State of the Union - live: Women wear white in powerful message as Trump vows to ban late-term abortion
Follow the latest updates as Mr Trump prepares to deliver his second State of the Union address to a divided Congress
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Your support makes all the difference.Donald Trump is delivering the second State of the Union address of his presidency, where he has the opportunity to lay out his vision for the last two years of his first term in office and beyond.
With a damaging and politically contentious 35-day government shutdown having just ended in Washington, the president stands before a joint session in the House chamber — where is expected to make sweeping calls for unity in a time of dramatic division and to promote lofty efforts like the eradication of HIV by 2030.
But, Mr Trump’s audience in the House chamber will be noticeably different from his address last year. Flanked behind him and to his left will sit Democrat House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who proved to be a formidable political foil to Mr Trump during those shutdown negotiations last month after her party took control of the lower chamber during the 2018 midterm elections.
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Rep. Ilhan Omar, a Minnesotan Democrat, said she will be wearing "suffragette white" to the State of the Union address in honor of "women's rights and equal pay."
Iowa Rep. Steve King is attempting to distance himself from his white supremacist label by inviting Lynnette Hardaway and Rochelle Richardson, known online as Diamond & Silk, as his guests for the State of the Union address.
Per ABC, Mr Trump told his supporters that about 40 to 50 per cent of his speech will focus on foreign policy. An attendee said that chief of staff Mick Mulvaney said "nobody cares," when asked if the deficit will be discussed in the State of the Union address tonight.
In other Trump news, the former mayor of Moscow has confirmed the US president met with officials in Russia in the 1990s to discuss a possible building project after archival footage of the meeting was posted online.
The video, allegedly aired by Russian state television in 1995, shows the US president meeting with members of the former mayor’s administration.
The State of the Union is one of the highest profile opportunities for the president to put forward his message — but also for those opposed to him to register symbolic opposition.
In addition to the various guests who will be in attendance, many women will be wearing white.
Here's our explainer on why:
A guest of Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi will be celebrity chef José Andrés, who helped to feed furloughed federal employees during the government shutdown earlier this year.
Here is our write up on why Chef Andrés has been chosen to attend tonight's State of the Union.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer has already rejected Donald Trump's likely claim this evening that the state of the union is "strong".
Mr Schumer said on the Senate floor that the Trump administration is in chaos, even if the president paints a rosy picture of the US as a whole.
"The President will say the state of our union is strong but the American people know the state of the Trump Administration is in chaos," Mr Schumer said.
Here is a nice thread from Chef Andrés explaining why he is attending tonight's State of the Union:
Donald Trump is trying to drum up the excitement around tonight's State of the Union by claiming he has good support from the American people.
He has tweeted a Drudge Report headline claiming he has 48 per cent approval. That's quite a bit higher than his aggregate score, which gives him closer to 41 per cent approval, according to Real Clear Politics.
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