Former NCAA athlete Riley Gaines, Silk Road founder Ross Ulbricht, and a state-level DOGE official are just some of the faces Americans will get a glimpse of inside the U.S. Capitol on Tuesday night.
Members of Congress spoke with Fox News Digital about their guests for President Donald Trump’s first address to a joint session of Congress for his second term.
Rep. Marianette Miller-Meeks, R-Iowa, said she invited Gaines after they both attended a White House event where Trump signed an executive order aimed at limiting transgender athletes’ participation in school sports. Girls’ sports was a top issue for Miller-Meeks during her close House race in 2024.
Meanwhile, a spokesman for Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., told Fox News Digital he would be bringing Ross Ulbricht, founder of the darkweb platform Silk Road.
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His operation of the site, which was known for facilitating the trafficking of firearms and narcotics, saw him get arrested by the FBI and hit with a sentence of double life imprisonment without the possibility of parole.
Ulbricht was pardoned by Trump, who called him a victim of a weaponized government.
In another nod to the Trump administration’s work so far, Rep. Ashley Hinson, R-Iowa, is attending the speech with the chair of her home state’s own DOGE task force.
Emily Schmitt, who works as chief administrative officer and general counsel for Sukup grain manufacturing company, was appointed to the role by Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds following Trump’s own Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) efforts, led by Elon Musk.
Hinson herself is a member of the House DOGE Caucus.
Among the guests of House GOP Majority Whip Tom Emmer, R-Minn., are U.S. Hockey Hall of Fame honorees Buzz Schneider and Rob McClanahan. The Minnesota natives were part of the Gold Medal-winning 1980 U.S. Olympic men’s hockey team.
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Their victory over the Soviet Union that year inspired the sports film, “Miracle on Ice.”
Guests invited by Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, and Main Street Caucus Chairman Dusty Johnson, R-S.D., were a nod to Republicans’ backing of law enforcement, Fox News Digital learned.
Roy’s guest is Texas Department of Public Safety spokesman Lt. Chris Olivarez.
Johnson is bringing Meade County Sheriff Pat West, who solved a sex trafficking case involving a 13-year-old girl who was abducted by a 33-year-old male sex offender, the congressman’s office said.
The border also remains a top issue for Republicans, which Sen. Joni Ernst, R-Iowa, is reflecting by inviting the father of Sarah Root, an Iowa native who was killed by an illegal immigrant. A provision known as “Sarah’s Law” made it into the Laken Riley Act, the first bill Trump signed when he returned to office.
On the other side of the aisle, Democrats are using their guest tickets to message against Trump’s policies.
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Democratic Sens. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Mark Warner of Virginia, and Rep. April McClain Delaney of Maryland, are bringing former federal workers who lost their jobs during Trump and Musk’s DOGE housecleaning efforts.
Warner’s office told Fox News Digital the senator was “bringing a laid-off park ranger from the Fredericksburg national battlefield.”
“She is a cancer survivor who now has no health insurance,” Warner’s office said of his guest.
Not all Democrats are following suit, however. Sen. Jon Ossoff of Georgia is attending with Al Lipphardt, commander in chief of the Veterans of Foreign Wars (VFW), from Stone Mountain.
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