Photograph by Noah Berger/Bloomberg

Tim Cook, chief executive officer of Apple Inc.

For clues about the topics President Barack Obama will cover in his State of the Union address tonight, just peruse a guest list for the event.

Of the 24 guests slated to join Michelle Obama, Jill Biden and presidential adviser Valerie Jarrett in the First Lady’s box during the president’s speech to a joint session of Congress, three are immigrants, three have military ties and three are business leaders. Obama is expected to dedicate ample time in his remarks to immigration policy, military plans and business growth, Bloomberg News reported.

He’ll also take on gun violence. The White House invitees include Cleopatra Cowley-Pendleton and Nathaniel A. Pendleton Sr.,  the parents of Hadiya Pendleton, who was shot and killed in Chicago just eight days after participating in Obama’s inauguration. Kaitlin Roig, a first grade teacher at Sandy Hook Elementary School where 2o children and six adults were massacred in December, will attend, along with Lt. Brian Murphy, the first police officer on the scene of the Sikh temple shooting in Oak Creek, Wisconsin, last August.

In spotlighting U.S. science and technological endeavors, Obama can offer a shout-out to Bobak Ferdowsi, the flight director for NASA’s Mars Curiosity rover, or Jack Andraka, a 16-year-old renowned for pioneering a pancreatic cancer detection method.

Apple CEO Tim Cook also is one of the White House guests, as is Peter Hudson, co-founder and CEO of health-care information company iTriage. Deb Carney, owner of New Glarus Brewing Company in Wisconsin, will also represent the business sector – and could even give Obama an excuse to mention his own White House beer to an audience of tens of millions.

Click here for the White House’s full guest list.

Original post is State of Union Guest List Offers Clues to Speech Content by Political Capital.

Photograph by Scott Olson/Getty Images

Community members hold a candle light vigil at Harsh park to honor Hadiya Pendleton on Feb. 1, 2013 in Chicago.

Fifteen-year-old Hadiya Pendleton attended President Barack Obama’s second-term inauguration.

First lady Michelle Obama will attend the girl’s funeral.

The trip home to Chicago for the first lady comes as the president is embroiled in a debate with Congress about curbing gun violence.

Pendleton, an honor student and band majorette at King College Prep, was shot by a fleeing gunman last week about a mile from the  South Side Chicago home of the Obama. She had participated in inaugural events in Washington a few days before her death.

The Chicago Tribune first reported that not only the first lady, but also senior White House adviser Valerie Jarrett and Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, a former superintendent of schools in Chicago, will attend the funeral on Saturday.

The local papers have called on the president to come home as well.

A Chicago Sun-Times editorial suggested Obama hasn’t paid enough attention to the violence in his home city.

“Two days after the mass murder at a school in Newton, Conn., President Barack Obama flew there to console the families and call for stricter gun control,” states the editorial, asking. “How many more children must die in Chicago before the president does the same here?”

Original post is Michelle Obama Attending Chicago Shooting-Victim’s Funeral by Political Capital.

Photograph by Daniel Acker/Bloomberg

John Kasich, governor of Ohio, center, announces his state’s choice for presidential candidate at the Republican National Convention.

Ohio Gov. John Kasich, an opponent of President Barack Obama’s federal health care program, has joined Republican governors in states including Arizona, Nevada and New Mexico in saying he supports the state accepting the Medicaid expansion under the law.

Kasich also has talked with Valerie Jarrett, a White House senior adviser, about expanding flexibility to allow more people to buy into private insurance through federal health exchanges, he says.

The first-term governor says that despite his objections to the individual mandate and other provisions in the Affordable Care Act adopted in 2010, he wants the Medicaid expansion because many poor Ohioans get care in emergency rooms. Not opting in would create “a financial chaos” at hospitals that would lose federal reimbursement for uncompensated care, and because Ohio will recapture about $13 billion in tax dollars over seven years, he adds

“It makes great sense for the state of Ohio because it will allow us to deliver care using our dollars to people who up to know haven’t been able to afford care,” Kasich said this afternoon during a presentation on his two-year budget proposal.

The U.S. Supreme Court left it up to each state to decide whether it would expand Medicaid eligibility to 138 percent of the federal poverty level, or about $23,000 a year for a family of four. For Ohio, that could mean an additional 275,000 uninsured people could gain access to coverage, said Greg Moody, director of the Ohio Office of Health Transformation.

Kasich said he also has tried to encourage other Republicans and Democrats to join him in pushing for allowing those between 100 percent and 138 percent of poverty to buy into private health exchanges. Kasich said he spoke with Jarrett on Wednesday night about it.

“I want to thank Valerie Jarrett today for being willing to work with us,” Kasich told reporters.

While state hospitals and business groups including the Greater Cleveland Partnership backed the expansion, there is opposition among the Republican members who control the Ohio House, Speaker William Batchelder told reporters last week.

Still, Kasich’s willingness to participate in the Medicaid expansion can help “break the logjam” among Republican governors opposing it, Ron Pollack, executive director of Families USA, said in a statement.

Kasich said that while he doesn’t know what other Republican governors will do, it’s a good sign that the Obama administration is talking.

“Doesn’t it stand to reason, by the fact that they are now discussing the willingness to look at other alternatives, it should send a signal not just to Republican governors but to should send a signal to everybody that there’s some willingness to try to work together?” Kasich asked. “There’s a lot of big decisions that have to be made over the next few years, and a lock-down between the political parties or even within the political parties is not helpful to the people of this country and the people of our state.”

Original post is Ohio’s Kasich Accepting Medicaid Expansion Under ‘Obama-care’ by Political Capital.

Photograph by David Paul Morris/Bloomberg

Valerie Jarrett, senior adviser to President Barack Obama, during an interview in San Francisco.

Valerie Jarrett, President Barack Obama’s senior adviser, flies in the front of Air Force One with him and dines with him on vacation and at the White House residence.

Yet, as she assessed the president’s first term today, she expressed one regret: the White House should have done more domestic travel.

Asked at a Bloomberg Breakfast at the Democratic National Convention in Tampa about what do-overs she would like to take, Jarrett said: “We should have spent more time outside of Washington in that first year.”

“If we could have energized them more in that first year,” the Democrats would not have suffered in the 2010 mid-term congressional elections, she said. The president “didn’t appreciate early on how important it was to tell” his side of the story.

In 2009, according to a count that CBS News’ Mark Knoller keeps in his White House coverage, Obama took 47 domestic trips spanning 71 days.

Original post is Obama Should’ve Gotten Out More: Valerie Jarrett by Political Capital.

Photograph by Yuri Gripas/AFP/Getty Images

President Barack Obama with senior adviser Valerie Jarrett in the Hyde Park neighborhood of Chicago.

President Barack Obama is headed home to Chicago this weekend for the family wedding of a close friend and adviser.

Republican Mitt Romney passed through last night to raise some campaign cash on the president’s home turf.

Romney raised more than $3.3 million. Speaking in a room at the upscale Public Chicago hotel, Romney said the president is in “over his head” when it comes to getting the U.S. economy restarted.

“I’m absolutely convinced that you are going to see an extraordinary resurgence of America’s economy, and it’s going to come roaring back with the right policies,” he told an audience of about 250 people who were snacking on appetizers and sipping wine, beer and cocktails.

The hotel gathering and a smaller dinner were expected to raise between $3.3 million and $3.5 million, according to Ron Gidwitz, one of the event’s organizers and a onetime Republican candidate for Illinois governor.

Romney spoke in the Pump Room, an updated version of the legendary restaurant and bar where celebrities in the era before airplane travel dined as they awaited their train connections in Chicago. The fundraiser took place less than 10 miles north of Obama’s home in Chicago’s Kenwood neighborhood.

Romney was flying out before Obama arrived, as the Republican prepares for the start of a multi-state bus tour this weekend and next week.

Obama and family are arriving for the wedding of the daughter of family friend and senior  White House adviser Valerie Jarrett.

Chicago has long been among Obama’s top fundraising hubs. So far this election season, Obama has raised $6.2 million from the Chicago metropolitan area, compared with $2.8 million for Romney, according to the Center for Responsive Politics — before last night.

Obama’s Chicago total is roughly equal to the amount he’s raised so far from the Los Angeles metropolitan area, another fundraising hotspot for the incumbent. Only the New York area has generated more for Obama, who attended more fundraising events there last night, including one at the home of actress Sarah Jessica Parker.

While Romney’s fundraising pace has increased since he secured the delegates needed for the Republican nomination, Obama’s re-election committee more than doubled his amount through April, taking in $222.3 million to $100.4 million. Obama’s re-election team had $115.2 million in the bank entering May, compared with $9.2 million for Romney.

Original post is Obama, Romney Crossed Paths in Chicago; Romney Left With Millions by Political Capital.