Baumgartner invites teacher to Trump’s address to Congress, while Cantwell’s guest highlights research cuts; Murray to skip speech

WASHINGTON – While President Donald Trump will surely use his address to a joint session of Congress on Tuesday to tout his administration’s actions and plans for the future, two Washington lawmakers are making their own statements by inviting special guests to attend the customary speech.

Rep. Michael Baumgartner, R-Spokane, chose to give his guest slot – each member of Congress gets one – to an Eastern Washington teacher nominated by her students. Stacey Nash, a career and technical education teacher at Wilbur-Creston High School in Wilbur, was selected by the freshman congressman’s team from 21 candidates whose students submitted essays to his office, Baumgartner said in an interview.

“The goal here is to give a special experience to teachers and a unique opportunity in a way that excites an interest in civics and public service for students,” the congressman said. “The folks that got nominated were all fantastic.”

Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., invited a retired doctor who credits federal funding – the type of support Trump’s administration has proposed cutting – with enabling him to found the Institute for Prostate Cancer Research at the University of Washington and Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center. Paul Lange, a professor emeritus at UW Medicine who pioneered testing for early detection of prostate and other cancers, said the president’s plan to cut funding for indirect costs could mean losing “a whole generation of researchers.”

“There’s almost no such thing as doing significant research without government funding,” Lange said in an interview. “It’s going to totally cripple, to almost a standstill, the major research enterprises around the country – including in the state of Washington, at UW and Fred Hutch, and also in Spokane.”

While not technically a State of the Union address – which presidents traditionally deliver near the end of each year in office – the address to a joint session of the House and Senate offers Trump a primetime TV slot to lay out his agenda for the next four years. The president and his unofficial deputy, billionaire Elon Musk, have moved at a breakneck pace to dismantle agencies and downsize the federal government in their first six weeks in office.

Congressional Republicans have largely cheered those moves while keeping any concerns to themselves. Democrats, meanwhile, have been trying to counter the administration’s moves with limited leverage, and some have decided to skip Trump’s speech altogether.

Sen. Patty Murray of Washington, the most senior Democrat in the Senate, said Monday that she would meet with constituents “who have been harmed by this administration’s reckless firings and its illegal and ongoing funding freeze across government” instead of attending the address.

“The state of the union is that the President is spitting in the face of the law and he is letting an unelected billionaire fire cancer researchers and wreck federal agencies like the Social Security Administration at will,” Murray said in a statement.

“The state of the union might be great for corrupt billionaires like Elon Musk as Trump guts our foremost consumer protection agency, and even for dictators like (Russian President Vladimir) Putin, who are cheering on the dismantling of USAID and the betrayal of our allies,” she continued. “But the rest of the country is in a state of emergency as Elon fires the experts responding to bird flu or managing our nuclear weapons stockpile, all while Republicans sprint to tear apart Medicaid and kick families off their health care to pass massive tax giveaways for billionaires.”

On Feb. 25, House Republicans passed a budget framework that includes $2 trillion in spending cuts and $4.5 trillion in tax cuts over a decade. While they haven’t yet specified exactly which programs they would cut, Baumgartner and some other GOP lawmakers have said that Medicaid – a program that provides health insurance for low-income Americans – should be scaled back.

According to Baumgartner’s office, Nash has worked in education for 27 years, including 17 at Wilbur-Creston High School. She advises the school’s Future Business Leaders of America chapter and helped her students launch an espresso business in 2018.

Lange survived a bout with prostate cancer, which was detected early because of the testing methods he helped develop. He said he worries that the United States will “take a back seat” to other countries in medical research, and that cuts to Medicaid funding will lead to more Americans waiting longer to see a doctor.

Trump’s address is scheduled to begin at 6 p.m. Pacific on Tuesday and will be broadcast and streamed online by various outlets. The traditional rebuttal will be delivered afterward by freshman Sen. Elissa Slotkin, D-Mich.