Listed here are Jill Biden’s visitors to tonight’s mendacity dog-faced pony present.
WASHINGTON, D.C. – First Woman Jill Biden will welcome visitors to affix her within the viewing field for President Biden’s State of the Union Deal with on Thursday, March 7, 2024. Every of those people had been invited by the White Home as a result of they personify points or themes to be addressed by the President in his speech, or they embody the Biden-Harris Administration’s insurance policies at work for the American folks. The Second Gentleman, Mr. Douglas Emhoff, will even be part of the First Woman within the viewing field.
The next people, listed in alphabetical order, shall be seated within the field with the First Woman and Second Gentleman:
Latorya Beasley (Birmingham, Alabama)
Beasley and her husband had their first baby via in vitro fertilization (IVF) in 2022 and had been within the means of increasing their household via one other spherical of IVF when her embryo switch was abruptly canceled on account of the current Alabama Supreme Courtroom resolution. Her current expertise is one more instance of how the overturning of Roe v. Wade has disrupted entry to reproductive well being care for ladies and households throughout the nation.
Kris Blackley (Fort Mill, South Carolina)
Blackley is an oncology nurse and the Director of Affected person Navigation for the Atrium Well being Levine Most cancers Institute, a part of Advocate Well being. She has revealed analysis associated to affected person navigation displaying improved outcomes, together with decreased readmissions, elevated remedy compliance, and fairness in care. In 2023, the Biden Most cancers Moonshot introduced new actions to develop entry to affected person navigation companies — companies that assist information people, caregivers, and households via most cancers screening, prognosis, remedy, and survivorship. In February 2023, the First Woman visited Atrium Well being, the place Blackley shared how the well being system plans to convey affected person navigation companies to extra most cancers sufferers and their family members on account of the Biden-Harris Administration’s actions.
Jazmin Cazares (Uvalde, Texas)
Cazares is a number one advocate for gun violence prevention on the state and nationwide degree. After her sister Jackie was killed within the taking pictures at Robb Elementary in Uvalde, Texas, Cazares spent her senior 12 months of highschool touring throughout the nation and sharing Jackie’s story. She spoke alongside March for Our Lives leaders on the Texas State Capitol and testified earlier than lawmakers to advocate for tighter background checks and excessive danger safety order legal guidelines. In 2023, Cazares was honored by the First Woman through the first-ever “Girls Leading Change” celebration on the White Home.
Kate Cox (Dallas, Texas)
Cox is a mom of two from Texas who has skilled the devastating penalties of state abortion bans and courageously spoke out about her expertise looking for the care she wanted to protect her well being. Cox is among the first girls in 50 years to have to show to the courts to ask permission to obtain the abortion that her physician really useful. She was in the end pressured to journey out of state for care that she would have been capable of obtain if the protections of Roe v. Wade had been nonetheless in impact.
Samantha Ervin-Upsher (Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania)
Ervin-Upsher is an apprentice with the United Brotherhood of Carpenters Native 432 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. She is 23 years outdated and a mom of two. In 2023, Ervin-Upsher met the First Woman throughout a go to to Pennsylvania to focus on the Investing in America Workforce Hub in Pittsburgh, an initiative that seeks to construct profession pathways via excessive colleges, group schools, and unions to job alternatives fueled by President’s Biden’s investments.
Shawn Fain (Metro Detroit, Michigan)
Fain is a 29-year member and the present President of the United Auto Employees (UAW). Hailing from a household of UAW members, Fain received his begin with UAW Native Union 1166 as an electrician for Chrysler on the Kokomo Casting Plant in his hometown of Kokomo, Indiana. In September 2023, President Biden joined Fain and UAW employees on the picket line in Belleville, Michigan, making historical past as the primary sitting President to affix a picket line. After hard-fought negotiations and a “Stand-Up” strike that impressed employees throughout the nation, the UAW gained historic pay will increase, better retirement safety, extra paid go away, and extra dignity and respect. Their efforts additionally yielded job safety commitments from Normal Motors, Ford, and Stellantis, together with a dedication from Stellantis to convey 1000’s of good-paying UAW jobs again to Belvidere, Illinois. The UAW’s historic contract instantly led non-union automakers to announce double digit pay raises for his or her U.S. employees – including additional proof that when unions do effectively, all employees do effectively.
Bettie Mae Fikes (Selma, Alabama)
Fikes is an American singer and civil rights advocate who was a Bloody Sunday Foot Soldier in Selma, Alabama in 1965. Often known as “The Voice of Selma,” Fikes served as a member of Selma’s Pupil Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) Freedom Singers. She has carried out at Carnegie Corridor, Newport Jazz Pageant, the Library of Congress, and was featured within the Smithsonian Institute’s Museum of Tolerance exhibition honoring girls of the Civil Rights Motion. In 2023, Fikes joined President Biden to commemorate the 58th anniversary of Bloody Sunday in Selma, Alabama. This 12 months’s State of the Union Deal with falls on the 59th anniversary of Bloody Sunday.
Steven Hadfield (Matthews, North Carolina)
Hadfield has a uncommon blood most cancers and is diabetic—two circumstances that require very costly medication, together with a drug that was chosen for the primary spherical of Medicare drug worth negotiation. He held a number of part-time positions as a result of he feared that, if he retired, he wouldn’t have adequate revenue to pay for the medication he wants to remain alive. The drug that treats his uncommon blood most cancers prices about $15,000 a month. On high of that, his insulin prices him as much as $400 each month. Now, because of the Inflation Discount Act, Medicare covers his insulin prescriptions with a $35 copay cap per 30 days. And for his blood most cancers medicines, this 12 months, his Half D out-of-pocket drug prices are capped at about $3,500 and in 2025, he’ll profit much more from the $2,000 annual cap on out-of-pocket drug prices.
Mayor Garnett L. Johnson (Augusta, Georgia)
Johnson is the Mayor of the Metropolis of Augusta, Georgia. In 2023, Augusta was designated by the White Home as one in every of 5 Investing in America Workforce Hubs, the place President Biden’s agenda — together with the American Rescue Plan, Bipartisan Infrastructure Legislation, CHIPS and Science Act, and Inflation Discount Act — is driving historic investments and creating good-paying jobs. The Augusta Workforce Hub is led by a partnership between Mayor Johnson and three Augusta regional training establishments centered on coaching college students in rising sectors, similar to superior manufacturing and building expert trades, to organize the following technology for technical jobs within the area. The First Woman was final in Augusta in July and November 2023, to satisfy with Mayor Johnson and spotlight how the local people is working collectively to develop pathways to careers.
Keenan Jones (Plymouth, Minnesota)
Jones is a public center college educator in Minnesota’s Twin Cities and a member of Training Minnesota. In April 2023, Jones wrote an e mail to President Biden to thank him for the Public Service Mortgage Forgiveness Program, which eradicated his remaining scholar mortgage debt after 10 years of public service and allowed him to proceed his educating profession. Jones is among the almost 800,000 academics, nurses, social employees, servicemembers, and different public servants who’ve acquired scholar mortgage debt forgiveness for the reason that begin of the Biden-Harris Administration.
Natalie King (Detroit, Michigan)
King is the founder and CEO of Dunamis Cost, the first-ever African American women-owned electrical automobile charger manufacturing firm in america. Her firm employs over 135 employees and is on observe to fabricate 400,000 electrical automobile chargers by 2025. In March 2023, King launched President Biden on the Small Enterprise Administration’s Ladies’s Enterprise Summit, the place she shared that the Administration’s investments in clear vitality and small enterprise house owners helped her enterprise thrive all through the pandemic.
Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson of Sweden
Kristersson is the Prime Minister of Sweden. Sweden is formally becoming a member of the NATO Alliance on March 7, 2024, changing into the thirty second Ally. Sweden is a powerful democracy with a extremely succesful army that shares our values and imaginative and prescient for the world. Having Sweden as a NATO Ally will make america and our Allies even safer. NATO is essentially the most highly effective defensive alliance within the historical past of the world, and it’s as vital as we speak to making sure the safety of our residents because it was 75 years in the past when our Alliance was based out of the wreckage of World Battle II.
Governor Stephen Roe Lewis (Gu-u-Ki, Sacaton, Arizona)
Lewis is serving in his fourth time period as governor of the Gila River Indian Group. Underneath his management, he has prioritized bringing revolutionary options to long-term points confronted by the Group and Indian Nation. In partnership with the Biden-Harris Administration, Governor Lewis has revolutionized how Tribal governmental infrastructure is constructed, which led to the completion of the primary new colleges on the Reservation in over 100 years and the primary solar-over-canal undertaking within the Western Hemisphere.
Commander Shelby Nikitin (Wakefield, Massachusetts)
Commander Nikitin is an officer within the U.S. Navy and not too long ago accomplished her command tour onboard the usTHOMAS HUDNER. Underneath her management, the ship deployed to guard maritime transport from unlawful, harmful, and destabilizing Houthi assaults in opposition to vessels transiting the Purple Sea. For her ship’s actions on this fight zone, Commander Nikitin was awarded the Bronze Star for her extraordinary management and bravado in defending lives and defending the free circulate of commerce in one of many world’s most important waterways.
Justin Phillips (Indianapolis, Indiana)
Phillips is the founder and Chief Govt Officer of Overdose Lifeline, a non-profit devoted to decreasing the stigma of substance use dysfunction and stopping deaths ensuing from opioid and fentanyl overdose. Since beginning Overdose Lifeline, Phillips has led the group via program enlargement to satisfy the rising wants of the inhabitants. Phillips labored to cross “Aaron’s Law” in Indiana and focuses her advocacy on increasing entry to overdose prevention medicines. Aaron’s Legislation permits people entry to Narcan with out a prescription, thus eliminating limitations to receiving the drug and utilizing it to avoid wasting lives. The Second Gentleman met Phillips and her daughter, Audrey, in 2023 at an occasion commemorating Worldwide Overdose Consciousness Day, the place the Administration introduced extra federal funds to fight unintended overdoses. Phillips is a particular visitor of Second Gentleman Douglas Emhoff.
Kameryn Pupunu (Lahaina, Hawaii)
Pupunu is a police officer for the county of Maui the place he has served for the final 5 years. In August 2023, his hometown of Lahaina was engulfed in flames throughout one of the deadliest wildfires in U.S historical past. Pupunu was one of many many native police officers who carried out heroic acts, together with saving 15 people, from this lethal wildfire. Tragically, Pupunu misplaced 4 of his fast relations to those fires.
Maria Shriver (Los Angeles, California)
Shriver is an writer, journalist, and founding father of the Ladies’s Alzheimer’s Motion and Strategic Advisor on Ladies’s Well being and Alzheimer’s at Cleveland Clinic. Shriver works to make use of her voice and platforms to advance a few of our nation’s most urgent points affecting girls and ladies’s well being. In November 2023, Shriver joined the President and the First Woman to announce the first-ever White Home Initiative on Ladies’s Well being Analysis, an effort led by Dr. Biden and the White Home Gender Coverage Council, to provoke the federal authorities and the personal and philanthropic sectors to spur innovation, unleash transformative funding to shut analysis gaps, and enhance girls’s well being. Shriver’s advocacy has been integral to the initiative and he or she continues to advise and collaborate with Dr. Biden.
Daybreak Simms (Davis Junction, Illinois)
Simms has been a member of the United Auto Employees (UAW) Native 1268 for greater than twenty years. She’s a third-generation autoworker on at Belvidere Meeting (IL), the place she began work in 1999. When Stellantis idled Belvidere Meeting in February 2023, Simms’ son was in the midst of his sophomore 12 months in highschool and compelled her into an not possible resolution: lose her job or relocate to a different plant far-off from her residence (and both transfer her son or go away him in Illinois). Due to the energy and the solidarity of the UAW members, the UAW-Large Three contract secured a dedication from Stellantis to reopen Belvidere Meeting and convey 1000’s of good-paying middle-class jobs again to Belvidere, stabilizing her household’s future. At this time, she is gainfully employed at Stellantis’ auto distribution middle in Belvidere. In November 2023, Simms joined President Biden in Belvidere to focus on the reopening of the meeting plant and the return of 1000’s of good-paying UAW jobs.
Rashawn Spivey (Milwaukee, Wisconsin)
Spivey is the founder and proprietor of Hero Plumbing in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. His resolution to develop into a plumber was impressed by his mom, who labored for one of many first Black-owned plumbing companies in Wisconsin. After graduating from a plumbing program at Milwaukee Space Technical Faculty and finishing an apprenticeship with Plumbers Native 75, help from his native union enabled Spivey to launch his personal plumbing enterprise. Spurred by investments from the Biden-Harris Administration, Spivey expanded his plumbing enterprise to concentrate on lead pipe replacements. Spivey and his group have changed greater than 825 poisonous lead pipes, primarily at native daycare facilities, to make sure safer ingesting water for his group and shield kids from lead poisoning. Via historic ranges of funding from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Legislation and the American Rescue Plan, the Biden-Harris Administration is working to switch each lead pipe in America within the subsequent decade.
Tiffany Zoeller (Fayetteville, North Carolina)
Zoeller is a army partner and works as a medical coder at Fort Liberty’s Womack Military Medical Heart. In June 2023, Zoeller launched the President at Fort Liberty to announce the Presidential Govt Order on Advancing Financial Safety for Navy and Veteran Spouses, Navy Caregivers, and Survivors. This Govt Order is essentially the most complete set of administrative actions any President has ever taken to help army spouses, and included almost 20 new actions geared toward enhancing army partner profession stability, employment assets, and profession transition help. The First Woman, via her Becoming a member of Forces initiative, has labored to get rid of limitations to employment and enhance financial alternative for army and veteran households, caregivers, and survivors.
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