No State of the Union for U.S. Rep. Gabe Amo

When President Donald Trump gives his first State of the Union address of his second term before a joint session of Congress next Tuesday night, Rhode Island’s Democratic U.S. Rep. Gabe Amo will not be there.

The 1st Congressional District representative instead plans to be at his desk in his Washington D.C. office, working.

“If I can continue to focus on Rhode Islanders rather than listen to lies, that’s what I’m going to be doing,” Amo told Rhode Island Current and a WJAR camera operator, the only two news outlets that attended his press conference Thursday morning in his Providence office. “I can always read a summary of it or maybe ChatGPT can help me with that.”

The State of the Union is typically given in January or February and serves as a reflection of the past year and the president’s agenda. Trump, who was inaugurated for his second nonconsecutive term on Jan. 20, 2025, delivered “a joint address to Congress” on March 4, 2025. The address saw scattered Democratic protests, including walkouts and an interruption by Rep. Al Green of Texas, who waved his cane during the speech.

But rather than disrupt the 2026 speech, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries advised Democratic lawmakers to either attend it in “silent defiance” or skip it entirely.

Amo attended Trump’s address last March. But Rhode Island’s Democratic U.S. Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse skipped the speech and intends to sit this year’s speech out too.

“After the crimes of January 6, Senator Whitehouse has not attended Trump’s inauguration or State of the Union and has no intention of doing so,” Meaghan McCabe, a spokesperson for Whitehouse’s office, said in an email to Rhode Island Current Thursday.

Whether U.S. Rep. Seth Magaziner will attend the State of the Union will be reveled early next week, office spokesperson Noah Boucher said in an email Friday. U.S. Sen. Jack Reed’s office on Friday did not say whether he would attend the president’s speech.

Guest list

Although Amo won’t be there, he will have a guest in the House gallery: Erin Spaulding, executive director for Connecting for Children and Families in Woonsocket.

The nonprofit specializes in offering family support services to the community, including a food pantry that saw a surge in use after federal food benefits were halted last November during the government shutdown.

“It’s essential that when Donald Trump scans the galleries, he sees someone who is working on behalf of Rhode Islanders,” Amo said.

Spaulding could not immediately be reached for comment Thursday. 

Whitehouse’s guest of honor is Thomas Kilday, an apprentice electrician and member of IBEW Local 99 whose work had to pause due to the Trump administration’s stop work orders on Revolution Wind. 

Kilday, a high-voltage technician, had just boarded an installation vessel headed out to run high-voltage cables inside a wind tower when the first stop-work order was issued last August.

“That created a lot of stress for a lot of guys who were wondering what was going to happen,” he said in an interview. 

The suspension was reversed by a federal judge in D.C. September. Then on Dec. 22, a second suspension order came down from the Trump administration, affecting five U.S. offshore wind projects, including Revolution Wind. That same federal judge again overruled the Trump order on Jan. 12, allowing work to resume.

As of the end of 2025, the project was 87% complete. Kilday said he’s eager to see the 65-turbine farm complete and online.

“We’re proud of our jobs, we do good work, and we want to continue to do good work for our communities, our states, our century and ultimately for the world,” he said. “The use of electricity is not going away any time soon and we want to be on the forefront of this frontier.”

Magaziner on Friday announced his guest will be Lynn Blais, president of the United Nurses and Allied Professionals (UNAP). Blais’ invitation is meant to underscore the impact of cuts to Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act on patients, providers and health care facilities, his office said.

“The cost of health care has skyrocketed for working people across this country because of deep cuts to Medicaid and Affordable Care Act funding under President Trump, all to pay for tax breaks for the wealthiest Americans,” Magaziner said in a statement.

Blais said she was honored to represent the union of 6,500 members at the president’s address.

“My members work every day, trying to care for patients in a very broken system that can’t afford any further cuts in its funding,” Blais said in a statement. “We can’t go back in time and prevent the working class and underserved to lose their health coverage because then we all pay.”

Reed’s guest will be Rhode Island Secretary of State Gregg Amore, who is facing a lawsuit by the Trump administration for refusing to turn over the state’s complete voter rolls.

“I appreciate Secretary Amore standing up for Rhode Island’s interests and I am honored to have him as my guest,” Reed in a statement. “We must keep elections free, fair, and secure and fortify our voting systems from attacks. Secretary Amore has been a leader on this front.”

Amore said he’s proud to have Reed as a partner in his legal battle against the federal government.

“Rhode Island may be the smallest state, but I am committed to doing everything in my power to ensure we are one of the loudest voices when it comes to standing up for our elections processes and the system of democratic governance designed by our Founders,” he said in a statement.

Abigail Jackson, a spokesperson for the Trump White House, said the administration is not shocked to see Democrats planning to skip out on the speech.

“Every Democrat in Congress tried to pass a $4 trillion dollar tax hike and voted against the working and middle class tax cuts the American people are seeing right now in their refunds,” Jackson said in a statement to Rhode Island Current. “Democrats all voted against securing the border and deporting criminal illegals. Democrats all voted against modernizing our military. The list goes on. It’s not a surprise that they refuse to celebrate and honor the Americans who have benefitted from the commonsense policies Republicans have governed with.”

The ‘real’ state of the union

With the president’s big speech still five days away, Amo was already offering his best guess for what Trump will say.

“Donald Trump is going to tell you that the state of the union is strong, he may even say that it is beautiful,” he said. “Frankly, it’s anything but.”

Over the past week, Amo has traveled across Rhode Island’s 1st Congressional District to highlight what he calls the “real state of the union” — rising costs and growing fears over health care access and other impacts of the Trump administration. 

On Monday, he visited FeedRI’s Hope Market, a food pantry located in East Providence that has seen demand skyrocket, Amo said. On Tuesday, he met with Reentry College Program leaders to discuss Pell Grants. 

Amo spent Wednesday touring the nearly complete Danoff Life Sciences Laboratories at Brown University to highlight the impact of Trump’s $32 billion in science funding cuts, then participated in a citizenship ceremony in Providence,followed by a visit with union offshore wind workers at Carpenters Union Local 330 in Warwick.

Following Thursday’s press conference, Amo went to Middletown Senior Center to discuss Medicare cuts coming over the next decade under the One Big Beautiful Bill Act signed into law last July.

“At the end of the day, the Trump agenda does not expand the opportunity — it constricts it,” Amo said. “It makes the American dream less achievable for countless Rhode Islanders, for countless Americans.”