State of the Union - live: Women wear white in powerful message as Trump vows to ban late-term abortion
Follow the latest updates as Mr Trump prepares to deliver his second State of the Union address to a divided Congress
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Donald Trump is delivering the second State of the Union address of his presidency, where he has the opportunity to lay out his vision for the last two years of his first term in office and beyond.
With a damaging and politically contentious 35-day government shutdown having just ended in Washington, the president stands before a joint session in the House chamber — where is expected to make sweeping calls for unity in a time of dramatic division and to promote lofty efforts like the eradication of HIV by 2030.
But, Mr Trump’s audience in the House chamber will be noticeably different from his address last year. Flanked behind him and to his left will sit Democrat House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who proved to be a formidable political foil to Mr Trump during those shutdown negotiations last month after her party took control of the lower chamber during the 2018 midterm elections.
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Ms Abrams has now started her response to Mr Trump's State of the Union.
She is making an appeal to education and hard work, saying that she was taught those values growing up.
"Faith, service, education, and responsibility," Ms Abrams said, naming the values she said she was taught growing up.
Ms Abrams recounted a story in which her father gave up his coat to a homeless man growing up, illustrating his character and the "grace of community" that she says drives her and Americans.
"My dad turned to us and said 'I knew when I left that man he would still be alone but I could give him my coat because I knew you were coming for me," Ms Abrams sad.
Ms Abrams is making a call for bipartisanship to negotiate tricky political issues, and placing American families at the centrre of the debate.
In doing so, Ms Abrams criticised the president for the 35-day government shutdown.
"The shutdown was a stunt, engineered by the president of the United States," Ms Abrams said.
Ms Abrams has also made a call for investment in American education, and criticized the Trump administration for not doing enough to expand gun control measures (noting that students frequently practice active shooter drills in school).
Ms Abrams has continued to criticise Mr Trump for his controversial immigration policies.
"Compassionate treatment at the border is not the same as open borders. President Reagan understood this. President Obama understood this," Ms Abrams.
"America is made stronger by the presence of immigrants. Not walls," she said.
After calling on greater access to healthcare and working to curb climate change, Ms Abrams as hit at the core of America's democratic institutions, raising a warning flag that voting is becoming harder and harder in the United States.
"Voter suppression is real. From making it harder to register and stay on the rolls, to moving and closing polling stations.... we can no longer ignore these threats to democracy", she said.
That wraps things up for Ms Abram's State of the Union response.
Here's a full read out of Mr Trump's prepared remarks. He mostly kept to the speech:
Here is a video of Ms Abram's Democratic response to the president's speech.
Here is the response given by Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, who is considering a run for president in 2020.
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