U2 LEAD SINGER Bono is set to attend the US State of the Union address tonight. 

The White House earlier today announced the guests of First Lady Jill Biden for the speech.

These include Ukraine’s ambassador, Oksana Markarova and Bono.

Other guests include Brandon Tsay, the 26-year-old man who disarmed the gunman in a January mass shooting in California, and RowVaughn and Rodney Wells, the parents of Tyre Nichols, a man whose death after a prolonged police beating in Memphis, Tennessee, shocked the nation.

On 17 April 2019, Bono was among those in the Dáil to hear then Speaker of the US House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi speak. 

The State of the Union is an annual address delivered by the US President to Congress. It typically happens at the beginning of the year, and the President gives their administration’s views on the state of the nation and plans for legislation. 

US President Joe Biden’s speech tonight comes as the nation struggles to make sense of confounding cross-currents at home and abroad — economic uncertainty, a wearying war in Ukraine, growing tensions with China among them.

The setting for Biden’s speech will be markedly different than a year ago, when it was Pelosi seated behind him as speaker.

She’s been replaced by GOP House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, and it’s unclear what kind of reception restive Republicans will give the Democratic president.

McCarthy yesterday vowed to be “respectful” during the address and said he asked Biden to refrain from using the phrase “extreme MAGA Republicans”‘ which he deployed on the campaign trail in 2022.

Arkansas governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders, who gained a national profile as Trump’s press secretary, was set to deliver the Republican response to Biden’s speech.

Senior White House adviser Anita Dunn will preview broad themes of Biden’s address to Democratic lawmakers throughout the day today, starting with a breakfast with House Democrats on Capitol Hill.

McCarthy called on Biden to embrace the Republican effort to put the nation’s finances on a path toward a balanced budget, which would require deep and politically unpopular reductions in federal spending that Biden and Democrats have vehemently resisted.

With reporting by Press Association and © AFP 2023