Following President Donald Trump’s annual State of the Union address (bottom), the Democratic Party response was delivered by Stacey Abrams.

In her address, Abrams recounted incidents of hardship that her parents had to face as immigrants in the US, and how this shaped her belief in a sense of community. She also touched upon the promise of equal opportunity, and other themes like expensive higher education, gun laws, and voter suppression.

Abrams said that the Republican leadership “ignores real life, or just doesn’t understand it”. She also brought up the wall on the southern border of the US. This standoff had caused the longest-ever government shutdown in the history of the United States, during the months of December 2018 and January 2019.