Frances Haugen, the former Facebook product manager who leaked damning internal documents to The Wall Street Journal last year, will sit with First Lady Jill Biden at President Biden’s first official State of the Union address tonight, the White House announced on Tuesday.
In December, Haugen testified before Congress that the social media giant had willfully misled the public about the role it played in “spreading divisive and extreme messages.”
Biden is expected to address the latest developments in Russia’s invasion of Ukraine – which has already been called a war crime by Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy – and we can expect a spotlight moment for Ukraine’s ambassador to the U.S., Oksana Markarova, who also joins Jill Biden in the viewing box.
Biden’s guests for tonight’s address include Danielle Robinson, the window of Sergeant First Class Heath Robinson; Pittsburgh-area steelworker Joseph Burgess, Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger, seventh-grade diabetes activist Joshua Davis; Melissa Isaac, the founder of Saginaw Chippewa Indian Tribe’s Project AWARE Program to expand mental health services for Native American children; and Kezia Rodriguez of New Jersey, who is able to attend school full-time thanks to a tuition-free child care program, an initiative made possible by the American Rescue Plan.
The State of the Union will air across several networks tonight at 8 pm PT/9 pm ET.