The State of the Union, a scripted opportunity for the president to address a joint session of Congress and the American public, has been punctuated by unscripted moments.
In 2024, President Biden exclaimed that he was ready for a second term. He dropped out of the race later that year. Four years earlier, Speaker Nancy Pelosi, wearing suffragist white, ripped up a copy of the speech President Trump had just delivered. In 2010, Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. appeared to mouth the words “not true” during President Obama’s speech.
So we have to be ready for anything. On Tuesday night, more than 50 New York Times journalists will cover the event, including two reporters and four photographers inside the House chamber, where the president will speak.
The editor at the center of that huge effort is Elizabeth Kennedy, who leads the White House team for The Times. She joined The Times in 2021 after moving to Washington in 2017 as a deputy bureau chief for The Associated Press. Before that, she was a foreign correspondent and bureau chief for The A.P. in Africa, the Middle East and Asia. So she knows how to handle herself in tense situations.
With that in mind, we asked her how the team prepares for the State of the Union. These are edited excerpts from our conversation.
How far in advance do you get copies of the speech? And how much can you rely on that for a leader like President Trump, who often goes off script?
It depends on the year and the president. Sometimes we get a copy of the speech just minutes before the president delivers it. By then, we really have our eyes on the president instead of on a printout. One focus will be whether he stays on script and focuses on the economy and affordability.
How do you decide what’s most important?
We are looking for things that surprise us or shed new light on the president’s thinking or his priorities. President Trump is delivering this speech at an interesting time — the midterms are coming up, his poll numbers are down and there are plenty of questions about how he’s balancing domestic policy concerns (like the economy) with foreign entanglements in Iran and Venezuela. And the Supreme Court just handed him a big loss on tariffs, which will be fresh in his mind. He was furious about that ruling, and members of the court will be sitting in the audience, staring right at him. Trump also goes off script all the time. So it’s hard to know exactly what to expect.
Are there things you know that we’ll skip? Some readers wonder about our choices.
I don’t go in with any preconceived ideas about what we would skip, no. I think sometimes there is an inclination to plan out every little thing before the event happens because we are under so much time pressure. But we have to stay nimble and move with the news.
Along those lines, can you think of a past example from for a big speech?
There are always moments where you have to stay on your toes — in 2020, Trump gave his address to Congress soon after he was impeached by the House. That was the year Nancy Pelosi ripped up her copy of his speech as the cameras rolled.
Theatrics have become more common during these types of events, going back to the “You lie” moment during a speech to a joint session of Congress during President Obama’s first term. There have been boos and chants of “U.S.A.!” Democratic congresswomen wearing white. How do we think about capturing the full spectacle?
These theatrics have become a part of what the State of the Union is. We assign a reporter to capture the “scene” in the room, which often says a lot about the politics of the moment. It can be hard for people watching at home to see or feel the vibe in the chamber, which is why we try to have a piece focused just on that aspect.
Talk to us about live fact-checking. Who is on that team, and what are they looking for?
For the State of the Union, we assemble a group of beat reporters who know the issues in detail and have all this knowledge at their fingertips. It’s amazing to watch them work so quickly, laying out what’s right, wrong and what’s exaggerated.
How did you approach this kind of big planned event earlier in your career, when you were a reporter? Has your view changed?
I spent so much of my career as a foreign correspondent but the fundamentals of covering a big speech like this are the same. You have to be fast and accurate and capture the big themes in real time. But you also have to add value through expertise to get at what it all means. It would be very hard to parachute into this kind of story without a really strong background.
Do you ever second-guess yourself about a judgment call?
Of course! But that’s why our setup for covering the State of the Union is so great. Only a few reporters can actually be in the chamber during the speech. The rest of us, including the Washington bureau chief (Richard W. Stevenson), gather in a huge conference room where we watch it on a big screen. We are all talking about what we’re seeing and making decisions in real time.
Mike Abrams is the deputy editor for Trust, working to help readers understand The Times and its journalistic values.
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