Four people from Western New York will sit inside the House Chamber on Tuesday night as President Donald Trump delivers his first State of the Union address of his second term — and for each of them, the trip to Washington, D.C., is personal.
The WNY guests to attend State of the Union represent the kind of ordinary Americans who rarely get a front-row seat to national politics: a small business owner watching his workforce shrink, a mother calculating whether she can afford her heart medication, a community advocate fighting for immigrant families, and a veteran sheriff who built his career trying to protect the people around him. Their presence in the Capitol gallery tonight tells a story that no policy speech, no matter how long, can fully capture.
Take a look at who they are — and why their stories matter before Trump takes the podium at 9 p.m. EST.
A Business Owner Who Watched His Workforce Disappear
Ben Pearson runs ENLAS, a Rochester-based company that manufactures science kits and educational products for classrooms across the United States. He built the business from the ground up, and until recently, he employed about 50 people.
Then Trump’s tariffs hit.
Pearson says the import duties have added more than one million dollars in costs to his annual operating budget — costs he simply cannot absorb. To stay afloat, he had to cut his team. Thirteen employees lost their jobs. His staff now sits at 37. He had a loss during the fourth quarter of 2025 that he did not anticipate and has not been able to fully explain to his investors.
Tonight, Pearson will sit in the gallery as the personal guest of Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer. He is not attending as a political prop. He is attending because he wants the people writing these trade policies to look him in the eye — even if only from a distance.
A Mother of Seven Choosing Between Medication and Bills
Eva Wood is also attending as Schumer’s guest, and her story hits closer to home for the millions of Americans who have watched their health insurance costs spiral.
Wood, a Rochester mother raising seven children, previously relied on the Affordable Care Act’s enhanced premium tax credits to keep her family covered at a rate she could manage. Those credits expired. Her monthly premium jumped to a figure that now rivals her mortgage payment. On top of that, Wood has a heart condition that requires ongoing medication. With coverage costs eating into her family’s budget, she is left making the kind of calculations that no parent should have to make.
Schumer has said publicly that his two Rochester guests reflect the economic reality facing working and middle-class families across Upstate New York right now — a reality he intends to make visible on one of the most-watched nights in American political life.
A Community Leader Representing Immigrant Families
Angelica Perez-Delgado is attending as the guest of Democratic Representative Joe Morelle, and she brings a different kind of weight to the room.
As president and CEO of the Ibero-American Action League, a Rochester organization dedicated to serving immigrant and Latino communities, Perez-Delgado works daily with families navigating a federal immigration system that has grown significantly more aggressive over the past year. She knows which families are afraid to drive to work. She knows which children are going to school worried their parents won’t be home when they return.
Morelle has said he selected Perez-Delgado because she exemplifies the work being done in Western New York to keep communities together despite mounting federal pressure — work that largely goes unnoticed in Washington until someone brings it into the room.
A Sheriff With 30 Years on the Ground
On the Republican side of the aisle, Representative Claudia Tenney is bringing Wayne County Sheriff Robert Milby as her guest for the evening.
Milby is a law enforcement veteran with three decades of service to Wayne County, a largely rural stretch of Upstate New York between Rochester and Syracuse. During his career, he founded both the Wayne County Opioid Task Force and the Wayne County Child Advocacy Center Advisory Board — two efforts that address deeply rooted problems in communities that often feel forgotten by the federal government. He currently serves as second vice president of the New York State Sheriffs’ Association and chairs its Border Security Committee.
Tenney called Milby someone who “represents the very best of Upstate New York.” His attendance tonight reflects the Republican Party’s emphasis on law enforcement, border security, and rural community service as central pillars of their 2026 midterm messaging.
The Broader Picture: A Nation Watching a President Under Pressure
The four WNY attendees are stepping into a moment that is, by any measure, politically charged.
Trump arrives at the podium carrying considerable turbulence. The Supreme Court ruled last Friday that he exceeded his authority with much of his sweeping global tariff program, striking down a key pillar of his trade agenda. His administration responded almost immediately by announcing a new 15% global import tax — a move that triggered fresh debate among economists and business owners alike. The Department of Homeland Security has been operating under a partial shutdown since February 14, the result of an ongoing standoff with congressional Democrats over immigration enforcement reform, particularly following the deaths of two American citizens at the hands of federal agents in Minneapolis last month.
Polls taken in the days leading up to tonight are not flattering. Roughly 60% of Americans disapprove of how Trump has managed the government during his second term, according to a recent national survey. A separate poll found that 57% of respondents do not believe the state of the union is strong — a number that has grown by four points compared to a year ago.
With midterm elections scheduled for November, tonight’s speech doubles as the opening argument in a national campaign. Trump is expected to tout accomplishments on immigration enforcement, deregulation, foreign policy, and what his administration has characterized as restoring American credibility on the world stage. The White House released a video on Sunday declaring that “the State of the Union is STRONG because America is RESPECTED again.”
House Speaker Mike Johnson confirmed that members of the gold medal-winning U.S. men’s Olympic hockey team — fresh off their victory at the 2026 Winter Games in Milan — will be seated in the gallery as special guests of the president. Virginia Governor Abigail Spanberger, who became the first woman to hold that office after her 2025 election flipped the Virginia governor’s mansion from Republican to Democratic control, will deliver the official Democratic response following Trump’s address.
Several House Democrats have announced they will not attend at all, opting instead for protest events outside the Capitol. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries has urged most Democrats to show up and hold their ground inside the chamber.
What the Guest List Says About American Politics Right Now
The tradition of seating special guests in the State of the Union gallery goes back four decades. Presidents use the gallery to celebrate heroes and underscore their priorities. Members of Congress use it to humanize their opposition or their support, depending on which side of the aisle they sit on.
This year’s guest list from Western New York threads that needle with unusual precision. Two of the four guests — Pearson and Wood — are there to show that federal economic decisions carry real consequences for real people in mid-sized American cities. Perez-Delgado is there to remind lawmakers that immigrant communities exist in places beyond the southern border. And Milby is there to represent the law enforcement perspective that Republicans argue should be front and center in any national conversation about safety.
Together, they represent something the night’s television coverage and live-tweeting can easily lose sight of: the speech is not just a performance. For the people sitting in that room who drove, flew, or took a train from Rochester or Wayne County to get there, it is a direct conversation about their lives.
Whether tonight’s address actually speaks to those lives — to the tariff bills stacking up on a business owner’s desk, to the prescription a mother is rationing, to the community organization holding a neighborhood together — is the question that every Western New Yorker in that chamber will be waiting to have answered.
Share your reaction to tonight’s State of the Union in the comments — what do you need to hear from President Trump, and do you think he’ll deliver?
