Among the hundreds of guests who will fill the House chamber on Thursday evening — each invited to telegraph distinct political messages — will be dozens of reproductive rights advocates and providers invited by Democrats who are looking to put access to abortion and fertility treatments front and center this election year.

Twenty-eight Democrats in the House and at least seven in the Senate chose their guests for their reproductive health experiences or advocacy background. They include the first person born in the United States via in vitro fertilization, women who relied on I.V.F. to get pregnant, abortion providers and women who were denied abortions by state bans after learning of fatal fetal anomalies or developing conditions that threatened their health and fertility.

It is all part of an effort by Democrats to highlight their support for reproductive rights, while seizing on the stringent restrictions imposed by Republican-led states since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade. It is also a way for them to spotlight how Republicans — many of whom have backed abortion bans and the notion of fetal personhood — have endorsed policies that could put access to abortion and fertility treatments at risk.

“It’s the fight of our lives. We have Republicans — they want to either force women to stay pregnant, or prevent women from getting pregnant,” said Representative Lois Frankel of Florida, who invited Dr. Cherise Felix, an OB-GYN who fled Tennessee’s abortion ban to practice at a Planned Parenthood in West Palm Beach. “The threat of Donald Trump is real. It’s because of him that Roe v. Wade has been overturned, and we know that Joe Biden will be a warrior for us.”

After the Alabama Supreme Court ruled last month that frozen embryos should be considered children, a decision that imperiled access to I.V.F. in the state, Senator Tim Kaine, Democrat of Virginia, invited Elizabeth Carr — the first American conceived in a lab. Ms. Carr was born in 1981 in Norfolk, Virginia. (Alabama lawmakers passed a law on Wednesday to protect I.V.F. providers from criminal and civil liability.)

“It’s more important than ever that we commit to protecting access to I.V.F. services nationwide,” Mr. Kaine said in a statement.

Representative Katherine Clark of Massachusetts, the No. 2 House Democrat, invited Amanda Zurawski, a plaintiff in a lawsuit challenging Texas’ abortion ban who was permitted to undergo the procedure only after going into septic shock when her water broke at 18 weeks of pregnancy. On Thursday, Ms. Zurawski said that she has turned to I.V.F. to start a family after the infection she sustained in her earlier pregnancy compromised her fertility, and she moved her frozen embryos out of state after the Alabama ruling, fearing a similar restriction could come down in Texas.

Senator Patty Murray, Democrat of Washington, invited Kayla Smith, who spent thousands of dollars traveling there for an abortion in 2022 after being denied one in Idaho after she found out that her baby — which she emphasized on Thursday was “very wanted” — had fatal anomalies. Ms. Smith is a plaintiff in a lawsuit filed in September challenging Idaho’s abortion ban.

Ms. Murray said it was paramount that Democrats “shine a light on the horrific consequences of Republican abortion bans that have ripped away a woman’s right to make her own health care decisions.”

Democrats in Congress have introduced legislation to codify federal abortion rights and to protect access to I.V.F., but have faced Republican opposition. Last week, Senator Cindy Hyde-Smith, Republican of Mississippi, blocked quick passage of a bill to protect access to fertility treatments.

“It’s really clear who’s standing up for women and trust women to make decisions about their own bodies and about their own health care — it’s Democrats,” said Senator Tammy Duckworth, Democrat of Illinois, who invited Dr. Amanda Adeleye, a reproductive endocrinologist. “So my reminder to voters is remember who’s watching out for your reproductive rights. It’s certainly not Republicans.”

President Biden has selected his education secretary, Miguel Cardona, to be the so-called designated survivor during Thursday night’s State of the Union address, a grim moniker meant to ensure at least one decision maker survives if a calamity were to wipe out the nation’s leadership assembled at the Capitol for the speech.

Secretary Cardona will follow the evening’s proceedings from an undisclosed location, becoming the latest member of a tradition that dates back to the Cold War tensions of the 1950s. The first survivor to be publicly disclosed was Terrel Bell, who served as education secretary to Ronald Reagan, in 1981.

There are few moments in American life when so many of the country’s top leaders are gathered in one place. Those gathered in the House chamber on Thursday will include many members of the Supreme Court, most of Mr. Biden’s cabinet, a great number of lawmakers and top military officials.

Those attending are in line to become president if something were to happen to Mr. Biden, as established by the Presidential Succession Act of 1947: the vice president, the speaker of the House, the president pro tempore of the Senate, the secretary of state, the secretary of the Treasury, the secretary of defense and the attorney general. (Beyond that, the succession proceeds through the rest of the cabinet.)

But that line of succession could be disrupted if there were an attack or disaster at the Capitol, which is why one cabinet member is chosen to skip the event.

Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo was chosen as Mr. Biden’s designated survivor during his State of the Union speech in 2022. Marty Walsh, who was secretary of labor in 2023, was the survivor last year.

Mr. Biden did not select a designated survivor for his joint address to Congress in 2021. The speech was much more sparsely attended because of Covid, and most members of the cabinet and other top officials were watching from remote locations anyway.

William J. Burns, the C.I.A. director who was made a member of the cabinet last July, will also not be at the State of the Union. Mr. Burns, according to a U.S. official, was in Doha, Qatar on Thursday, meeting with Qatari officials, as part of an effort to push forward talks on a temporary ceasefire and hostage release in Gaza.

Because Mr. Burns will not be in the secure location away from Washington, he will not be the official designated survivor. But since he will be away from the Capitol building, in the event of a catastrophe, he could be considered, unofficially, a second backup survivor.

When former Representative George Santos, the serial fabulist, was expelled from Congress by his colleagues in December, he left in a huff, declaring, “to hell with this place.”

On Thursday night, the Tom Ripley of Congress was back.

Dressed in a crystal-encrusted collar, Mr. Santos took a seat on the House floor in a surprise appearance ahead of President Biden’s State of the Union address, putting to use the lifetime floor privileges conferred on former members of the House — even the ones who are expelled.

There, he was greeted more warmly than he was ever treated when his colleagues wanted nothing to do with him.

On Thursday night, he sat and chuckled with Representatives Lauren Boebert of Colorado and Matt Gaetz of Florida. Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia greeted him with a warm embrace. Even members who had been publicly critical of him in the past, like Representative Claudia Tenney of New York, stopped to snap his picture, while others made a beeline to greet him.

It was fair to say that the disgraced former congressman, who is scheduled to go on trial in September on federal fraud charges that include accusations of stealing money from campaign donors for personal expenses, was doing something akin to holding court.

Since leaving Congress, Mr. Santos has tried to launch a career on the video app Cameo, monetizing on his strange slice of fame by charging hundreds of dollars a pop for his short personalized videos. But interest in micro-celebrities can be fleeting.

And he had been carefully planning his splashy return. Mr. Santos told some members of the press corps that he planned to return on Thursday night to seize back the spotlight, but swore them to secrecy.

It was not clear what high jinks he had planned, aside from the fact of his presence alone. At least year’s State of the Union address, Mr. Santos got in a confrontation with Senator Mitt Romney, Republican of Utah, who told him, bluntly, “you don’t belong here.” Mr. Santos had stationed himself close enough to the action to reach out for a presidential handshake.

Speaker Mike Johnson earlier Thursday tried to encourage members to show decorum during Mr. Biden’s speech.

Not everyone was willing to make that promise.

Mr. Santos appeared to be staking out a seat near the corridor where Mr. Biden was set to enter the chamber, along with some of the hard-right members of the Republican conference, such as Ms. Boebert.

“Oh, you think I plan that stuff?” Ms. Boebert said, when asked how she planned to behave during the speech. “I’m more spontaneous than you think.”

But minutes ahead of the speech, without a seat saved, Mr. Santos moved himself to the back of the chamber.

In his State of the Union address in 2022, President Biden warned of social media harms to young people and called for new privacy protections for children online.

“We must hold social media platforms accountable for the national experiment they’re conducting on our children for profit,” Mr. Biden said.

The president made similar comments in his State of the Union speech last year, urging Congress to enact restrictions on social media services like TikTok and Instagram.

“It’s time to pass bipartisan legislation to stop Big Tech from collecting personal data on kids and teenagers online, ban targeted advertising to children and impose stricter limits on the personal data these companies collect on all of us,” Mr. Biden said at the time.

Tonight, the president is likely to call for new curbs on social media yet again. What is different this year is that a bipartisan group of federal lawmakers is moving closer to passing new social media rules.

In the Senate, a bill called the Kids Online Safety Act has gained traction among both Democrats and Republicans. The measure would cover social media and video game platforms with certain design features like never-ending newsfeeds and personalized content recommendation systems.

It would require those online service to turn on the highest privacy settings by default for minors. It would allow young people to opt out of personalized recommendation algorithms. And it would impose a “duty of care” on many social media and video game platforms to prevent harms to minors — including depression, eating disorders, violence, sexual exploitation and predatory marketing.

Introduced by Senators Marsha Blackburn, a Tennessee Republican, and Richard Blumenthal, a Connecticut Democrat, the online safety bill now has more than 60 co-sponsors, more than enough support to pass. The measure has also been endorsed by health organizations including the American Academy of Pediatrics and the American Psychological Association. It has not yet been scheduled for a Senate vote.

Even if the bill passes the Senate, however, it faces an uphill battle.

Civil liberties groups and tech industry trade organizations have raised First Amendment concerns about the measure, warning that the bill’s “duty of care” provision could lead social media platforms to limit information on significant issues like eating disorders, gender identity and reproductive health. That would make it more difficult for young people to find crucial news, resources and communities, critics say.

Brian Jack, a political adviser to former President Donald J. Trump, filed paperwork on Thursday to run for Congress in Georgia, aiming to replace a retiring Republican representative in a deeply conservative district.

Mr. Jack, who was the final White House political director under Mr. Trump and has remained an adviser to the former president, will run to succeed Representative Drew Ferguson in Georgia’s Third Congressional District, which includes the southern suburbs of Atlanta. Mr. Ferguson, a four-term Republican, announced his retirement late last year.

Mr. Trump gave his “complete and total” endorsement to Mr. Jack’s candidacy in a social media post on Thursday afternoon.

“I encourage Brian, a Fayette County native, to go for it, pursue his dream, and run for Congress,” Mr. Trump wrote. “He represents a new generation of leadership, and he will be a GREAT congressman.”

In a statement, Mr. Jack, who was also an adviser to Representative Kevin McCarthy when he was the speaker of the House, said that with Mr. Trump’s endorsement “comes great responsibility.” He added: “I will tirelessly work to earn the trust and support of my home district.”

The endorsement, as well as Mr. Jack’s larger relationship with Mr. Trump, will most likely give him a significant advantage in the race’s Republican primary, on May 21.

At least six other Republican candidates have entered the race, including Mike Crane and Mike Dugan, both former state senators, and Philip Singleton, a former state representative. Those candidates could draw the ire of Mr. Trump, who has a history of holding grudges and has tightened his grip over the Republican Party.

If Mr. Jack advances out of the primary, he will practically be assured a victory in the general election in November. Mr. Ferguson defeated his Democratic opponent in the deep-red district by more than 36 points in 2022.

Prosecutors in former President Donald J. Trump’s classified documents case sought on Thursday to rebut his claim that he is a victim of selective prosecution, rejecting the former president’s argument that he was being treated more harshly than President Biden had been in an investigation into his handling of sensitive materials.

The evidence of potential wrongdoing is “starkly different” in the two matters, the prosecutors wrote.

In one of an array of motions to dismiss the documents case against Mr. Trump filed last month, the former president’s lawyers cited the decision by Robert K. Hur, the special counsel who scrutinized Mr. Biden’s handling of classified information when he was out of office, not to bring charges. If Mr. Biden was not charged, Mr. Trump should not be either, Mr. Trump’s lawyers maintained.

But prosecutors working for the special counsel investigating Mr. Trump, Jack Smith, accused the Trump legal team of misrepresenting Mr. Hur’s findings. Despite some “superficial similarities between the two cases,” they argued that the evidence that Mr. Trump committed crimes was far stronger and noted that Mr. Hur himself explained in his report how Mr. Trump’s alleged conduct — including attempted obstruction — was far worse.

“The volume, sensitivity and storage of the documents all point in the same direction — that Trump’s conduct was more serious — thus confirming that the two cases are not ‘nearly identical’ and that there are ‘legitimate reasons for viewing them differently,’” they wrote.

They added: “Trump has not shown that Biden’s conduct, as described in the Hur Report, makes him a similarly situated comparator for purposes of his selective prosecution claim.”

Selective prosecution motions are notoriously difficult to win because they require defendants to show that the government effectively discriminated against them by charging them but not charging “similarly situated individuals.”

Prosecutors wrote that Mr. Trump’s decision to hold on to dozens of highly classified records as if they were “keepsakes, memorabilia or trophies,” store them in “an unsecure location” and then repeatedly obstruct attempts by the government to retrieve them, including through a grand jury subpoena, made his behavior different.

Such factors separated his behavior from that of Mr. Biden and a litany of other former officials — like former Vice President Mike Pence — “who have retained classified documents beyond their terms in office through inadvertence or carelessness, but then returned them upon their discovery,” they wrote.

Mr. Trump “has not identified anyone who has engaged in a remotely similar battery of criminal conduct and not been prosecuted as a result,” the prosecutors wrote. “He has likewise failed to provide any evidence that his indictment was brought solely to retaliate against him for exercising his legal rights, rather than because he flagrantly and repeatedly broke the law.”

The request by the prosecutors to Judge Aileen M. Cannon to reject Mr. Trump’s claims that he had been treated unfairly was only one of several court filings they submitted on Thursday seeking to rebut a flurry of motions by defense lawyers to dismiss the classified documents case based on myriad other arguments.

The prosecutors also sought to counter Mr. Trump’s efforts to attack the law he is accused of violating, to question the legality of the special counsel prosecuting him, to claim that the records he has been charged with removing from the White House belonged to him and to argue that he is shielded from prosecution by a sweeping form of executive immunity.

The multiple filings by Mr. Smith’s team came as the defense and prosecution were waiting for Judge Cannon to issue a critical decision on when the classified documents case will go to trial.

At a hearing last week, in Federal District Court in Fort Pierce, Fla., prosecutors asked Judge Cannon to start the trial on July 8. Mr. Trump’s lawyers, claiming he could not be tried fairly during his presidential campaign, said the proceeding should be delayed until after the election, but also said they could live with a date of Aug. 12.

In another of their motions to dismiss the case, Mr. Trump’s legal team had argued that the charges should be dropped based on a claim that Attorney General Merrick B. Garland had no legitimate authority to appoint Mr. Smith as special counsel and that prosecutors working for him had no legitimate funding.

Noting that there had been many special prosecutors appointed by attorneys general, and that the Supreme Court had recognized that authority in a Watergate-era case, prosecutors rejected that idea, too. “Each argument is incorrect, and neither supports dismissal of the charges that were properly returned by a grand jury in this district,” they wrote.

The Trump legal team argued that the case should be dismissed because a law called the Presidential Records Act, which makes official White House files public property, allows presidents, before they leave office, to designate certain materials like diaries as personal records.

They argued that Mr. Trump’s sending of the files to his Florida compound indicated that he had implicitly done so and that there was no second-guessing such a determination. But Mr. Smith’s team mocked the idea that official classified documents could be personal files — while saying that even if they were, it would not matter, since Mr. Trump was not authorized to possess that information after he was no longer in office.

“Trump’s claims rest on three fundamental errors, all of which reflect his view that, as a former president, the nation’s laws and principles of accountability that govern every other citizen do not apply to him,” prosecutors wrote. A related motion by Mr. Trump’s team argued that he was absolutely immune from being charged in the case since its origins traced back to what they asserted was his decision, while still president, to convert the White House files into his personal property. (There is no evidence that Mr. Trump specifically took that step.)

Mr. Trump has also challenged his other federal case — in which he stands accused of plotting to subvert the 2020 election — with an argument that he is immune to prosecution on the charges. The claim in that case is now before the Supreme Court, which has scheduled arguments on the question for April 25. Noting that none of the actions for which Mr. Trump is charged in the classified documents case took place while he was in office, Mr. Smith’s team called the immunity claim “frivolous” and argued that it was being “offered for one transparent purpose — to delay the trial.”

An investigator for the city of Uvalde said on Thursday that despite the many documented failures of more than 20 city police officers who were among those responding to the shooting at Robb Elementary School in 2022, no punishment was warranted because the officers acted in good faith and did not violate department policy.

During a special meeting convened to reveal results of a two-year investigation, the investigator, Jesse Prado, a retired detective from Austin, also advised that the acting police chief at the time, Lt. Mariano Pargas Jr., be cleared of any wrongdoing. Mr. Pargas, who was running the force that day while the chief was on vacation, had resigned amid a storm of criticism from city residents.

“There were many failures,” Mr. Prado said, but he added that “there was no evidence of serious acts of misconduct in direct violation of the Uvalde Police Department’s policies.”

At the conclusion of his 45-minute presentation, Mr. Prado walked away, drawing the ire of relatives of the victims who had shown up to express their outrage. The families have continued to demand transparency and accountability for a lengthy delay in confronting the gunman.

“It was for their safety; it was not for the safety of children,” Kim Mata-Rubio, whose daughter Lexi was among the children who were killed, shouted from the meeting room about the police officers. “Are these the people that you want responding to your loved ones? Guaranteed, it’s not.”

She added: “Do what’s right. Terminate them.”

The shooting occurred on May 24, 2022, when a teenage gunman climbed a low fence and entered the school through what turned out to be an unlocked door. Armed with an AR-15-style rifle, he unleashed a barrage of bullets on two connected classrooms, killing 19 children, two teachers and injuring 17 other people. More than 370 officers from local, state and federal agencies gathered at the scene but after initially being shot at, the officers did not make an attempt to confront the gunman until later.

The city findings, included in a report released on Thursday, are the third major investigation into the delayed police response. Two previous probes by a state committee and the Department of Justice both agreed that a perfect storm of failures in leadership, wrong decision-making and lack of police training led the officers to wait 77 minutes to confront the gunman holed up in two connected classrooms.

Other key investigations are pending. The local district attorney, Christina Mitchell, has convened a grand jury that is hearing testimony to determine whether criminal charges should be brought against any of the officers. The Texas Department of Public Safety has yet to release its findings.

A new investigation unfolding at the Georgia State Capitol is previewing the turbulence that Fani T. Willis, the district attorney prosecuting Donald J. Trump, may face even if a judge allows her to keep the high-stakes case.

At a hearing on Wednesday before a special committee of the State Senate, which recently began investigating Ms. Willis, the defense lawyer leading the disqualification effort testified that Ms. Willis had once taken a large sum of money from her political campaign for her personal use.

The senator presiding over the hearing, Bill Cowsert, a Republican, was taken aback by the allegation. “I think all of us up here that have campaigns know that you can’t take campaign funds for personal use, right?” he asked.

The defense lawyer, Ashleigh Merchant, told Mr. Cowsert that she was “not well versed in that area of law, but that is my understanding.” He replied, “It’s pretty black and white.”

There is no evidence to back up the allegation. In fact, Ms. Willis lent her first campaign nearly $50,000, drawn from a retirement account, and was paid back only a fraction of that, according to her office, campaign finance records and her past remarks.

But the incident reflected that even if Ms. Willis survives the effort to disqualify her, she would face tough inquiries by Georgia Republicans that could perpetuate questions about her character and uncertainty around the Trump case for months to come.

Seven months have passed since Ms. Willis brought the racketeering case against Mr. Trump and 18 of his allies, charging them with conspiring to overturn his 2020 election loss in Georgia. Four of the defendants have already pleaded guilty, and Ms. Willis at one point told the judge, Scott McAfee of Fulton County Superior Court, that she was aiming for a trial to start in August.

But the case was upended in January after Ms. Merchant revealed in a court filing that Ms. Willis had a romantic relationship with Nathan Wade, the lawyer she hired in November 2021 to manage the Trump case.

Ms. Merchant represents Michael Roman, a defendant and former Trump campaign official. She and other defense lawyers have said that Ms. Willis engaged in “self-dealing,” because she took a number of vacations with Mr. Wade after hiring him while using public funds to pay him more than $650,000 to date.

The filing forced Ms. Willis to publicly acknowledge that she and Mr. Wade had pursued a romance. And the allegations were concerning enough that Judge McAfee held a series of public hearings over the last few weeks to determine whether the relationship had created a disqualifying conflict of interest. The judge has said that he will decide by next week.

Legal experts have pointed out that Ms. Willis could have avoided this particular controversy had she not had a romantic relationship with someone who worked for her.

Ms. Merchant testified on Wednesday that if Ms. Willis had gone to the county and said, “I’m having an affair with this man, but he is brilliant and he would be an amazing prosecutor on this election interference case,” then “we wouldn’t be here,” because the hiring, Ms. Merchant later added, “wouldn’t have been approved.”

The Senate investigation is one of several springing up around Ms. Willis. Representative Jim Jordan of Ohio, a Trump ally and the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, has used the conflict-of-interest allegations to seek more records as part of the committee’s ongoing investigation of the district attorney’s office. Georgia Republicans are in the process of empowering a prosecutorial oversight commission that is also expected to review the matter.

The Republican-controlled Senate created its special committee to investigate Ms. Willis soon after the motion was filed to disqualify her. The committee has no power to punish the district attorney. But with the power to issue subpoenas, it can embarrass her.

That could help Mr. Trump as he seeks to win Georgia in the presidential election. Negative headlines about Ms. Willis generated by the committee’s work could also influence potential jurors if the Trump case ends up going to trial.

During the Senate hearing on Wednesday, Ms. Merchant said that Ms. Willis recently testified that she had used a large amount of money from her failed 2018 campaign for a local judgeship to reimburse Mr. Wade for expenses from their vacations.

Ms. Merchant said that Ms. Willis testified “that the majority of the cash she had on hand was from her campaign,” and that it was “a loan she had given herself from the campaign.”

“She was very clear about that,” Ms. Merchant added.

In fact, Ms. Willis’s testimony on Feb. 15 was not clear. She said: “When I ran for judge I took $50,000 of my personal money out of my retirement and that money ended up being lost.”

Later in her testimony, when she was pressed further about how she had repaid Mr. Wade, she said that she had taken “a large amount of money on my first campaign,” and that she had “kept some of the cash of that.” Neither the judge nor defense lawyers asked at the time what exactly she meant.

Campaign finance records from Ms. Willis’s judicial campaign show loans of $49,000, and that the campaign reimbursed her roughly $8,500 in 2018.

After the Senate hearing, a spokesman for Ms. Willis’s office said Ms. Merchant had “misstated the D.A.’s testimony.” The spokesman, Jeff DiSantis, said Ms. Willis “testified that she took money out of her retirement to fund her unsuccessful 2018 campaign for Superior Court judge.”

“She did not testify that she took money out of her campaign for herself, other than the repayment of the loan that is detailed in her campaign report,” he added.

Ms. Merchant, in an email, said that her testimony “was based on Ms. Willis’s statements under oath.”

The Senate committee is planning to meet again in the next few weeks.

The White House guest list for President Biden’s State of the Union address will underscore some of his administration’s biggest accomplishments, from student debt forgiveness to the expansion of NATO.

But even as he heralds his accomplishments, the guest list will highlight intractable challenges still facing his presidency, including pervasive gun violence and the vast problem of climate change.

Among the 20 guests who will join the first lady, Jill Biden, to watch the address is Jazmin Cazares, the sister of a 9-year-old victim of the 2022 shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, where a gunman killed 19 children and two teachers.

After Uvalde, Mr. Biden signed the first gun safety legislation in decades — a measure he plugged during his State of the Union address last year, when he also called on Congress to enact a ban on assault weapons. In September, he announced the creation of the Office of Gun Violence and Safety Prevention, led by Vice President Kamala Harris, at the White House.

But just since the start of 2024, there have been 10 mass shootings in the United States, according to an analysis by The New York Times, which tracks shootings that killed four or more people, not including the attacker, and occurred in a public place without a connection to another crime. Violence involving children, which has surged since 2011, remains a key concern: Since the start of 2024, there have been 10 school shootings causing injuries or deaths, according to an analysis by Education Week, which tracks gun violence in schools.

Ms. Cazares, 18, who was honored by Ms. Biden during an event at the White House in the fall, has become an activist for gun violence prevention, and spent her senior year of high school traveling the country advocating for laws that could have protected her sister, Jackie Cazares.

To other advocates, her presence at the State of the Union is a reminder of the work the president still has to do on an issue that is critical to young voters who helped send him to the White House — especially if he wants them to help do so again.

Ryan Barto, spokesman for March for Our Lives, the group started by students who survived the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School massacre in Parkland, Fla., in 2019, said that young voters are calling on Mr. Biden “to finish the job.” He noted that in 2023, no pieces of legislation that addressed gun violence passed.

Last month, Mr. Biden announced an executive order to promote safe gun storage, citing statistics that show gun violence is the leading cause of death of children in America.

Mr. Barto said young voters want to see Mr. Biden use his bully pulpit and executive authority more forcefully, and to address gun violence in a more “holistic way,” by connecting it to the dwindling social safety net, the rise of white supremacy and a lack of federal funding for research.

“We need him to take the reins on this issue — he needs to be out there talking about this issue,” Mr. Barto said. He added, “It’s fine to use his words to give a speech, but it’s after he leaves the podium and what he does that really matters.”

Other guests on Thursday night will include the prime minister of Sweden — which officially joined NATO a few hours before Mr. Biden’s speech, a key foreign policy victory for the president — and people affected by student debt forgiveness, jobs programs, and recent rollbacks of reproductive rights.

Also attending will be guests who reflect Mr. Biden’s energy and climate change agenda — and underscore his message that tackling global warming creates jobs.

Shawn Fain, the president of the United Automobile Workers, will be one of them. Mr. Biden won the U.A.W. endorsement after walking the picket line of a union strike that ultimately led to new contracts with General Motors, Ford and Stellantis.

Mr. Fain’s presence also suggests that the union is likely to support the finalization this spring of a major Environmental Protection Agency regulation to curb automobile tailpipe emissions.

The rule is designed to entice Americans to switch to electric vehicles from gas-powered cars. Labor unions have been wary of the rule, since electric vehicles require fewer workers to assemble.

The Biden administration is making changes to the proposed rule that addresses some of the U.A.W.’s concerns, including giving car manufacturers more time to ramp up the sale of electric vehicles.

Mr. Biden is fond of saying that when he thinks of climate change, he thinks about jobs. And he will have two people in the audience who prove his point.

Natalie King, a Detroit woman whom the White House described as the first Black woman to found an electric vehicle charging manufacturing company, and Rashawn Spivey, the owner of a plumbing company in Milwaukee that replaces lead pipes, will attend the address.

The Biden administration has set a goal of installing 500,000 electric vehicle charging stations across the country by 2030 and replacing every lead pipe, and has put millions of dollars toward both objectives.

Republicans have chosen Senator Katie Britt of Alabama to deliver their response to President Biden’s State of the Union address on Thursday night, turning to one of their youngest members of Congress to burnish the image of their aging, male-dominated party and draw a contrast with a president nearly 40 years older.

Ms. Britt was sworn in last year after being endorsed by former President Donald J. Trump, whom she has endorsed in his 2024 campaign. She is the first elected female senator from Alabama and, at 42, the youngest Republican woman to have been elected to the Senate. She was born while Mr. Biden, 81, was serving his second term there.

“The Republican Party is the party of hard-working parents and families, and I’m looking forward to putting this critical perspective front and center,” Ms. Britt said in a statement last week. “There is no doubt that President Biden’s failed presidency has made America weaker and more vulnerable at every turn. At this decisive moment in our country’s history, it’s time for the next generation to step up and preserve the American dream for our children and our grandchildren.”

Speaker Mike Johnson noted in announcing her selection that Ms. Britt is the “only current Republican mom of school-age kids serving in the Senate.”

Senator Mitch McConnell, Republican of Kentucky and the minority leader, said: “Senator Katie Britt is an unapologetic optimist, and as one of our nation’s youngest senators, she’s wasted no time becoming a leading voice in the fight to secure a stronger American future and leave years of Washington Democrats’ failures behind.”

In choosing her, Republicans were saddling Ms. Britt with a tradition so difficult to perform well that it has come to be seen as somewhat cursed: delivering the opposing party’s on-camera rebuttal to the president’s annual prime-time address to the nation, filled with pomp, ceremony and standing ovations.