Joe Biden to urge Congress to unite to ‘finish the job’ in State of the Union address – live

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Lawmakers have the ability to invite guests to the State of the Union address, and the Guardian’s Edwin Rios reports relatives of Black people killed by police will be in the chamber when Joe Biden gives his speech tonight:

Families of Black people killed by police in recent years, including George Floyd’s brother and Michael Brown’s father, will attend the State of the Union address on Tuesday night alongside lawmakers advocating for urgent police reform. The push in Congress comes after the recent beating death of Tyre Nichols at the hands of Memphis police.

The release of video footage, along with the charging of several Memphis police officers involved in Nichols’s death and the firing of several employees from the Memphis police and fire departments, reignited national outcry over police brutality and calls for reforms. This includes renewed efforts to pass the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act, which was introduced after the murder of George Floyd in 2020. It was passed twice by the US House before failing to clear the Senate in 2021.

Representative Sheila Jackson-Lee plans to reintroduce the legislation after the State of the Union address and include provisions named after Tyre Nichols that would require police officers to intervene when excessive force is used. A divided Congress will make satisfying current demands even more difficult.

As is customary, a prominent Republican will deliver a speech in response to Joe Biden’s State of the Union address, and this year, current Arkansas governor and former Donald Trump press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders will do the honors.

Unsurprisingly, it will touch on economic issues, with Sanders to say, “Republicans believe in an America where strong families thrive in safe communities. Where jobs are abundant, and paychecks are rising,” according to excerpts released by the office of Mitch McConnell, the top Republican in the Senate.

“In the radical left’s America, Washington taxes you and lights your hard-earned money on fire, but you get crushed with high gas prices, empty grocery shelves, and our children are taught to hate one another on account of their race, but not to love one another or our great country.”

Sander’s speech appears to be considerably more heated than what the president plans to say, although Biden’s full speech hasn’t been made public yet. Here’s what she has to say about what could best be described as the “culture wars”:

And while you reap the consequences of their failures, the Biden administration seems more interested in woke fantasies than the hard reality Americans face every day. Most Americans simply want to live their lives in freedom and peace, but we are under attack in a left-wing culture war we didn’t start and never wanted to fight.

Every day, we are told that we must partake in their rituals, salute their flags, and worship their false idols … all while big government colludes with Big Tech to strip away the most American thing there is— your freedom of speech.

That’s not normal. It’s crazy, and it’s wrong.

This infamous scene from Donald Trump’s State of the Union address in 2020 will not be repeating itself tonight. Photograph: Jonathan Ernst/Reuters

Kevin McCarthy had another message for reporters on Monday: no drama.

“I won’t tear up the speech, I won’t play games,” he said, according to the Associated Press. Tonight’s State of the Union will be the first since 2020 where the speaker of the House is not of the same party as the president. Just after his address concluded three years ago, Democrat Nancy Pelosi shredded Republican Donald Trump’s speech while standing behind him, in full view of the cameras.

McCarthy did have one ask of Biden, the AP reports: don’t say “extreme Maga Republicans”, the term the president has used to condemn Republicans who adhere to the former president’s ideology.

“The state of the union is not great.”

That’s the line from Kevin McCarthy, the Republican House speaker who will be sitting behind Biden as he gives his address tonight. He then goes onto call for Joe Biden to sit down with the GOP to fix the country’s issues, all while insisting the Democrats can’t be trusted to run the government.

Here’s more from his interview with CNBC ahead of the speech:

'Finish the job,' Biden to declare in State of the Union speech

In his State of the Union address tonight, Joe Biden will appeal to Republicans and argue that Americans will benefit only if the two parties work together.

“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 president will say, according to excerpts released by the White House. “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!”

His speech appears set to focus heavily on the economy, with Biden noting how America has recovered more quickly from the Covid-19 pandemic than other major markets.

“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,” Biden will say. “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.”

He’ll also try to empathize with Americans as he argues that his policies have improved their lot, despite high inflation and many workers’ generally gloomy views of the economy.

“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,” the president will say.

“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.”

Joe Biden’s delivered his last State of the Union address on 1 March, 2022. Here’s a non-exhaustive list of how America has changed since then:

• Conservatives on the supreme court accomplished a goal they’d been working towards for decades by overturning Roe v Wade and allowing states to ban abortion entirely. According to the Guttmacher Institute, 12 states have now banned procedure outright or with very limited exceptions, while abortion is unavailable in two others. The Republican-appointed justices responsible for the Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision may be in the room when Biden speaks tonight.

• Democrats lost control of the House of Representatives after the midterm elections, but only by four seats, defying predictions of a “red wave” of Republican victories that would sweep decisively them out of power. Biden’s allies meanwhile gained a seat in the Senate, allowing them to exercise complete control over the chamber and ending the narrow 50-50 majority they navigated for the past two years. The president will be speaking to this new configuration tonight.

• Biden gave last year’s speech at a time when his legislative agenda appeared deadlocked by his inability to win the votes of Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema, two Democratic senators who had refused to go along with many of his demands. Months later, the lawmakers signed on to the Inflation Reduction Action, a more limited piece of legislation than the White House wanted but which nonetheless represents Washington’s first major legislation against climate change. This blog will eat its hat if Biden doesn’t mention the bill in his speech.

• Seated behind Biden tonight will be Kevin McCarthy, the speaker of the House elected after a history-making 15 rounds of balloting by his fractious Republican majority. He replaced Nancy Pelosi, who as Democratic speaker made all kinds of news during her two stints as the second-in-line to the presidency. Here’s one relevant to today: that time in 2020 when she tore up Donald Trump’s State of the Union address shortly after he finished giving it.

Biden to give State of the Union speech as 2024 decision nears

Good evening, US politics blog readers, and thanks for joining us for our coverage of Joe Biden’s annual State of the Union address. At 9 pm eastern time, the president will take the stage before Congress, supreme court justices, cabinet secretaries and guests from across the country to make the case that things are looking up for the United States. But as the Guardian’s Lauren Gambino and Joan E Greve reported earlier today, many Americans hold gloomy impressions about the state of the nation – just look at the mere 21% who have a positive view of economic conditions. Looming over Biden’s speech is the big question the president has yet to answer: will he run for a second term in 2024? Don’t expect an answer tonight, but it’s possible he’ll give hints of which way he’s leaning.

But first, a rundown of what happened today so far:

• Federal Reserve boss Jerome Powell said the central bank may have to keep raising interest rates to fight inflation, a decision with effects that will ripple across the country and into Americans’ bank accounts.

• Dozens of George Santos’ constituents traveled to the Capitol from suburban New York City to demand he resign for lying his way into Congress.

• Republican House speaker Kevin McCarthy has reiterated his demand that Biden agree to cut spending in exchange for increasing the debt ceiling, a vital piece of business Congress must agree to do in the coming months.