President Biden's 2023 State of the Union address

Tyre Nichols' family has entered the House chamber just as the Memphis City Council voted unanimously to pass several public safety reforms in the first city council meeting since the release of the video of the beating of Nichols.

The reforms included resolutions in support of the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act, as well as an ordinance for the Memphis Police Department to conduct an annual independent review of the police training academy and all training techniques.

The family will be seated in First lady Jill Biden's box and President Joe Biden is expected to address police reform in his speech tonight.

CNN's Nick Valencia and Pamela Kirkland contributed reporting to this post.

There is a lot of buzz in the House chamber and energy in the room as members take their seats and their guests fill up the upstairs gallery. 

It’s a much different feel to the last few years when Covid-19 put a damper on the mood in the room.

Also GOP Rep. George Santos is sitting currently in the center aisle where President Joe Biden will arrive and is chit-chatting with several conservative members of Congress.

He will be able to shake hands with Biden.

Rep. Juan Ciscomani of Arizona will give the Spanish-language GOP response to President Joe Biden's State of the Union address.

Here are some excerpts released from his remarks:

He is also expected to talk about the American Dream. In 2022, he became the first Latino Republican elected to Congress from Arizona. He was born in Mexico and immigrated to the US with his family as a child, and previously worked at the Tucson Hispanic Chamber of Commerce and was a senior adviser to former Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey.

Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders was tapped to deliver the GOP response in English.

President Joe Biden spent most of Tuesday rehearsing his State of the Union address with senior aides, going over the lengthy remarks carefully in an effort to make his forthcoming delivery on Capitol Hill seamless. 

The rehearsal is not surprising — given this is Biden's style with any major address, putting in a significant amount of practice beforehand. 

But Biden has a clear goal tonight, a senior aide said, to make an appeal for more bipartisan progress while drawing a clear line between Democrats and Republicans on key economic issues.

His top White House aides believe this is shaping up to be the single biggest distinction with GOP lawmakers at this point in his presidency, and tonight is his chance to make it obvious. 

President Joe Biden has spoken repeatedly to advisers and allies over the last several weeks about his disdain for “limousine liberals.”

They are the upper class elites from big cities often identified as central to the Democratic coalition.

In his State of the Union address, Biden will make an explicit call to those that have moved sharply away from Democrats in recent cycles — blue collar and rural voters that have seen jobs and industry’s depart their home towns in recent decades, according to speech excerpts.

It’s a constituency central to Biden’s theory of the case — and a primary audience advisers say he’s targeting not just with his speech tonight, but with his entire agenda. 

Vice President Kamala Harris has entered the House chambers and will be seated next to House Speaker Kevin McCarthy.

Harris shook McCarthy's hand before taking her seat. Both will be seated behind President Joe Biden during the State of the Union address.

President Biden has departed the White House and is headed to Capitol Hill to deliver his second State of the Union address.

Reporters asked Biden how he was feeing and he responded, “Good.” 

Asked “what is the state of the union,” he told reporters, “Great shape, getting better,” as he entered the car.

Traveling with the president are the first lady and the second gentleman.

Watch:

President Joe Biden is expected to return to themes of his 2020 campaign several times throughout his State of the Union address Tuesday night.

Things like the “battle for the soul of the nation," an “economy built from the bottom up and middle out,” “rebuilding the backbone of America” and “uniting the country” – all 2020 themes, all in tonight’s speech, Democrats briefed on the matter told CNN. 

The reason, advisers said, is Biden’s steadfast belief in the agenda he ran on. As one adviser pointedly added, it is also an agenda he “received 80 million votes for,” making it the animating feature of his administration. 

It will appear that the president will rehash some of the same old lines, an adviser said, adding, “But this isn’t about you. This is about connecting to the people outside of Washington."

The themes are the core of a populist economic message designed to engage blue collar voters, a foreign policy based on steadfast and long-standing alliances and a political system where unity replaces a fabric that has for years been tearing at the seams.

Biden’s pitch will seek to attack his campaign themes to the progress made in his first two years and argue to Americans that he can “finish the job” in the two — or six— years ahead.

Final edits and tweaks to his second State of the Union address reveal that President Joe Biden is keenly aware of the need to overcome a disconnect with the public. 

In the final hours of preparations and edits to the president’s remarks, there has been one constant focus — sharpening each section to best connect his policies with real people, according to advisers. 

It’s a reality that underscores how aware White House officials are of a clear disconnect between their accomplishments and an American public that remains uneasy and dissatisfied. 

It’s long been an almost obsessive behind-the-scenes issue for Biden. Aides tell stories of being sent out of meetings by an unsatisfied president to try explanations out on executive assistants and people on the street.

There will not be a better moment to shift that view than tonight with tens of millions of viewers in prime time. As one adviser put it, “This is a night when people who don’t otherwise pay attention to politics tune in. We can’t miss that moment.”

The speech itself will be long – more than an hour without factoring in the applause and standing ovations from lawmakers — but the length underscores Biden’s view that there is much he needs to tell the American people and this is the best moment to do just that.