President Joe Biden to address nation in 2024 State of the Union | AP News

In her State of the Union response, Sen. Katie Britt will argue that it costs too much to be American — and the fault rests with Biden.

“Hardworking families are struggling to make ends meet today,” Britt will say, according to released excerpts. “And with soaring mortgage rates and sky-high childcare costs, they’re also struggling to plan for tomorrow.”

Polling suggests that the majority of the people disapprove of Biden’s economic leadership. But what’s not clear is how Republican policies would tame mortgage rates, which are influenced by the Federal Reserve. There is a bipartisan bill to expand the child tax credit and help families, but it’s stalled in the Senate due to Republican objections.

Television cameras will pan across the chamber during the State of the Union, so you’ll have a clear view of everyone in the audience too. This is a chance for lawmakers and guests to send a message of their own with their clothing.

Democratic women wore white, the color of the women’s suffrage movement, during Trump’s State of the Union in 2019. In 2022, some lawmakers wore blue and yellow ribbons to show their support for Ukraine. (The country’s ambassador to the United States, Oksana Markarova, was a guest as well.)

The Alabama Senator will say the “country we know and love seems to be slipping away. It feels like the next generation will have fewer opportunities — and less freedom — than we did. I worry my own children may not even get a shot at living their American Dreams.” That’s according to a released excerpt of her prepared remarks.

She’ll also talk about the border, a huge political issue for Republicans. “President Biden inherited the most secure border of all-time. We know that President Biden didn’t just create this border crisis. He invited it with 94 executive actions in his first 100 days. … President Biden’s border crisis is a disgrace. It’s despicable. And it’s almost entirely preventable.”

The president’s address has a not-so-veiled dig at his predecessor and likely competitor for being old and vindictive.

Excerpts of the speech have Biden saying he was taught “to embrace freedom and democracy,” but, “now some other people my age see a different story: an American story of resentment, revenge, and retribution. That’s not me.”

How does a speechwriter learn to adopt someone else’s voice — especially when that person is the president of the United States?

It starts with a lot of listening. Studying. Learning how he uses language and frames arguments. Gaining a deeper understanding of his worldview, and essentially becoming a mirror of the president himself.

“You can try to find the right words,” said Dan Cluchey, a former speechwriter for President Joe Biden. “But ultimately, your job is to ensure that when the speech is done, that it has a reflection of the speaker.”

The annual State of the Union puts a spotlight on presidential speechwriters like no other, and past speechwriters delved into how they do their craft.

▶ Read more about how speechwriters tackle the State of the Union.

President Joe Biden plans to say in the State of the Union that he came to the White House during “one of the toughest periods in our nation’s history” and “the American people are writing the greatest comeback story never told.”

That speech excerpt released from the White House gets at one of Biden’s major frustrations. He feels as though the country doesn’t fully know about his infrastructure investments, support for high-tech factories and funding for renewable energy development. He’s betting that tonight’s speech is a chance for the public to really hear those stories for the first time.

He’s expected to say, according to excerpts of his remarks, that “clearly those bragging about overturning Roe v. Wade have no clue about the power of women in America.”

“But they found out when reproductive freedom was on the ballot and won in 2022, 2023, and they will find out again in 2024. If Americans send me a Congress that supports the right to choose I promise you: I will restore Roe v. Wade as the law of the land again.”

Biden, of course, could vary how he gives the address.

Biden is expected to say that he rejects “an American story of resentment, revenge” framing the likely rematch with Donald Trump.

▶ Read the full excerpts from tonight’s address.

By custom, at least one Cabinet member does not attend the speech in order to preserve the Constitutional line of succession in the event of a catastrophe.

Last year, that fell to then-Labor Secretary Marty Walsh. In 2022, the duty was assigned to Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo.

We’ll know who this year’s chosen one is later on tonight.

Timed to today’s State of the Union, the ad features footage of Biden’s halting answers and verbal stumbles, as well as footage of him tripping at an event and while walking up the stairs of Air Force One.

“If Biden wins, can he even survive ’til 2029?” asks a narrator. “The real question is: Can we?” he goes on before the ad cuts to footage of Vice President Kamala Harris laughing.

Titled “Jugular” in response to reports that Biden has been pushing his campaign to embrace a more aggressive strategy, the ad began airing Thursday morning on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” a program Biden is known to watch. It will run nationally on other news channels through Friday morning.

Biden is 81 and polls show that his age is a top concern, even among Democratic voters. Trump is not all that much younger at 77.

You might think that everything about the State of the Union is scripted, but that’s not the case. Even in a tightly controlled environment, it’s still possible that someone could stage an interruption.

Biden has been shadowed around the country by protests over his support for Israel’s war in Gaza. Activists have also planned a demonstration in Lafayette Square near the White House before the speech.

For his first address on Dec. 8, 1801, Thomas Jefferson sent written copies to both houses of Congress to be read by each chamber’s clerks.

Calvin Coolidge delivered the first speech broadcast on radio in 1923. Harry Truman’s address in 1947 was the first broadcast on television. George W. Bush’s 2002 speech was the first available as a live webcast on the White House website.

President Joe Biden will announce during the speech tonight that he will direct the U.S. military to help set up a temporary port off the Gaza coast. It will open a sea route for food and other aid for desperate Palestinian civilians trapped in the Israel-Hamas war. That’s according to senior administration officials who spoke to The Associated Press.

Democrats, including some of his closest allies, have become increasingly vocal about the need for the U.S. to act directly to ease civilian suffering in Gaza. Sen. Chris Van Hollen, a Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, told The Associated Press that he will be looking for the president to give a forceful message on the need to get humanitarian aid into Gaza.

“Obviously [Biden] is going to talk about domestic issues. He’s going to talk about Ukraine. He’s going to talk about the awful attacks of October 7, as he should and Israel’s right to self defense,” the Maryland lawmaker said. “But I also think he should couple all of that with a clear message that the United States will not stand by and tolerate people starving to death.”

President Joe Biden will focus tonight on areas that he and White House aides believe broadly unify the country. It’s an implicit nod to moderate Republicans and swing voters whom the president hopes will find a home in his political coalition.

In his speech, Biden will make an explicit appeal to the divided Congress for his “unity agenda,” which covers broadly popular initiatives such as dealing with the mental health epidemic, curbing opioid abuse, aiding veterans and improving cancer care, according to White House officials who spoke to The Associated Press ahead of the speech.

It’ll come under one broad umbrella theme — that Biden is a president for all Americans.

“Stopping fentanyl at the border, passing privacy legislation to protect children online, keeping our sacred obligation to veterans and ending cancer as we know it are priorities for everyone without regard to party,” White House deputy chief of staff Bruce Reed told the AP.

After the president delivers his speech, the Republicans respond. This year, that duty falls to Sen. Katie Britt, an Alabama senator who has become deeply involved in the state’s battle over IVF.

The Alabama Supreme Court ruled frozen embryos can be considered children under state law, a decision that has threatened fertility clinics in the state. Britt called Republican front-runner Donald Trump to tell him that the party should embrace IVF.

Republicans are struggling to find their political footing following the overturning of abortion protections by the Supreme Court, particularly as the ripple effects of the decision grow.

Within hours of their conversation, Trump issued a statement that said he would “strongly support” the availability of IVF.

Britt is 42. She was elected to the Senate in 2022. Britt has called herself a “mama on a mission” to get things done in Washington.

This is a new-ish feature. It first went up after the Jan. 6, 2021, violent riot at the Capitol, when Trump supporters stormed the building and tried to disrupt the certification of Joe Biden’s victory. The fence stayed up for months out of security concerns. It was eventually taken down, but it goes back up temporarily for major events.

Just hours ahead of the State of the Union address, the House easily passed the “Laken Riley Act” with all Republicans and 37 Democrats.

The legislation, named after the 22-year-old Georgia nursing student who was killed late last month, would require the administration to detain unauthorized migrants who are accused of theft. But the nine-page bill was designed more to deliver a political point than to enact law and had little chance of being taken up in the Democratic-controlled Senate.

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, far-right Republican of Georgia, was handing out pins with Riley’s name for lawmakers to wear during the address.

However, Biden is also expected to scold Republicans for rejecting a bipartisan Senate proposal on border security last month. It would have overhauled the U.S. asylum system with faster and tougher enforcement, but Donald Trump derided the proposal as insufficient, and it was swiftly dismissed by Republicans.

▶ Read more about the Laken Riley Act.

Trump “will be doing a LIVE, Play by Play, of Crooked Joe Biden’s State of the Union Address,” he wrote on his Truth Social platform.

“I will correct, in rapid response, any and all inaccurate Statements, especially pertaining to the Border and his Weaponization of the DOJ, FBI, A.G.s, and District Attorneys, to go after his Political Opponent, ME (something never done before in this Country!)”

Trump has also been pushing Biden to agree to debates after their respective Super Tuesday wins.

There are more than just lawmakers and top officials at the Capitol for the speech. Politicians bring guests to the gallery to put a face to issues they want to highlight.

The most high-profile guests are invited by the White House and are often recognized during the president’s speech. Biden is eager to demonstrate how the U.S. Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade has limited reproductive rights. And Kate Cox will be sitting with the first lady. She’s a Texas woman who was unable to get an abortion in her home state even though her health was in danger and her baby had a fatal condition.

House Speaker Mike Johnson invited the parents of Evan Gershkovich, a Wall Street Journal reporter imprisoned in Russia. He’s also leaning into border politics and bringing two NYPD members — a lieutenant and an officer — who were attacked by migrants in Times Square.

▶ Read more about the guests for tonight’s address.

The atmosphere in the Capitol might seem a little frosty during tonight’s speech, after months of conflict between Biden and the House GOP. And Americans don’t have a lot of confidence that Biden will be able to work successfully with congressional Republicans going forward.

According to a new AP-NORC poll, about half (52%) of Americans have “hardly any confidence at all” in Biden’s ability to work with Republicans in Congress, while 35% have “only some confidence” and 12% have “a great deal of confidence.”

Views of Biden’s ability to work with his own party in Congress aren’t overwhelmingly positive either: 34% have a great deal of confidence, 36% have only some confidence and 30% have hardly any confidence at all.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, given their skepticism about the success of Biden’s relationship with one of the governing parties in Congress, nearly half of Americans have hardly any confidence in Biden’s ability to accomplish major policy goals (47%) or effectively manage government spending (51%).

President Joe Biden’s State of the Union Address is going to take the form of an on-the-job interview this year, as the president seeks reelection and tries to quell voter concerns over his age and job performance.

Thursday will be his third State of the Union address. It’s delivered from the House Rostrum.

The stakes are substantially higher than previous years, as the nation’s oldest president uses one of the few remaining political events that is broadly watched to sell his second-term vision to a dispirited electorate that broadly believes he’s not up to the task of the presidency.

He is also going to sharpen the contrast with his predecessor and all-but-certain 2024 rival, Donald Trump.