Trump’s guests at joint session of Congress to highlight gender ideology and crime
Members and guests on the floor of the House during a joint session of Congress. / Credit: mark reinstein/Shutterstock
Washington, D.C. Newsroom, Mar 4, 2025 / 17:45 pm (CNA).
A woman athlete and a parental rights advocate are among the guests invited by the White House for President Donald Trump’s speech in front of a joint session of Congress scheduled for 9 p.m. Tuesday.
In Trump’s first address to Congress in his second term, the president will focus on the theme of “The Renewal of the American Dream.” He is expected to discuss some of his executive orders from the first month and a half of his presidency, which include policies to combat gender ideology in public life and curtail illegal immigration.
*Payton McNabb, advocate for women’s sports*
One of Trump’s 15 guests is Payton McNabb, a former high school athlete from North Carolina.
McNabb, according to the White House, suffered a traumatic brain injury when playing women’s high school volleyball after a biological male — who self-identified as a girl — spiked a volleyball in her face in September 2022. She is now an ambassador for the Independent Women’s Forum and advocates against men in women’s sports.
On Trump’s first day in office, the president signed an executive order to deny federal funding to all K–12 schools, high schools, and colleges that permit biological males to play in women’s and girls’ athletics. The order is facing ongoing legal battles from state-level Democratic officials and transgender advocacy groups.
House lawmakers passed a bill to codify the prohibition of men in women’s sports, but the effort stalled in the Senate after it failed to receive any Democratic support in that chamber.
*January Littlejohn, parental rights advocate*
January Littlejohn, a mother and parental rights advocate from Tallahassee, Florida, is also expected to attend the event as a guest of the president.
Littlejohn sued the Leon County School Board after school officials socially transitioned her middle-school-aged daughter. According to the White House, the school began treating her as though she was a boy without her parents’ knowledge or permission.
“The school drove a wedge between January’s daughter and her parents and deceived January about their covert plan to transition her daughter,” according to the White House.
Trump also signed an executive order to deny federal funding from K–12 schools that socially transition a child’s gender. A social transition refers to treating a child as a gender that is not consistent with his or her biological sex. This includes modifying the child’s name, using pronouns that do not match his or her sex, or permitting the child to use locker rooms, bathrooms, and other facilities that are not consistent with his or her sex.
The president also signed an executive order that restricts doctors from providing gender transition drugs to children or performing gender transition surgeries on them.
*Victims of crimes, others will also attend*
Some other guests invited by the White House include victims of crime — particularly of crimes in which the perpetrator was a migrant who entered the country illegally.
“These men, women, and families come from all different walks of life with incredible stories about the disaster wrought by the previous administration, and the historic achievements President Trump has already enacted to usher in the Golden Age of America,” read a statement from the White House.
Allyson and Lauren Phillips, the mother and sister of Laken Riley, will be in attendance. Riley was a nursing student who was murdered by a man who entered the country illegally and remained in the country after an earlier shoplifting conviction.
The first bill Trump signed after his inauguration was the Laken Riley Act, which requires the automatic detention of a person who entered the country illegally if he commits certain crimes while in the United States.
Trump’s guests also include Alexis Nungaray, whose 12-year-old daughter Jocelyn was murdered by two people who were in the country illegally after previously being arrested in the United States. Another guest is Roberto Ortiz, a Border Patrol agent who has been repeatedly shot at by members of Mexican drug cartels.
Other guests will be Elliston Berry, a 15-year-old who was the victim of computer-generated deepfakes, and Stephanie Diller, whose husband, NYPD police officer Jonathan Diller, was murdered by a repeat criminal.
The family of Corey Comperatore, who was at the Trump rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, and was shot and killed by the same gunman who shot the president’s ear, will also be in attendance.