President Trump will deliver the State of the Union address on Tuesday night at 9 p.m. Eastern time before a joint session of Congress, where he’s expected to speak about Iran, tariffs and his immigration crackdown.
Here’s what to know.
Where can I watch?
The New York Times will stream the address with live analysis from reporters. The speech will also be carried by major television networks such as ABC, NBC, FOX and CNN, and cable news channels.
Who will deliver responses?
Democrats have chosen Gov. Abigail Spanberger of Virginia to deliver their party’s response.
Ms. Spanberger, a moderate Democrat and a former undercover C.I.A. officer, has a résumé of repeatedly defeating Republican candidates in battleground districts. In 2018, she became the first Democrat in 50 years to win Virginia’s Seventh Congressional District, to the north of Richmond. Last November, she won the governor’s race by 15 points in a competitive state, becoming the first woman to assume Virginia’s governor’s office.
Ms. Spanberger said she planned to use her speech to address the issues facing Americans at a pivotal moment: “rising costs, chaos in their communities, and a real fear of what each day might bring.” For some Democrats, Ms. Spanberger’s focus on affordability and centrist branding are a winning combination for Democrats vying to retake at least one chamber of Congress in November.
The choice of Ms. Spanberger mirrored the party’s selection of Senator Elissa Slotkin of Michigan, a relatively young, centrist female lawmaker with national security credentials, to deliver its response to Mr. Trump last year. Ms. Spanberger and Ms. Slotkin were both first elected to Congress in 2018, riding a blue wave after two years of Mr. Trump’s first term and rooming together in a house on Capitol Hill.
The Spanish-language response to the speech will be delivered by Senator Alex Padilla of California, the first Latino elected to represent the state in the Senate.
Mr. Padilla, the son of Mexican immigrants, last year was shoved to the ground by federal agents and handcuffed after trying to ask Kristi Noem, the homeland security secretary, a question at a news conference in downtown Los Angeles.
Who will attend?
The White House invited the Olympic champion U.S. men’s and women’s hockey teams. The women’s team declined the invite, citing schedule conflicts. It is unclear whether any of the men will attend.
Mr. Trump has also invited families of people murdered by undocumented immigrants as part of an effort to trumpet his aggressive immigration crackdown.
For over a decade, those families have provided powerful political cover for some of Mr. Trump’s most aggressive policies, which are predicated on the idea that undocumented immigrants are responsible for violence. Mr. Trump and his supporters often point to high-profile crimes as evidence, but data shows that immigrants are less likely to commit crimes than people who are born in the United States.
Speaker Mike Johnson has invited Chinese dissident figures to highlight China’s human rights abuses. Those include the family of a Uyghur doctor, Dr. Gulshan Abbas, who has been detained by Chinese authorities since 2018, and Claire Lai, the daughter of an imprisoned Hong Kong pro-democracy media mogul, Jimmy Lai.
Some Democratic lawmakers are hosting victims of Jeffrey Epstein to focus attention on the survivors’ stories and the Justice Department’s slow release of millions of pages on the wealthy sex offender with links to Mr. Trump.
Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the minority leader, has invited Danielle Bensky, a ballerina and a victim of Mr. Epstein’s, while Representative Ro Khanna of California, who led the efforts to pass a resolution that compelled the administration to release all Epstein files, will bring Haley Robson, another victim.
Others are inviting residents from Democratic cities whose lives have been impacted by the Trump administration’s surge of immigration agents, who at times have come into violent confrontations with U.S. citizens.
Representative Ilhan Omar of Minnesota will host Aliya Rahman, a Bangladeshi American from Minneapolis, who encountered federal agents on her way to a doctors’ appointment. Despite her repeated pleas that she was disabled, immigration agents dragged her out of her vehicle after smashing the car’s windows.
Who will not attend?
Dozens of Democrats are planning to boycott Mr. Trump’s speech and attend an alternative event, a rally called the “People’s State of the Union,” which will take place on the National Mall near the Capitol.
The event, which is being coordinated by the left-wing advocacy group MoveOn and MeidasTouch, a progressive media company, will feature Democratic lawmakers speaking with people who say they’ve been hurt by Mr. Trump’s economic and health care policies, as well as federal workers who lost their jobs and immigrants who the administration has targeted.
Minho Kim reports on breaking news for The Times from Washington.
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