Credit: (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite, File)

WASHINGTON — When Bill Pascrell walked off the House floor Tuesday night, bloodshed in Eastern Europe was on his mind.

“I’m concerned about Ukraine,” Pascrell said in an interview with NJ Spotlight News. Wearing a blue and yellow necktie and Ukraine-themed lapel pin he added,  “I’ve seen what’s in store for them if we don’t get them these weapons and ammunition. It ain’t pretty. It ain’t pretty.”

Weapons funding for the Ukrainian military, locked in a war with Russia, has stalled in Congress due to opposition from House Republicans, and U.S. officials and lawmakers on the armed services committees are warning Ukraine may lose the war against the Russian attackers without a new infusion of arms.

“I’m going to wear my blue and gold Thursday night. Slava Ukraini,” Pascrell said. Or in English: “Glory to Ukraine.”

Getting the word out

In this town of power suits, flag pins and television green rooms, the annual State of the Union address, which President Joe Biden will deliver to a packed House chamber Thursday, is one of the few Washington events on the calendar that draws wide national and international audiences. And New Jersey lawmakers will use that platform to elevate issues of interest to them to a broader public.

And after former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley ended her presidential campaign Wednesday, clearing former President Donald Trump’s path to the Republican nomination, Biden will likely make overtures to Haley supporters to secure their support.

“There is a place for them in my campaign,” Biden said in a statement, after Haley withdrew. “I know there is a lot we won’t agree on. But on the fundamental issues of preserving American democracy, on standing up for the rule of law, on treating each other with decency and dignity and respect, on preserving NATO and standing up to America’s adversaries, I hope and believe we can find common ground.”

Biden’s agenda

Biden, White House officials and Cabinet secretaries have spent the days preceding the State of the Union talking about lowering health care costs, tackling small everyday expenses — like credit card fees and so-called bulk fees that landlords charge even if renters have not opted in — and passing a broad immigration bill.

On a visit last week to the Mexico-U.S. border, Biden, speaking in Brownsville, Texas, told federal agents with the U.S. Border Patrol he would push Congress for more federal resources to process migrants and asylum seekers. “I promise you, we’re going to fight like the devil to get you this bipartisan proposal,” Biden said. A deal Senate Republicans and Democrats negotiated privately for months has stalled, and no clear path to immigration legislation this Congress has yet to emerge.

Both the stalled immigration legislation and Ukraine aid, as well as threats to American democracy, voting rights and women’s health care, including access to in vitro fertilization, will likely loom large in Biden’s remarks.

After Alabama’s highest court last month ruled embryos are people, a precedent that could threaten IVF treatment, Democrats in Washington have hammered the issue, culminating in Sen. Tammy Duckworth’s maneuver on the Senate floor to pass a bill to protect IVF access nationally.

Republicans blocked the request from Duckworth, a Democrat from Illinois, who conceived her two children with IVF, though the Senate Majority Leader, Chuck Schumer, could bring it to the floor.

Where NJ stands

Pascrell’s guest at the State of the Union address will be Marie Duplak, president of the North Jersey chapter of the Ukrainian Congress Committee of America, an advocacy group.

Democratic Reps. Donald Norcross (D-1st) and Josh Gottheimer (D-5th) are both bringing parents whose children Hamas is holding hostage, following the Oct. 7 terrorist attacks in southern Israel, while Rep. Jeff Van Drew (R-2nd) invited Yehuda Beinin, the father of Liat Atzili, whom Hamas captured but has since been released.

Yael Alexander, mom to Edan Alexander, who is still a hostage and volunteered to join the Israeli army after graduating from Tenafly High School, according to Norcross’s office, will watch Biden’s remarks with the congressman.

“As President Biden lays out his goals and promises to the American people, we ask that the safe and swift return of Edan and remaining hostages remain top priority,” Alexander said. “Time is of the essence.”

Gottheimer will have two guests: Adi Alexander, Edan’s father, and Jonathan Dekel-Chen, father to hostage Sagui Dekel-Chen.

Sen. Cory Booker’s guest, Roshni Kamta, a 27-year-old who lives in Jersey City and works at Inc. Magazine, learned she had breast cancer when she was 22, prompting her to freeze her eggs in case she wanted to have children, before undergoing chemotherapy, according to Booker’s office.

Economic issues

Some members of the state’s delegation have opted to underscore labor and economic issues.

Rep. Mikie Sherrill (D-11th) invited Franceline Ehret, New Jersey state director for the Communication Workers of America union, which represents more than 70,000 households in the state, and Rep. Frank Pallone picked Luis Acosta, a health and physical education teacher from Perth Amboy who works at Edward J. Patton Elementary School.

Acosta enrolled in a community solar program to lower his utility bills — a subject that falls in the bailiwick of the Energy and Commerce Committee, where Pallone is the most senior Democrat — and he “often incorporate(s) lessons about the climate crisis and the importance of taking steps to lower our carbon footprint as part of a healthy future when I teach.”

Francesa Mani, a Westfield High School student from whose images online were manipulated into computer-generated pornography using so-called deepfake technology, will join Rep. Tom Kean Jr. (R-7th) for the speech.

Rep. Robert Menendez (D-8th) is bringing his wife, Alex, and Rep. Bonnie Watson Coleman (D-12th) will attend with Matthew Desmond, an author and Princeton University professor who studies poverty and is an investigator at The Eviction Lab, a program at the university that studies the human repercussions of eviction.

Between the presidencies of Thomas Jefferson and Woodrow Wilson, presidents sent written messages to Congress, updating that body about national matters. But Wilson broke that pattern in 1913, when he appeared in person to speak, and Franklin Delano Roosevelt helped cement the practice during his terms in the White House.

Katie Britt, the junior senator from Alabama, is scheduled to give the Republican rebuttal to Biden.