Biden said. “But don’t worry. I promised I’d be the president for all Americans. We’ll fund these projects. And I’ll see you at the ground-breaking.”

House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, who opposed bill when he was minority leader and it was considered by the House, was sitting behind Biden during the State of the Union remarks.

President Joe Biden delivers the State of the Union address to a joint session of Congress.

President Joe Biden called for the passage of the “Billionaire Minimum Income Tax” during his State of the union address.

The tax would require households worth more than $100 million to pay at least $20 on their full income, including unrealized investment income.

Biden also said he proposes “that we quadruple the tax on corporate stock buybacks and encourage longterm investments instead.” “They will still make a considerable profit,” he added.

“Look I’m a capitalist, but pay your fair share. A lot of you at home agree with me and many people know the tax system is not fair. It is not fair,” Biden said to applause.

President Joe Biden delivers his State of the Union speech.

President Joe Biden called on Congress to raise the debt ceiling during his State of the Union address.

Biden made his case and said that his administration “cut the deficit by more than $1.7 trillion — the largest deficit reduction in American history.”

He highlighted that under the administration of Donald Trump, “America’s deficit went up four years in a row. Because of those record deficits, no president added more to the national debt in any four years than my predecessor.”

An eruption of boos ensued from some Republicans following Biden’s remarks.

Biden added, “Nearly 25% of the entire national debt that took over 200 years to accumulate was added by just one administration alone — the last one. They are the facts, check it out. Check it out. How did Congress respond to that debt? They did the right thing. They lifted the debt ceiling three times without preconditions or crisis. They paid America’s bills to prevent an economic disaster to our country.”

House Speaker Kevin McCarthy is seen as the doors to the House Chamber are closed ahead of U.S. President Joe Biden’s State of the Union Address.

The US hit the debt ceiling set by Congress in January, forcing the Treasury Department to start taking extraordinary measures to keep the government paying its bills and escalating pressure on Capitol Hill to avoid a default later this year.

The White House and the new House GOP majority have been at odds over how to resolve a way to raise the debt limit. President Joe Biden and House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy met last week to discuss a possible agreement.

House Republicans continue to demand that lifting the borrowing cap be accompanied by spending cuts. In January, McCarthy rejected Democratic calls for a clean debt ceiling increase without any conditions attached, something he said he reiterated to the president during their meeting.

The White House has said it will not negotiate or offer concessions and has pushed McCarthy to show the president his budget.

Though the debt ceiling was originally designed to make it easier for the federal government to borrow, the limit has become a way for Congress to restrict the growth of borrowing — turning it into a political football in recent decades.

What is the debt ceiling: Established by Congress, the debt ceiling is the maximum amount the federal government is able to borrow to finance obligations that lawmakers and presidents have already approved – since the government runs budget deficits and the revenue it collects is not sufficient. Increasing the cap does not authorize new spending commitments.

The debt ceiling, which currently stands at $31.4 trillion, was created more than a century ago and has been modified more than 100 times since World War II.

What would happen if the US defaults on its debt: The Treasury Department said it expects extraordinary measures to last until early June. Once these measures and cash on hand are exhausted, the debt ceiling crisis would start having very real impacts.

If the government is no longer able to borrow, it would not have enough money to pay all its bills in full and on time — including interest on the national debt. So it would likely have to temporarily delay payments or default on some of its commitments, potentially affecting Social Security payments, veterans’ benefits and federal employees’ salaries, among others.

Gas prices are displayed at a BP gas station in Mount Prospect, Illinois on Sunday, January 29.

President Joe Biden, touting progress against inflation, said: “Here at home, gas prices are down $1.50 since their peak.” 

Facts First: Biden’s claim is correct. He didn’t mention, however, that gas prices are still significantly higher today than they were when he took office. And it’s important to note that presidential policy has a limited impact on gas prices, which are determined by a complex global interplay of supply and demand factors. 

As of the day of the State of the Union, the national average for a gallon of regular gas was $3.457, per data from the AAA. That was indeed down more than $1.50 from a record high of $5.016 in mid-June. But it was still up from a national average of $2.393 on Biden’s Inauguration Day in January 2021.

Biden has taken steps to lower gas prices. Following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in early 2022, which contributed to a spike in gas prices, the Biden administration released 180 million barrels of oil from the national Strategic Petroleum Reserve. The administration also issued an emergency waiver that allowed the sale of E15 gasoline, a blend that contains 15% ethanol, last summer.

But as we regularly note — whether a president is boasting about a decline in gas prices or his critics are blasting him for an increase in gas prices — presidential policy is not a primary factor in the price of gasoline.  

De Haan said Biden’s releases of oil from the strategic reserve “put some downward pressure on the price of oil, but I would not call it materially significant.” 

During tonight’s address, President Joe Biden announced a new standard that would require all construction material used in federal infrastructure projects be made in America.

Biden went on to directly speak to the American people, stating that his economic plan is about “investing in places and people that have been forgotten … Amid the economic upheaval of the past four decades, too many people have been left behind and treated like they’re invisible. Maybe that’s you, watching from home.”

“You remember the jobs that went away. You remember them don’t you? The folks at home remember them. You wonder whether a path even exists anymore for your children to get ahead without moving away. I get that. That’s why we’re building an economy where no one’s left behind,” he said. “Job’s a coming back. Pride is coming back because choices we made in the last several years.”

President Joe Biden delivers his State of the Union address.

President Joe Biden telegraphed his intent to highlight bipartisanship in his State of the Union address, but one key statistic is viewed inside the West Wing – and underappreciated. 

To be clear, many of those wins are on bills that fly under the news radar – or even the radar of many members of Congress. But in each, White House officials have sought to identify rank-and-file GOP member priorities and get them to Biden’s desk.

Has it had an effect on the partisan warfare in Washington? Even White House officials acknowledge the answer is no. 

But do they matter to those individual members? And will those members remember that effort from the White House legislative affairs team in some future negotiation?

That’s the long game bet. 

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell arrive to attend President Joe Biden's State of the Union address.

It’s not surprising that Republicans didn’t give a rousing ovation for President Joe Biden when he entered the chamber, or when he praise Nancy Pelosi for her tenure as House Speaker — but they also had a mixed and tepid reaction for Senate GOP Leader Mitch McConnell when the president recognized McConnell for being the longest-serving party leader in Senate history.

Many House Republicans remained seated — including hardliners like Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene.

The reason? Lingering frustration over his support for bipartisan bills in the last Congress — even as House Republicans largely opposed them. Also, McConnell’s rock-bottom relationship with former President Donald Trump has eroded his standing in the MAGA-aligned House GOP Conference.

U.S. President Joe Biden delivers his State of the Union address.

Democracy remains “unbroken” despite hardships and challenges in the past two years, President Joe Biden said in his State of the Union address.

“Two years ago, democracy faced its greatest threat to the civil war, and today, though bruised, our democracy remains unbowed and unbroken,” he said, referring to the events of the Jan. 6 insurrection at the US Capitol.

The president also talked about the challenges that came with the Covid-19 pandemic — schools and businesses were shut down, stunting the economy. He said the US was still able to overcome, touting his administration’s job creation.

President Joe Biden delivers his State of the Union address.

President Joe Biden said in his State of the Union address that his administration has “created, with the help of many people in this room, 12 million new jobs — more jobs created in two years than any president has ever created in four years.” 

Facts First: Biden’s number is accurate: the US economy added 12.1 million jobs between Biden’s first full month in office, February 2021, and January 2023. That number is indeed higher than the number of jobs added in any previous four-year presidential term. However, it’s important to note that Biden took office in an unusual pandemic context that makes meaningful comparison to other periods very difficult.  

Biden became president less than a year after the economy shed nearly 22 million jobs over two months, March and April 2020, because of the Covid-19 pandemic. The jobs recovery then began immediately after that, under then-President Donald Trump, but there was still an unprecedented hole to fill when Biden took office.  

Biden is free to argue that his stimulus legislation and other policies have helped the country gain jobs faster than it otherwise would have. (As always, it’s debatable precisely how much credit the president deserves for job-creation.) Nonetheless, it is clear that there could only be such an extraordinary number of jobs added in 2021 and 2022 because there was such an extraordinary number of jobs lost in early 2020. 

We’re tracking the approximate length of President Joe Biden’s second State of the Union speech. Here’s how it compares to the longest and shortest SOTU addresses since 1964.

President Biden shakes hands with House Speaker Kevin McCarthy prior to his address on Tuesday.

President Joe Biden started his State of the Union address Tuesday by congratulating new, Republican House Speaker Kevin McCarthy. This is the first time Biden is addressing a GOP-controlled House.

McCarthy and Vice President Kamala Harris are seated behind Biden.

The president also congratulated Democratic Rep. Hakeem Jeffries as the first Black House Minority leader, as well as Sen. Mitch McConnell for being the longest-serving Senate leader.

“I want to give special recognition to someone who I think is going to be considered the greatest Speaker in the history of the House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi,” Biden added, which was met by cheers from Democrats as Pelosi blew the president a kiss from her seat in the chamber.

Biden is expected to focus on bipartisanship throughout the address.

President Biden issued a call to bipartisan call to unity during the opening remarks of the State of the Union address, telling Republicans in the House chamber that he’s eager to continue working together in the new session of Congress.

Since taking office, Biden said, “we proved the cynics and the naysayers wrong. Yes, we disagreed plenty. And yes, there were times when Democrats went alone. But time and again, Democrats and Republicans came together.”

Together, he said, both parties came together to defend Europe, and passed a massive infrastructure bill as well as more than 300 other bipartisan pieces of legislation over the last two years.

President Joe Biden is now delivering his second State of the Union address at the US Capitol.

The remarks come roughly at the halfway point of his term after Republicans regained control of the House chamber. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy and Vice President Kamala Harris are sitting directly behind the president.

According to excerpts released ahead of the speech, Biden will tell congressional Republicans that he wants to work together instead of “fighting for the sake of fighting” and will reiterate his focus on middle class jobs.

Biden is also expected to address concerns from Congress and the nation as his administration faces an uncertain economic picture, renewed calls for police reform, a war in Ukraine and escalating tensions with China – all while Democrats and the GOP eye 2024

Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders will deliver the Republican response to Biden’s address.

President Joe Biden greets people as he arrives in the House chamber to deliver the State of the Union address.

President Joe Biden has entered the House chamber to deliver his second State of the Union address.

Labor Secretary Marty Walsh speaks during the daily press briefing at the White House on April 2, 2021, in Washington, DC.

Labor Secretary Marty Walsh is the designated survivor while President Joe Biden delivers his State of the Union address.

Walsh is expected to depart the Biden administration soon after being offered a job heading the NHL’s Players’ Association. His departure wasn’t expected to be announced until after Biden’s address.

What is the designated survivor? At least one top official is expected not to be in the US Capitol building during the president’s speech, participating instead in an obscure ritual in order to maintain the line of presidential succession in the rare case that disaster strikes. That person is the designated survivor.

Last year, Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo was the designated survivor for Biden’s first State of the Union address, staying away from the Capitol in an undisclosed and secure location during the president’s prime-time remarks.

How it started: According to the National Constitution Center, the tradition of a designated survivor during the State of the Union speech began in the 1950s as a result of fears of a nuclear attack during the Cold War. But the federal government did not publicly name the designated survivor until 1981 when President Ronald Reagan’s Education Secretary Terrel Bell assumed the designation for an address to a joint session of Congress.

After the vice president, the speaker of the House, the Senate president pro tempore, and the secretaries of State, Treasury and Defense are next in the line of succession. Data analyzed by CNN shows that the attorney general, seventh in the line of succession, has been the highest-ranking Cabinet member known to have been appointed to be designated survivor. A Justice Department head has been selected for the role three times.

While not as well known, the National Constitution Center states that designated survivors have also been used during inaugurations and presidential speeches to joint sessions of Congress. Members of Congress also have been designated to skip the State of the Union as a precautionary measure, according to the center.

President Joe Biden is about to give his second State of the Union address.

See photos of arrivals and other scenes from before the speech.

House Speaker Kevin McCarthy arrives before President Biden’s State of the Union address.

Members of the media set up Statuary Hall.

A worker delivers food to McCarthy's office.

Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi arrives in the House Chamber.

Firefighters unload equipment in front of the Capitol.

A majority of the Supreme Court is in attendance at this year’s State of the Union address.

Members of the court just walked into the chamber, including Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Elena Kagan, Brett Kavanaugh, Amy Coney Barrett and Ketanji Brown Jackson — which is her first time attending.

Members of the Supreme Court usually attend the State of the Union, though they do not play an official role. Roberts has said in the past that he is not always content attending the event that is so geared around politics, but he is the only sitting justice to go to every address since joining the court in 2005.

Over the years, some combination of justices have always crossed the street to attend the speech, but others have refrained either due to scheduling conflicts or the feeling that the event has devolved into what the late Justice Antonin Scalia referred to as a “childish spectacle.” 

Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch and Sonia Sotomayor are not in the chamber this year. The last time all nine sitting justices attended the speech was in 1977. 

CNN’s Ethan Cohen and Melissa DePalo contributed reporting to this post.

President Joe Biden tweeted just moments before he’s set to make his State of the Union address.

See the president’s tweet:

Paul Pelosi, husband of Representative Nancy Pelosi, a Democrat from California, from right, musician Bono, Brandon Tsay, who disarmed the shooter responsible for the mass shooting at the Monterey Park Lunar New Year celebrations, and RowVaughn Wells and Rodney Wells, mother and stepfather of Tyre Nichols, a Black man who was fatally beaten by Memphis, Tennessee, police officers, ahead of a State of the Union address.

Tyre Nichols’ family has entered the House chamber just as the Memphis City Council voted unanimously to pass several public safety reforms in the first city council meeting since the release of the video of the beating of Nichols.

The reforms included resolutions in support of the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act, as well as an ordinance for the Memphis Police Department to conduct an annual independent review of the police training academy and all training techniques.

The family will be seated in First lady Jill Biden’s box and President Joe Biden is expected to address police reform in his speech tonight.

CNN’s Nick Valencia and Pamela Kirkland contributed reporting to this post.

Rep. George Santos waits for President Joe Biden's State of the Union address.

There is a lot of buzz in the House chamber and energy in the room as members take their seats and their guests fill up the upstairs gallery. 

It’s a much different feel to the last few years when Covid-19 put a damper on the mood in the room.

Also GOP Rep. George Santos is sitting currently in the center aisle where President Joe Biden will arrive and is chit-chatting with several conservative members of Congress.

He will be able to shake hands with Biden.

Rep. Juan Ciscomani of Arizona will give the Spanish-language GOP response to President Joe Biden’s State of the Union address.

Here are some excerpts released from his remarks:

He is also expected to talk about the American Dream. In 2022, he became the first Latino Republican elected to Congress from Arizona. He was born in Mexico and immigrated to the US with his family as a child, and previously worked at the Tucson Hispanic Chamber of Commerce and was a senior adviser to former Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey.

Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders was tapped to deliver the GOP response in English.

President Joe Biden departs the White House to deliver his State of the Union address at the US Capitol.

President Joe Biden spent most of Tuesday rehearsing his State of the Union address with senior aides, going over the lengthy remarks carefully in an effort to make his forthcoming delivery on Capitol Hill seamless. 

The rehearsal is not surprising — given this is Biden’s style with any major address, putting in a significant amount of practice beforehand. 

But Biden has a clear goal tonight, a senior aide said, to make an appeal for more bipartisan progress while drawing a clear line between Democrats and Republicans on key economic issues.

His top White House aides believe this is shaping up to be the single biggest distinction with GOP lawmakers at this point in his presidency, and tonight is his chance to make it obvious. 

President Joe Biden has spoken repeatedly to advisers and allies over the last several weeks about his disdain for “limousine liberals.”

They are the upper class elites from big cities often identified as central to the Democratic coalition.

In his State of the Union address, Biden will make an explicit call to those that have moved sharply away from Democrats in recent cycles — blue collar and rural voters that have seen jobs and industry’s depart their home towns in recent decades, according to speech excerpts.

It’s a constituency central to Biden’s theory of the case — and a primary audience advisers say he’s targeting not just with his speech tonight, but with his entire agenda. 

Vice President Kamala Harris shakes hands with House Speaker Kevin McCarthy as they arrive before President Joe Biden delivers the State of the Union.

Vice President Kamala Harris has entered the House chambers and will be seated next to House Speaker Kevin McCarthy.

Harris shook McCarthy’s hand before taking her seat. Both will be seated behind President Joe Biden during the State of the Union address.

President Biden has departed the White House and is headed to Capitol Hill to deliver his second State of the Union address.

Reporters asked Biden how he was feeing and he responded, “Good.” 

Asked “what is the state of the union,” he told reporters, “Great shape, getting better,” as he entered the car.

Traveling with the president are the first lady and the second gentleman.

Watch:

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President Joe Biden is expected to return to themes of his 2020 campaign several times throughout his State of the Union address Tuesday night.

Things like the “battle for the soul of the nation,” an “economy built from the bottom up and middle out,” “rebuilding the backbone of America” and “uniting the country” – all 2020 themes, all in tonight’s speech, Democrats briefed on the matter told CNN. 

The reason, advisers said, is Biden’s steadfast belief in the agenda he ran on. As one adviser pointedly added, it is also an agenda he “received 80 million votes for,” making it the animating feature of his administration. 

It will appear that the president will rehash some of the same old lines, an adviser said, adding, “But this isn’t about you. This is about connecting to the people outside of Washington.”

The themes are the core of a populist economic message designed to engage blue collar voters, a foreign policy based on steadfast and long-standing alliances and a political system where unity replaces a fabric that has for years been tearing at the seams.

Biden’s pitch will seek to attack his campaign themes to the progress made in his first two years and argue to Americans that he can “finish the job” in the two — or six— years ahead.

Final edits and tweaks to his second State of the Union address reveal that President Joe Biden is keenly aware of the need to overcome a disconnect with the public. 

In the final hours of preparations and edits to the president’s remarks, there has been one constant focus — sharpening each section to best connect his policies with real people, according to advisers. 

It’s a reality that underscores how aware White House officials are of a clear disconnect between their accomplishments and an American public that remains uneasy and dissatisfied. 

It’s long been an almost obsessive behind-the-scenes issue for Biden. Aides tell stories of being sent out of meetings by an unsatisfied president to try explanations out on executive assistants and people on the street.

There will not be a better moment to shift that view than tonight with tens of millions of viewers in prime time. As one adviser put it, “This is a night when people who don’t otherwise pay attention to politics tune in. We can’t miss that moment.”

The speech itself will be long – more than an hour without factoring in the applause and standing ovations from lawmakers — but the length underscores Biden’s view that there is much he needs to tell the American people and this is the best moment to do just that.

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez says she hopes to hear about the implementation of key legislation from president Joe Biden in his State of the Union address.

She noted that “there still is implementation” and “execution” to be done on legislation passed like the Inflation Reduction Act and the American Rescue Plan.

This will be her first time in the chamber where she is a member of the minority. Still, Ocasio-Cortez said she has an expectation that Biden will also mention some of the “audacious plans on taxing the rich” and “stock buybacks” in his address.

The congresswoman said she does believe some Republicans may be willing to work with the Biden administration.

“I do believe that (Speaker) Kevin McCarthy has already demonstrated a struggle in keeping his caucus together, which again, all of that plays into potential openings in the next one to two years for Democrats to exploit.”

As for her, Ocasio-Cortez said she “would enthusiastically support [Joe Biden] if he were the Democratic nominee.”

She said the American people will need to “see what the plan is for our future” from and potential presidential candidate. And should Biden make his case for second term in tonight’s address, she said: “I think we are going to have to hear a very forceful, big, animating, exciting vision.”

At the halfway point of his first term in office, one of the biggest questions facing President Joe Biden: Is America still listening?

That is a central concern hanging over the White House, with even many loyal Democrats — including those who supported and still genuinely like Biden — unsure whether he is the best choice to lead the party and the nation. 

Spending the day talking to Democrats in battleground Wisconsin, a sense of strong admiration emerges, but also clear signs of trepidation about Biden’s future.

It was a common sentiment.

Never mind winning over his critics, tonight’s address is designed to inspire — and re-energize — those who sent him to the White House in the first place. It’s also intended to show that he has the vigor to run again — a challenge that is unique for Biden, the oldest president in American history.

Democratic congressional leaders previewed President Joe Biden’s State of the Union address during a roundtable Tuesday on Capitol Hill, predicting he will lean into the narrative that Democrats can deliver and defend democracy while drawing a sharp contrast with House Republicans. 

While highlighting how the State of the Union is often one of the biggest television audiences a president can address, Schumer said Americans shouldn’t expect a “campaign rally-style speech,” but instead a “serious” and focused one. 

“When we communicate, we win,” Schumer said. 

Pressed about polls that show Americans don’t feel the impact of Biden’s agenda, the two Democrats argued that will change and predicted Biden’s approval numbers will rise as legislation is implemented. Jeffries said it will take time for people to feel the effects, likening it to Roosevelt’s New Deal. 

On police reform: Both lawmakers acknowledged the difficult road ahead for legislation, though Schumer and Jeffries expressed cautious optimism about police reform talks, noting that discussions between Sen. Cory Booker and Sen. Tim Scott have started again.

Sen. Dick Durbin meanwhile is talking to Sen. Lindsey Graham, who they predicted could potentially be more open than his GOP colleagues have been. Schumer wouldn’t say if qualified immunity, which has been a past sticking point, should be part of any deal, instead leaving that up to those doing the negotiating. 

In this file photo, a group of migrants, mostly from Cuba and the Dominican Republic, wait after crossing the border from Mexico and surrendering to authorities to apply for asylum near Yuma, Arizona, on November 3, 2022.

The Biden administration told the Supreme Court Tuesday that its intent of letting the coronavirus public health emergency expire in May will moot the ongoing case over a Trump-era border restriction. The filing came just hours before President Biden was set to deliver his second State of the Union address.

The Trump administration invoked Title 42 at the onset of the coronavirus pandemic. The public health authority allows border officials to turn away migrants encountered at the US-Mexico border in the name of Covid-19.  

Title 42 has been the subject of ongoing litigation.

Last year, Republican-led states, which had already filed suit in a separate court, requested to intervene in a case, arguing the program should be left in place.

The Supreme Court agreed to leave the program in effect and said it would hear arguments on March 1 on whether the GOP-led states can intervene. The administration’s brief was filed in advance of those scheduled arguments, which could potentially be impacted.

House Speaker Kevin McCarthy has privately told his members that the country will be watching their actions closely and he doesn’t want a distracting gaffe to undermine their party’s image with millions of Americans for the first time seeing their party in power, according to people who have spoken with him. 

Realizing that this is the first time many Americans will have tuned into the happenings on the House floor since his messy election to speaker, McCarthy is aiming to project a middle-of-the-road image for his party.

This has been a project for McCarthy for several cycles, attempting to recruit more ethnically diverse members for moments like this: To show the country that Republicans reflect America. 

McCarthy has told his members he will be acting responsibly when sitting behind Biden, applauding politely and repeatedly noting he won’t replicate Nancy Pelosi’s infamous 2020 moment when she tore up Donald Trump’s speech. 

Republicans don’t want a replay of 2009 when GOP Rep. Joe Wilson yelled out “You Lie” during former President Barack Obama’s speech to a joint session of Congress on health care. 

It’s unclear if the hardliners will listen to him. 

GOP Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene was spotted in the Capitol carrying a white balloon — a symbol of the Chinese spy balloon that flew across the United States last week.

CNN has reached out to see if she will bring that balloon into the chamber — several Republicans are hoping she doesn’t.

“Please no,” one House Republican told CNN.

White House officials view tonight’s address as a primetime moment to lay out in detail a laundry list of accomplishments they view as transformative to the US economy. 

But they’re also aware many still need to be implemented — and aren’t being felt by the broader public. 

That’s the driving force behind three words you’ll hear several times in tonight’s address, advisers say: “Finish the job.”

As one adviser put it: “He wants to tell the country why the state of the union today is strong — but lay out his plans for an even better union a year or two from now.” 

Of course, it’s not lost on White House officials that in that time period, President Biden plans to be in the middle of a heated reelection battle. Tonight marks a critical moment to lay that groundwork for what comes next. 

When President Joe Biden returns to the House chamber to deliver his second State of the Union address soon, the former longtime senator will be addressing his one-time congressional colleagues as a guest.

Two seats on the dais behind the president are reserved for the vice president and the House speaker. Vice President Kamala Harris, who is also the president of the Senate, will sit to the right behind Biden, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy will be seated to his left.

Presidents and first ladies typically invite about two dozen guests to sit in the House gallery. State of the Union guests help put a human face on a president’s message for both policymakers and viewers at home.

The president’s Cabinet, Supreme Court justices who choose to attend, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, former members of Congress and members of the diplomatic corps are seated in front of lawmakers.

House members aren’t assigned seats. Instead, seats in the chamber are doled out on a first come, first served basis the day of the speech. House members must stay seated in the spot they choose until the address begins, according to the Congressional Research Service.

Senators join their House colleagues in the chamber, sitting at the front, the report from the Congressional Research Service states.

Here’s at look at where everyone will be in the chamber:

RowVaughn Wells, left, mother of Tyre Nichols, who died after being beaten by police officers in Memphis, and her husband Rodney Wells, Samaria Rice, center, who's son Tamir Rice was killed by police in Cleveland, Ohio, and Rep. Shontel Brown, D-Ohio, walk on the Capitol grounds following meeting with reporters to call for police reform on Tuesday.

Multiple House members are bringing guests related to police reform to Tuesday’s State of the Union address, using stories of police violence in their states to call for legislation.

Democratic Rep. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota said in a tweet Monday that she has invited the father of Amir Locke, a man killed by Minneapolis police serving a no-knock warrant. She said in the a tweet that she is also planning to introduce reform legislation titled the Amir Locke End Deadly No-Knock Warrants Act.

Democratic Rep. Bobby Scott of Virginia also said on Twitter that he is joining other members of the Congressional Black Caucus to call for police reform.

He invited Wayne Lynch, the father of Donovon Lynch, as his guest to the address, the tweet said. Donovon Lynch died after he was shot in the torso and thigh by a Virginia Beach police officer in March 2021. Officers were responding to a series of shootings on the night Lynch was shot.

Biden is expected to address police reform in his speech and acknowledge some of the guests in the chamber. The president hosted members of the Congressional Black Caucus at the White House last week to discuss police reform, which has stalled in Congress multiple times and faces an uncertain path forward.

The mother and stepfather of Tyre Nichols, RowVaughn and Rodney Wells, are among the first lady’s guests on Tuesday. Nichols was killed last month by police in Memphis, Tennessee. The video of the deadly confrontation sparked protests across the country and prompted activists and Nichols’ parents to call for the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act to be passed.

CNN’s Betsy Klein and Arlette Saenz contributed reporting to this post.

In this file photo, Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders answers a question while taking part in a panel discussion during a Republican Governors Association conference on Nov. 16, 2022, in Orlando.

Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders will deliver the Republican response to President Joe Biden’s State of the Union address to Congress on Tuesday night.

The speech will give Sanders a prominent national platform to speak to the country and counter Biden after the president highlights his priorities and agenda to the nation.

In a statement ahead of the speech, Sanders previewed her message to the American public, saying, “I am grateful for this opportunity to address the nation and contrast the GOP’s optimistic vision for the future against the failures of President Biden and the Democrats.”

Sanders released the following excerpts from her speech:

This year’s State of the Union will take place with Republicans newly in control of the House, a position of power the GOP is using to launch congressional oversight investigations aimed at the Biden administration.

Sanders is expected to make the case that Republicans are now in positions to hold the Biden administration accountable, according to the governor’s office. Sanders is expected to argue that Biden is not defending the border, not defending the skies, and not defending the people of America.

President Joe Biden’s second State of the Union address is a national platform for the commander-in-chief to showcase the progress he’s made on key policies and offer a glimpse into his vision for the future of the country.

Here are some key topics to watch:

In his first State of the Union address to a divided Congress, President Joe Biden will tell congressional Republicans that he wants to work together instead of “fighting for the sake of fighting” and will reiterate his focus on middle class jobs, according to excerpts of his remarks released by the White House Tuesday evening.

“The people sent us a clear message. Fighting for the sake of fighting, power for the sake of power, conflict for the sake of conflict, gets us nowhere. And that’s always been my vision for the country: to restore the soul of the nation, to rebuild the backbone of America: the middle class, to unite the country. We’ve been sent here to finish the job!”

As expected, Biden will also talk about his economic plan “investing in places and people that have been forgotten,” and “building an economy where no one is left behind.” He will also address strong economic recovery since the pandemic.

In his speech, Biden will seek to connect with his audience by saying he understands their plight.

“Amid the economic upheaval of the past four decades too many people have been left behind or treated like they’re invisible. Maybe that’s you watching at home. You remember the jobs that went away. And you wonder whether a path even exists anymore for you and your children to get ahead without moving away. I get it,” he will say.

Read the full excerpts from his speech:  

“The story of America is a story of progress and resilience…We are the only country that has emerged from every crisis stronger than when we entered it. That is what we are doing again. Two years ago our economy was reeling. As I stand here tonight, we have created a record 12 million new jobs – more jobs created in two years than any president has ever created in four years. Two years ago, COVID had shut down our businesses, closed our schools, and robbed us of so much. Today, COVID no longer controls our lives. And two years ago, our democracy faced its greatest threat since the Civil War. Today, though bruised, our democracy remains unbowed and unbroken.”

_

“My economic plan is about investing in places and people that have been forgotten. Amid the economic upheaval of the past four decades too many people have been left behind or treated like they’re invisible. Maybe that’s you watching at home. You remember the jobs that went away. And you wonder whether a path even exists anymore for you and your children to get ahead without moving away. I get it. That’s why we’re building an economy where no one is left behind. Jobs are coming back, pride is coming back because of the choices we made in the last two years. This is a blue-collar blueprint to rebuild America and make a real difference in your lives.

—

“To my Republican friends, if we could work together in the last Congress, there is no reason we can’t work together in this new Congress. The people sent us a clear message. Fighting for the sake of fighting, power for the sake of power, conflict for the sake of conflict, gets us nowhere. And that’s always been my vision for the country: to restore the soul of the nation, to rebuild the backbone of America: the middle class, to unite the country. We’ve been sent here to finish the job!”

Rahmat Mokhtar, a former Afghan interpreter, speaks with Jake Tapper on CNN on Tuesday.

Rahmat Mokhtar, a former Afghan interpreter who is advocating for the passage of the Afghan Adjustment Act, is among the various guests arriving in Washington, DC, to attend President Joe Biden’s second State of the Union address.

Mokhtar is a guest of Democratic Rep. Scott Peters, who said on Twitter on Monday that he is bringing Mokhtar to “amplify the need for Congress to pass [the Afghan Adjustment Act] now.” 

Mokhtar worked with US Marines for roughly four years starting in 2010 and arrived in San Diego in 2016 under the Special Immigrant Visa program, he told CNN on Monday.

As an ethnic minority in Afghanistan, Mokhtar said it was difficult for him to find work in Afghanistan after graduating college — but the US military didn’t care “about the inter-ethnic dynamics in Afghanistan,” they just cared that he could do the job. 

More on the Afghan Adjustment Act: The act was heavily advocated for by former senior military leaders and service members alike, who were pushing for Congress to include the provision in the omnibus spending bill in December. It ultimately did not make it into the bill.

While Mokhtar said his original plan when he began working with the military wasn’t to come to the US, life in Afghanistan began getting too dangerous for him because of his job. So despite still having family in Afghanistan and hope in his country, he came to the US on the SIV program and quickly made a life for himself. 

His wife joined him in San Diego just a few months later; the couple now has two boys, and Mokhtar said he became a US citizen just two months after the withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021. He has also started working with #AfghanEvac, a non-profit focused on fulfilling promises to Afghan allies. 

Shawn VanDiver, the founder of #AfghanEvac, called Mokhtar an “absolute patriot and American citizen” who works daily to help other refugees. He met with officials at the White House and State Department on Tuesday, VanDiver said, to make a case with his own words about the Afghan Adjustment Act. 

“He is an absolutely incredible human being who gives so much of himself,” VanDiver said.

Speaking with CNN on Monday, Mokhtar said he had a clear message to Congress and the Biden administration: The time to take action is now.

On January 17, 1966, in the Capitol’s Old Senate Chamber, Senate Republican Leader Everett Dirksen and House Minority Leader Gerald Ford delivered the first official opposition response to a State of the Union Address, beginning a tradition that continues to this day.

This year Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders will be delivering the Republican response to President Joe Biden’s State of the Union address.

The tradition of the opposing party response dates back to 1966.

The first official “response” to the State of the Union by the opposing party was delivered by Republican Sen. Everett Dirksen and Rep. Gerald Ford in 1966.

Each television network offered a half-hour slot for response time, although the slots were not “roadblocked” (i.e. did not air at the same time on all networks) and did not air immediately after the President’s address.

In 1976, television time was available for the opposing party’s response immediately following the State of the Union.

The choice of speaker usually rotates between the opposing party’s House and Senate leadership, although on several occasions, party leaders have chosen multiple speakers. 

CNN’s Robert Yoon, Adam Levy and Liz Stark contributed reporting to this post.

President Joe Biden salutes a Marine as he walks on the South Lawn after returning to the White House on Marine One on February 6 in Washington, DC.

State of the Union addresses are supposed to be a high mark of sorts for a president. The president has the nation’s attention as he describes his accomplishments and agenda going forward.

And while President Joe Biden will certainly do those things Tuesday night, he faces a tall task.

Biden’s poll numbers (both in terms of his approval rating and his 2024 prospects) continue to be lackluster heading into the beginning of the 2024 primary season.

Three polls were released in the past five days regarding how Americans view the job Biden is doing as president, and they all say basically the same negative thing.

Polls from ABC News/Washington Post, AP-NORC and CBS News/YouGov all have Biden’s approval rating in the low to mid 40s and his disapproval rating in the mid to high 50s.

The best polls that Biden has received (and that meet CNN’s standards for publication) over the past few weeks still have Biden’s disapproval rating above his approval rating.

Indeed, Biden has sported a negative net approval (approve - disapprove) rating since the end of the summer of 2021, just months into his administration. That’s nearly a year and a half in which more Americans have disliked than liked the job Biden has been doing as president.

The only other president who had a negative net approval rating for that long during this early part of his presidency was Biden’s predecessor, Donald Trump.

The good piece of news for Biden is that his approval rating does not seem to be falling. Biden’s approval rating seemed to be on a steady upclimb for much of December and into January. Then it dropped after classified documents were found at his Wilmington, Delaware, home and a Washington, DC, office he used after serving as vice president. It now looks to be up slightly, again.

Further, Biden’s base seems to be sticking with him. Almost every single poll has his approval rating with Democrats in the 80s.

No president has ever faced any real challenge for renomination when his approval rating among his own party was above 75%.

But there are other signs ahead of 2024 that are far from encouraging. Even as most Democrats like the job Biden is doing as president, they’re not ready to commit to him being the party’s standard bearer in the coming presidential cycle.

Read more of Enten’s analysis here.

Supreme Court Justices John Roberts, Elena Kagan, Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh attend the State of the Union address in the chamber of the U.S. House of Representatives at the US Capitol Building on February 5, 2019 in Washington, DC.

Members of the Supreme Court usually attend the State of the Union address and sit in the House of Representatives chamber in the front-row, center.

Chief Justice John Roberts is the only sitting justice to attend every address since joining the court in 2005. Justices Elena Kagan and Brett Kavanaugh had attended each address since they joined the court until 2021.

Roberts was the only justice invited that year due to pandemic capacity restrictions on attendance. That limitation also prevented Justice Amy Coney Barrett (who joined the court in 2020) from having the opportunity to attend her first presidential address to Congress.

Retired Supreme Court Justice Breyer has attended the speech 24 times. He only missed four speeches since joining the court in 1994 (2000, 2019, 2020, 2021). He was the sole representative of the high court during the 2001, 2003 and 2004 addresses. 

The last time all nine sitting justices attended the speech was in 1977. Retired Justice John Paul Stevens attended seven of the first eight speeches after he joined the Supreme Court in 1975 but skipped every speech for the remainder of his 26 years on the bench.

CNN’s Robert Yoon, Adam Levy and Liz Stark contributed reporting to this post.

When President Biden delivers his State of the Union address on Tuesday evening, he’ll speak in front of nearly every influential federal official in Washington – including members of Congress, top military brass, US Supreme Court justices and senior officials within his administration.

But at least one top official is not expected to be in the US Capitol building for Biden’s speech, participating instead in an obscure ritual in order to maintain the line of presidential succession in the rare case that disaster strikes. That person is the designated survivor.

Last year, Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo was the designated survivor for Biden’s first State of the Union address, staying away from the Capitol in an undisclosed and secure location during the president’s prime-time remarks.

How it started: According to the National Constitution Center, the tradition of a designated survivor during the State of the Union speech began in the 1950s as a result of fears of a nuclear attack during the Cold War. But the federal government did not publicly name the designated survivor until 1981, when President Ronald Reagan’s Education Secretary Terrel Bell assumed the designation for an address to a joint session of Congress.

After the vice president, the speaker of the House, the Senate president pro tempore, and the secretaries of State, Treasury and Defense are next in the line of succession. Data analyzed by CNN shows that the attorney general, seventh in the line of succession, has been the highest-ranking Cabinet member known to have been appointed to be designated survivor. A Justice Department head has been selected for the role three times.

While not as well known, the National Constitution Center states that designated survivors have also been used during inaugurations and presidential speeches to joint sessions of Congress. Members of Congress also have been designated to skip the State of the Union as a precautionary measure, according to the center.

House Speaker Kevin McCarthy walks to a House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence meeting on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC, on February 7.

Ahead of President Joe Biden’s State of the Union address, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy warned members during a closed-door meeting to behave themselves, reminding them that the “mics are hot” and the “cameras are on,” according to a source in the room.

House GOP conference chair Elise Stefanik issued a similar warning.

McCarthy also told members to be cognizant that photographers can see their phones so be aware of what they are looking at on their screens — and be aware that boom mics can pick up their conversations, per source in room.

The source also said that McCarthy said he would not tear up Biden’s speech as Rep. Nancy Pelosi did after one of former President Donald Trump’s State of the Union address.

McCarthy also discussed and outlined the three main things he spoke to Biden about during his White House meeting last week including; that he’s not willing to raise taxes, he won’t pass a clean debt ceiling, and that Congress needs to spend less money, according to a person in the room.

“I was very clear to him: we’re not going to raise taxes, we’re not going to pass a clean debt ceiling,” he said. “I told the president we’re going to spend less money, and we also care about policy as well.”

McCarthy added that he saw Biden the next day at the national prayer breakfast, and the president remarked to him how good he thought their first meeting was.

As you prepare to listen to President Joe Biden’s address tonight, catch up on some notable State of the Union milestones and facts:

World War 1 - President Woodrow Wilson addresses Congress in Washington DC 7th December 1915 during the state of the union address.. (Photo by Universal History Archive/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)

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Related gallery Photos: A visual history of the State of the Union | CNN Politics

CNN’s Robert Yoon, Adam Levy and Liz Stark contributed reporting to this post.

A newly installed perimeter fence is seen in front of the US Capitol on Tuesday.

US Capitol Police have been tracking social media posts about attacking the Capitol as the agency and other law enforcement around Washington increase security for Tuesday’s State of the Union address. 

Among the security measures taken ahead of the address, authorities erected a non-scalable fence around the Capitol over the weekend — over the objection of the Republican House sergeant at arms — as security remains a political debate on Capitol Hill.

Intelligence analysts still believe the US remains in a heightened threat environment with possible violence directed toward lawmakers and law enforcement, according to a Capitol Police Intelligence and Interagency Coordination Division bulletin circulated in recent days.    

The bulletin also noted that calls on social media for violence targeted toward the Capitol remains prevalent.  “January 6 supporters perpetuate antagonistic commentary in social media platforms and several have called for aspirational targeting of the SOTU,” the bulletin said.  

Among the examples of concerning social media posts included a post comparing the Jan. 8, 2023, insurrection in Brazil to the January 6, 2021, insurrection at the US Capitol, and criticizing the Jan. 6 rioters for failing to “finish it.”   

“This was the problem with J6. You can’t do it halfway,” the user posted.   

Other posts speculated about the return of former President Donald Trump and called for the execution of officials in President Joe Biden’s administration as well as Biden’s arrest by the House Sergeant at Arms.  

The bulletin also noted that increased scrutiny of police in the wake of incidents, such as the death of Tyre Nichols, could make the State of the Union a focal point for demonstrations.  

The bulletin did point out there were no specific credible threats related to the event.  

The fence was erected after House Sergeant at Arms William McFarland voted last week against it, according to a source familiar with the Capitol Police Board vote. The other two members of the Capitol Police Board, Senate Sergeant at Arms Karen Gibson and Architect of the Capitol J. Brett Blanton, voted for putting up the fence.

McFarland, recently appointed by House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, didn’t think the fence was necessary given a lack of intelligence suggesting a credible threat or large protests planned, the source said. Previous State of the Union addresses have been secured without a fence, the source added, and the cost “to make the campus look like a military fortress was unnecessary.”

 Two years removed from the Jan. 6 riot, the Capitol Police Board is now split, with the Democratic appointed Senate Sergeant at Arms and the Republican House Sergeant at Arms. Blanton was appointed by former President Trump in 2019.  

The political split will push different opinions about security onto the Capitol Police Board agenda, and the State of the Union presented the first test of the functioning of the new board. 

President Biden will deliver his second State of the Union address tonight. Here’s a look at what we can expect, according to someone who’s been briefed on the speech:

In this photo provided by Chad Fish, the remnants of a large balloon drift above the Atlantic Ocean, just off the coast of South Carolina, with a fighter jet and its contrail seen below it on February 4.

The fallout over the decision to shoot down a suspected Chinese surveillance balloon over the Atlantic Ocean this weekend presents new logistical and diplomatic priorities for the United States.

Politically, questions surrounding the balloon – should it have been shot down earlier? was it able to collect any intelligence? what should the US response be? – loom large over President Joe Biden as he prepares for his State of the Union address Tuesday evening. The response in Washington has unfolded predictably, with Republicans calling Biden’s response delayed and Democrats rushing to defend the White House’s approach.

House Republicans are weighing the passage of a resolution condemning the Biden administration for its handling of the suspected surveillance balloon, a source familiar with the discussions told CNN’s Melanie Zanona.

“Letting a Chinese surveillance balloon lazily drift over America is like seeing a robber on your front porch and inviting him in, showing him where you keep your safe, where you keep your guns, where your children sleep at night, and then politely asking him to leave. It makes no sense,” GOP Rep. Mike Gallagher of Wisconsin told Fox News Sunday.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell called the administration’s decision to shoot the Chinese spy balloon on Saturday “too late” and said the US let China “make a mockery” of US airspace.

But Democrats aren’t rolling over. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer called the GOP critiques “premature” and “political.”

“Our friends are playing politics with US intelligence. We sent a clear message to China that this is not acceptable. We protected civilians. We gained more intelligence while protecting our own sensitive information. And the bottom line here is shooting down the surveillance balloon over water wasn’t just the safest option, but it was the one that maximized our intelligence payload,” he said.

A Gang of Eight briefing – with the top leaders in both chambers and key intelligence committee members – on the suspected Chinese spy balloon is expected to occur soon. Schumer also announced the full Senate would receive a comprehensive briefing on China.

But this isn’t the first Chinese surveillance balloon Congress has been briefed on. The Pentagon briefed Congress on previous balloons during the Trump administration that flew near Texas and Florida, GOP Rep. Michael Waltz said in a statement to CNN.

The new details about previous balloons flying near Florida and Texas were confirmed by two additional sources familiar with the briefings, CNN’s Jeremy Herb and Zachary Cohen reported Sunday evening.

But the transiting of those three suspected balloons during the previous administration was only discovered after Biden took office, a senior administration official told CNN’s Natasha Bertrand on Sunday. The official said that the intelligence community is prepared to offer briefings to key Trump administration officials about the Chinese surveillance program, which the Biden administration believes has been deployed in countries across five continents over the last several years.

Read more about the suspected Chinese balloon incident here.

National Economic Council Director Brian Deese speaks at the daily press briefing at the White House on February 6.

President Joe Biden’s economic message during the State of the Union address on Tuesday will focus on highlighting the progress made in improving the state of the economy while also contrasting his policies with the GOP proposals the White House sees as fiscally irresponsible.   

Brian Deese, the outgoing director of the National Economic Council, outlined Biden’s economic State of the Union themes, saying at the White House press briefing on Monday that the president “wants this economic conversation to focus on how we can keep reducing costs for the American people,” while contrasting that with Republicans “doing things like cutting taxes for the very wealthiest people in the country and increasing the deficit.” 

Biden will “talk about progress” made economically since he took office, underscoring that it’s been “a consistent vision since the campaign,” Deese said. 

And during his speech, Biden will announce proposed guidance “to ensure construction materials from copper and aluminum to fiber optic cable, lumber, and drywall, are made in America,” the White House says.

Biden is slated to acknowledge that more work needs to be done in order to continue making economic inroads and implement the landmark legislation signed into law during his first two years in office.  

Biden will both hone in on areas of potential areas of bipartisan compromise and “draw some clear lines,” Deese previewed. The American people will hear the president “outline specific ideas” on how to keep lowering costs for American families, including building on prescription drug reforms and lower the costs of child and elder care. And, when asked about his approach to the debt ceiling, Deese said Biden will express his “openness and eagerness to have a conversation about the fiscal and economic priorities of the country and find common ground.” 

The president is expected to acknowledge continued economic anxieties amongst Americans. 

Amid acknowledgements of continued concerns about the economy, Deese said he believes the country will “hear the president is optimistic about America’s future because he believes in the American worker and the greater resilience of the American people.” 

President Bill Clinton addresses Congress on January 27, 2000, during his final State of the Union address in Washington, DC.

The longest State of the Union/annual message in terms of minutes was delivered by former President Bill Clinton in 2000.

It clocked in at 1 hour, 28 minutes, 49 seconds, according to the American Presidency Project at the University of California at Santa Barbara.

Clinton spoke before a joint session of Congress on nine occasions over the course of two terms.

CNN’s Robert Yoon, Adam Levy and Liz Stark contributed reporting to this post.

In this file photo, New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson speaks at a fundraiser for the campaign of Washington Gov. Chris Gregoire on Monday, April 28, 2008, in Seattle.

The tradition of the Spanish response to the president’s annual address or State of the Union speech dates to 2004, when then-Gov. Bill Richardson of New Mexico rebutted George W. Bush on the impact the president’s policies had on the Hispanic community and immigration in the US.

Since then, a Spanish response to the address has become almost standard. The years 2009, 2021 and 2022 are the only times since 2004 without a Spanish response.

Republican party leaders announced that Rep. Juan Ciscomani will deliver the Spanish-language response to this year’s address.

This year will be the first Spanish language response to the address since 2020.

Previous responses: Florida GOP Rep. Mario Díaz-Balart gave the first Republican Spanish response to a State of the Union address in 2010.

In 2013, Republican Sen. Marco Rubio became the first official to give both the English and Spanish response. He pre-taped the Spanish version before his live response in English. 

CNN’s Robert Yoon, Adam Levy and Liz Stark contributed reporting to this post.

President Joe Biden’s State of the Union address included a binder and a sweet treat.

The president posted a photo on Twitter Monday of a binder with what appeared to be a draft of the speech, alongside a plate of cookies and mugs with the Camp David seal.

“Getting ready,” Biden tweeted alongside the photo.

CNN reported Biden was set to spend part of his weekend working on speech preparations, joined by presidential historian Jon Meacham. 

See Biden’s tweet:

A worker helps to install security fencing around the Capitol on February 5 in Washington, DC.

US Capitol Police ramped up security for the State of the Union, including a non-scalable fence addition around the Capitol grounds, according to two sources familiar with the plans.  

Intelligence officials in the police department warned in an email circulated to the force Friday that the threat level remains elevated ahead of President Joe Biden’s State of the Union address.

While there are no specific credible threats to the event, the Capitol Police bulletin notes that “recent incidents targeting politicians and law enforcement agencies within the past month indicate that there is a heightened threat toward government officials.” 

Split opinions on security came into focus last month when House Speaker Kevin McCarthy removed the magnetometers leading to the House floor. The metal detectors, installed following the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol attack, were a sore spot for Republicans who felt they were a largely meaningless security measure. 

The issue bubbled up again last week. On Wednesday, more than a dozen Democrats wrote to House and Senate leadership in attempt to raise alarm about security. 

One law enforcement source said lawmakers will not undergo any additional screening before entering the House chamber for Biden’s address. Another source pointed out the magnetometers outside the House chamber were removed for the last two presidential addresses – the Joint Session in 2021 and State of the Union in 2022.    

The State of the Union is considered a “National Special Security Event,” a designation that puts the US Secret Service in charge of much of the planning and unlocks significant resources for security plans. Capitol Police control most of the security apparatus on the Capitol grounds in cooperation with the Secret Service and other agencies. 

Capitol Police declined to describe specific security plans.  

The State of the Union is traditionally delivered in the chamber of the House of Representatives, before members of both the House and the Senate, as well as justices of the Supreme Court, members of the president’s cabinet and the diplomatic corps.

This year’s State of the Union will be the first since 2020 to have no Covid-19 precaution measures.

The arrival of the president is announced by the House Sergeant at Arms (William McFarland). The speaker of the House (Rep. Kevin McCarthy) will then introduce the president.

Traditionally, Senate and House Leadership escort the president into the chamber. This year, those members will be:

Senate:

House:

Seated behind the president are the top members of each chamber of Congress: the president of the Senate (Vice President Kamala Harris) and the speaker of the House.

Note: If there is no vice president, or if the vice president does not attend, the President Pro Tempore of the Senate sits in the vice president’s seat.

CNN’s Jake Tapper is getting ready for tonight. Check out the video below to see what he’s looking for in Biden’s speech:

CNN’s Robert Yoon, Adam Levy and Liz Stark contributed reporting to this post.

A look back at public opinion following presidential addresses to Congress reveals two long-standing, seemingly contradictory trends. First, audience reactions to these speeches are almost unvaryingly positive. And second, it’s increasingly rare for them to have a notable effect on the president’s overall approval ratings. 

Much of this disconnect comes down to the viewership for these addresses, which tends to be highly unrepresentative of the full US public. People are more likely to tune in for politicians they already support than for those they oppose, meaning that Democratic presidents find themselves speaking to an audience that’s disproportionately composed of Democrats, and vice versa for Republican presidents.

Last year, the viewing audience of Biden’s speech was about 11 percentage points more Democratic than the public as a whole, CNN’s polling found. That dynamic ensures a relatively friendly reception, but helps make it unlikelier that any single address will lead to a broader public reevaluation of the president who delivers it. 

Since 1998, CNN has gauged the public reaction to 21 State of the Union speeches and first-year presidential addresses to Congress. All were rated positively by most Americans who tuned in to watch, and most garnered a “very positive” reaction from more than half of the viewing audience. 

Biden’s two addresses to Congress so far both followed that pattern, receiving generally warm audience reviews — 78% positive for his initial speech in 2021, and 71% positive for his State of the Union speech last year. Just 41%, however, viewed Biden’s 2022 address very positively, tying with George W. Bush in 2007 for a low on that metric in CNN’s reaction polls over the past 25 years. 

State of the Union speeches also tend to make at least a brief positive impact on audience assessments of presidential policies – in polls taken following the speech, viewers are more likely say that the president’s proposed policies will move the country in the right direction than they were to say the same prior to the address. Following Biden’s 2022 address, 67% of US adults who watched his speech said they believed his policies would move the country in the right direction, up from 52% among the same group prior to his address. 

Yet, across the speeches since 1952 for which polling is available, presidents’ approval ratings changed by an average of roughly two-tenths of a percentage point post-speech, well within the margin of sampling error of a typical poll – and not always in a positive direction. Addresses after a president’s inaugural year have been even less likely to produce any notable bounce. (Timing, of course, does not guarantee correlation – any movement could be a result of the speeches, but could equally be a result of other events happening simultaneously.) 

Some past presidents have seen a shift in their ratings following an address to Congress. For instance, that happened to Bill Clinton, whose approval rose 10 percentage points following his 1998 speech. But that may be becoming increasingly uncommon. The most recent president to see a post-address approval rating shift of more than 3 percentage points was Barack Obama, following his initial speech to Congress in 2009.  

Neither of Biden’s previous speeches produced a noticeable effect on his approval rating overall. In both 2021 and 2022, his approval rating remained effectively stable, shifting by only 1 percentage point in the weeks following the address. 

Rep. Juan Ciscomani speaks at a Congressional Hispanic Conference press conference on February 1.

Rep. Juan Ciscomani, who represents Arizona’s 6th District, will deliver the Republican Spanish-language response to the State of the Union address, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy announced last week in a news release.

Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders was tapped to deliver the GOP response in English.

In 2022, Ciscomani became the first Latino Republican elected to Congress from Arizona. He was born in Mexico and immigrated to the US with his family as a child, and previously worked at the Tucson Hispanic Chamber of Commerce and was a senior adviser to Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey.

McCarthy called Ciscomani “inspirational.” He said in the statement that he looks “forward to hearing his response where I know he will share with viewers Republicans’ Commitment to America to empower the American people and hold the Biden administration accountable.”

President Gerald Ford waits for the crowd to settle before starting his 1976 State of the Union address.

President Biden will deliver his second State of the Union tonight at 9 p.m. ET, and his third address to a joint session of Congress.

Tuesday’s address will be his first in front of a divided Congress, after Republicans won control of the House in November.

While all US presidents are constitutionally obligated to deliver an annual update on the state of the country to Congress, for most of American history they were delivered as written messages.

This will be the 106th time a president has delivered either address as an in-person speech before Congress.

The US Constitution requires the president to brief Congress on the state of the union. Article II, Section 3, Constitution says:

Some historical background: The idea for a State of the Union address originated from a ritual from the British monarchy. The king or queen gives a speech from the throne at the opening session of the British Parliament.

The US State of the Union address used to be known as “the President’s Annual Message to Congress.” Franklin Roosevelt titled his 1934 speech, “Annual Message to Congress on the State of the Union,” according to his papers.

According to the House Clerk’s office, the speech was informally referred to as “the State of the Union” from 1942 to 1946. It was first officially called the “State of the Union” address in 1947 under Harry Truman.

George Washington delivered the first “annual message” on Jan. 8, 1790, at Federal Hall in New York. 

Washington and his successor, John Adams, both delivered their annual messages as speeches before Congress. Thomas Jefferson, the third president, discontinued this practice in 1801, saying the elaborate, formal ceremony (which included a “president’s throne”) too closely resembled a king addressing his subjects.

Instead, Jefferson’s private secretary carried the written message to Capitol Hill, and it was read to the chamber by the Clerk of the House. The practice of written annual messages continued for 112 years. President Woodrow Wilson resumed the practice of addressing Congress in person in 1913.

Two presidents, Franklin Delano Roosevelt in 1945 and Dwight Eisenhower in 1956, sent written messages to Congress but also delivered radio addresses to the nation that summarized their congressional notes. 

World War 1 - President Woodrow Wilson addresses Congress in Washington DC 7th December 1915 during the state of the union address.. (Photo by Universal History Archive/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)

gallery

Related gallery Photos: A visual history of the State of the Union | CNN Politics

CNN’s Robert Yoon, Adam Levy and Liz Stark contributed reporting to this post.

In this file photo, Arkansas Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders answers a question while taking part in a panel discussion during a Republican Governors Association conference in November 2022.

Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders will deliver the Republican response to President Joe Biden’s State of the Union address, according to an announcement from GOP congressional leaders last week.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy announced Thursday that Sanders will give the Republican address to the nation from Little Rock, Arkansas, after the conclusion of Biden’s speech.

In a joint statement, McConnell and McCarthy both touted Sanders as a representative for a new generation of Republicans.

Sanders expressed gratitude in the statement for the opportunity to give her party’s response and “contrast the GOP’s optimistic vision for the future against the failures of President Biden and the Democrats.”

More about Huckabee Sanders: he gained national prominence when she served as White House press secretary under former President Donald Trump, but she was no stranger to politics with her father, Republican Mike Huckabee, serving as governor of Arkansas from 1996 to 2007.

Sanders worked for two years in the George W. Bush administration and later ran her father’s 2008 campaign for the Republican presidential nomination and then was campaign manager for his 2016 White House bid. She made history last year as the first woman elected as governor of Arkansas.

Within 48 hours of being sworn in as governor, Sanders signed a flurry of executive orders, with one targeting critical race theory “to prohibit indoctrination” in schools and another banning the use of the term “Latinx” in official state documents.

The Rev. Al Sharpton introduces the family of Tyre Nichols during his funeral service in Memphis, Tennessee, on Wednesday, February 1.

Paul Pelosi, Tyre Nichols’ parents, U2 star Bono, Monterey Park shooting hero Brandon Tsay, Ukraine’s ambassador to the US Oksana Markarova and a Holocaust survivor are among those headed to the US Capitol Tuesday evening where President Joe Biden is set to deliver his State of the Union address.

Biden’s remarks will both touch on key themes of his presidency and offer a preview of a 2024 reelection message. And the guest list for first lady Dr. Jill Biden’s box offers a blueprint for what to expect.

The first lady’s 26 guests represent key administration priorities and accomplishments like infrastructure, mental health, climate and health care. They also represent issues the administration has confronted in the past year: support for Ukraine in the face of Russian invasion, antisemitism, the overdose epidemic, support for same-sex marriage, increased political polarization, mass shootings, a renewed national conversation on justice in policing and women’s reproductive health.

Read more about the invited guests here.