{"id":19280,"date":"2026-02-23T18:32:01","date_gmt":"2026-02-23T18:32:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/house-scrambling-to-host-hockey-teams-at-state-of-the-union-johnson-says\/"},"modified":"2026-02-23T18:32:01","modified_gmt":"2026-02-23T18:32:01","slug":"house-scrambling-to-host-hockey-teams-at-state-of-the-union-johnson-says","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/house-scrambling-to-host-hockey-teams-at-state-of-the-union-johnson-says\/","title":{"rendered":"House scrambling to host hockey teams at State of the Union, Johnson says"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<p>Speaker Mike Johnson said Monday House officials are scrambling to find a way to accommodate the gold-medal-winning U.S. men and women&#8217;s hockey teams at Tuesday&#8217;s State of the Union address.<\/p>\n<p>Johnson told reporters Monday he&#8217;s working to &#8220;figure out logistics&#8221; now for a potential visit from the teams, which were each invited by the White House and have dozens of players and coaches on their rosters.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;There&#8217;s no way to have special guests on the floor because it&#8217;s a literal session of Congress,&#8221; he said. &#8220;But we&#8217;re going to work and do what we can to accommodate.&#8221; <\/p>\n<p>The speaker added that House officials are &#8220;trying to work out logistics to see if there&#8217;s some way to perhaps get them into the gallery and the doors, wave and receive the applause that they&#8217;re due.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Neither team has announced plans to attend the speech, though Trump <a href=\"https:\/\/www.foxnews.com\/sports\/trump-invites-us-mens-hockey-team-state-union-speech-after-olympic-triumph\" target=\"_blank\">personally invited the men&#8217;s team<\/a> in the immediate aftermath of their overtime win Sunday, offering to send a military jet to bring them to Washington.<\/p>\n<p>A spokesperson for the women&#8217;s team <a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/albamonica\/status\/2025989449197158504?s=46&amp;t=ncdqfRV74gcQrRg3XkYQbA\" target=\"_blank\">told NBC News<\/a> that while its members are &#8220;sincerely grateful&#8221; for the invitation, they cannot attend the speech &#8220;due to the timing and previously scheduled academic and professional commitments.&#8221;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Speaker Mike Johnson said Monday House officials are scrambling to find a way to accommodate the gold-medal-winning U.S. men and women&#8217;s hockey teams at Tuesday&#8217;s State of the Union address. Johnson told reporters Monday he&#8217;s working to &#8220;figure out logistics&#8221; now for a potential visit from the teams, which were each invited by the White [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19280","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-congress"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19280","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19280"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19280\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19280"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19280"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19280"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}