January 23, 2019

Pelosi Officially Disinvites Trump From Giving State of the Union Address

Hours later, the president finally conceded and said he’d deliver the address after the government reopened.

Roll Call/AP

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Update, 1/24, 7:20 a.m. EST: Late Wednesday, President Trump said that he would concede to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and deliver the State of the Union after the government reopens. 

Update, 2:37 p.m. EST: House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said that she would not allow a vote on a resolution for the State of the Union, effectively barring President Trump from delivering his address in the US House chamber.

Previously:

It took an entire week, but on Wednesday, President Donald Trump finally responded to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s recommendation to postpone the State of the Union address until after the government reopens, saying that he would deliver the speech as originally planned in the chamber of the US House.

Trump claimed that after speaking to officials at the Defense Department and the Secret Service, he concluded that Pelosi’s security concerns due to the partial government shutdown were unfounded. “Therefore I will be honoring your invitation, and fulfilling my Constitutional duty, to deliver important information to the people and Congress of the United States of America regarding the State of our Union,” Trump wrote in the letter.

“It would be so very sad for our Country if the State of the Union were not delivered on time, on schedule, and very importantly, on location!”

This is a breaking news post. We will update as more information becomes available.

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In "News Never Pays," our fearless CEO, Monika Bauerlein, connects the dots on several concerning media trends that, taken together, expose the fallacy behind the tragic state of journalism right now: That the marketplace will take care of providing the free and independent press citizens in a democracy need, and the Next New Thing to invest millions in will fix the problem. Bottom line: Journalism that serves the people needs the support of the people. That's the Next New Thing.

And it's what MoJo and our community of readers have been doing for 47 years now.

But staying afloat is harder than ever.

In "This Is Not a Crisis. It's The New Normal," we explain, as matter-of-factly as we can, what exactly our finances look like, why this moment is particularly urgent, and how we can best communicate that without screaming OMG PLEASE HELP over and over. We also touch on our history and how our nonprofit model makes Mother Jones different than most of the news out there: Letting us go deep, focus on underreported beats, and bring unique perspectives to the day's news.

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