Ukrainian Ambassador Oksana Markarova To Attend Tonight's State Of The Union Speech

Ukraine’s Ambassador to the U.S. Oksana Markarova will be in the audience at tonight’s State of the Union speech, as will Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen.

Both will be guests of first lady Jill Biden, along with second gentleman Douglas Emhoff; the president’s sister, Valerie Biden Owens; and seven other Americans from across the country.

In a statement, the White House praised each of the individuals for their “resilience, innovation, service, and courage.”

Jill Biden’s other guests include: Joseph Burgess, an Army veteran and steelworker from Pennsylvania; Joshua Davis, a middle schooler from Virginia; Refynd Duro, a nurse who’s been treating COVID-19 patients from the start of the pandemic; Patrick Gelsinger, the CEO of Intel; Melissa Isaac, an education advocate and member of the Saginaw Chippewa Indian Tribe; Danielle Robinson, a veterans health advocate; and Kezia Rodriguez, a full-time student at Bergen Community College and mother of twin daughters.

Haugen breathed renewed urgency into the effort to regulate Silicon Valley late last year, when the former Facebook lead product manager on civic misinformation leaked thousands of pages of internal documents showing the company’s products “harm children, stoke division, weaken our democracy.”

She’s since testified before Congress several times and informed dozens of impactful articles on the harm caused by Meta, Facebook’s newly christened parent company.