Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Jewish Congresswoman To Skip State Of The Union

By Aiden Pink January 29, 2018

President Trump’s first State of the Union address on Tuesday will be missing at least one important audience member: Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

Ginsburg has a previously-scheduled speaking engagement in Rhode Island on Tuesday and so will not be attending the speech in Washington, the Associated Press reported Saturday.

Ginsburg attended all eight of former President Barack Obama’s State of the Union speeches — including in 2015 when she fell asleep because, as she admitted, she “wasn’t 100% sober.”

But it’s not unheard of for Supreme Court justices to skip out on presidential speeches — Ginsburg, Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas skipped out on Trump’s address to Congress last year, and the late Antonin Scalia stopped attending State of the Union ceremonies between 1997 and his death in 2016.

More unusually, a few Democratic members of Congress will be formally boycotting the speech, including Rep. Jan Schakowsky of Illinois. She told the Chicago Sun-Times on Sunday that she was not going in protest of Trump’s Muslim ban, failure to condemn white supremacists in Charlottesville, Virginia and using obscene language to refer to African countries.

Trump has “disrespected millions and millions of Americans and the presidency itself,” Schakowsky said. She added that members of Congress should not attend his speech “just for the sake of politeness.”

Other members of Congress who have announced they are skipping Trump’s speech are Reps. John Lewis, Maxine Waters, Frederica Wilson and Earl Blumenauer.

Contact Aiden Pink at [email protected]

Aiden Pink is the Deputy News Editor for the Forward. Contact him at [email protected] or on Twitter, @aidenpink.

A message from our Publisher & CEO Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.

The coming year promises to be filled with more complex and historic developments. We are entering an era where independent, fact-based Jewish journalism will be more important than ever. We need to be ready for whatever 2025 will bring, and with your help, we can be.

We’ve set a goal to raise $260,000 by December 31. That’s an ambitious goal, but one that will give us the resources we need to invest in the high quality news, opinion, analysis and cultural coverage that isn’t available anywhere else.

If you feel inspired to make an impact, now is the time to give something back. Join us as a member at your most generous level.

— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO