WASHINGTON — In remarks pivotal to his reelection this fall, President Joe Biden in his State of the Union address Thursday night portrayed himself as the defender of democracy, touted the bipartisan deals he’s brokered during his first term in office and appealed to Congress to support Ukraine in its battle against the Russian invasion.
“My lifetime has taught me to embrace freedom and democracy,” Biden said. “A future based on the core values that have defined America: honesty, decency, dignity, equality. To respect everyone. To give everyone a fair shot. To give hate no safe harbor. Now some other people my age see a differently: an American story of resentment, revenge, and retribution. That’s not me.”
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Without ever uttering his name, Biden rebuked likely Republican opponent Donald Trump by calling him “a former president” and said that Trump’s recent comments at a rally in South Carolina about allowing Russia’s military to attack NATO allies were outrageous, dangerous and unacceptable.
“History is literally watching,” Biden said. “If the United States walks away, it will put Ukraine at risk. Europe is at risk. The free world will be at risk, emboldening others to do what they wish, to do us harm.”
Biden said that “what makes our moment rare is that freedom and democracy are under attack, both at home and overseas, at the very same time.”
The president promised to seek the restoration of reproductive rights — speaking to a chamber full of Democratic women dressed in white, intended to show their support for such rights — and with a heavy emphasis on an economic agenda he vowed to reduce health care costs, impose higher taxes on the wealthy and bring back an expanded child tax credit.
Back-and forth over immigration
Trump has made immigration a main theme of his campaign, and the Republican-led House earlier Thursday passed legislation named for a murdered college student from Georgia, Laken Riley, whose death has been tied by conservatives to White House immigration policies.
As Biden walked down the House aisle before the speech, Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, who was wearing a t-shirt bearing Riley’s name, attempted to hand Biden a button with Riley’s name on it. And when Biden mentioned immigration during his remarks, Greene continued to interrupt the president.
Biden’s address to the joint session of Congress was part campaign speech, part legislative agenda and part victory lap on the laws enacted during his first term. But it was also significant because it was the largest audience he is likely to have to himself all year, both in person and watching on television.
The speech marked an especially important moment for Biden’s reelection bid after dozens of Republicans questioned his mental faculties following Special Counsel Robert Hur’s report on classified documents, which said the president “would likely present himself to a jury, as he did during our interview of him, as a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory.”
Biden will have dozens of opportunities to take the message in his State of the Union speech directly to voters in the months ahead, beginning with a visit to the Philadelphia area on Friday and a trip to Atlanta on Saturday.
On foreign policy, Biden used the address to call for the protection of civilians in Gaza and for Hamas to release the hostages that militants have held since attacking Israel in October.
He pressed Congress to approve aid for Ukraine and Israel as well as the bipartisan border security and immigration bill that senators negotiated earlier this year — and that Republicans then dropped under pressure from Trump.
FDR reference
Biden began his speech referencing one that President Franklin Roosevelt gave in January 1941.
“President Roosevelt’s purpose was to wake up Congress and alert the American people that this was no ordinary time. Freedom and democracy were under assault in the world,” Biden said.
“Tonight I come to the same chamber to address the nation. Now it is we who face an unprecedented moment in the history of the Union,” Biden added. “And yes, my purpose tonight is to wake up this Congress, and alert the American people that this is no ordinary moment either.”
Biden assured lawmakers who think that Russian President Vladimir Putin will stop if he successfully overtakes Ukraine that he will not end his military campaign there.
Biden criticized Trump and Republican lawmakers in statehouses throughout the country for restricting or banning access to abortion in the last two years after the Supreme Court’s conservative justices overturned the constitutional right to end a pregnancy that had stood for nearly 50 years.
“My predecessor came into office determined to see Roe v. Wade overturned,” Biden said. “He’s the reason it was overturned and he brags about it. Look at the chaos that has resulted.”
Biden then called on voters to flip the U.S. House back to Democratic control while keeping the Senate blue during November’s elections.
“Clearly those bragging about overturning Roe v. Wade have no clue about the power of women in America,” Biden said. “But they found out when reproductive freedom was on the ballot and won in 2022, 2023, and they will find out again in 2024.”
“If Americans send me a Congress that supports the right to choose, I promise you: I will restore Roe v. Wade as the law of the land again,” Biden added.
Popular policy issues
Biden’s address touched on many of the policy issues that Americans view as important areas for lawmakers to address, according to a recent Pew Research Center survey.
About 73% of Americans view the economy as a top policy priority for the Biden administration, followed by defending against terrorism at 63% and reducing the influence of money in politics at 62%.
Reducing health care costs, improving education and making Social Security financially sound all tied at 60% in the poll.
Dealing with immigration received 57% while reducing the availability of illegal drugs got 55% in the survey.
Biden also called on Congress to pass a so-called Unity Agenda that includes issues he believes Republicans and Democrats can agree on.
Those bills, he said, should increase penalties for people who traffic fentanyl, provide protections for children online, bolster artificial intelligence while protecting people from “its peril” and find new ways of treating cancer.
Israel-Hamas war
Biden also discussed the war in Gaza, saying that Hamas’ attack on Israel was the “deadliest day for the Jewish people since the Holocaust.”
Biden added that more than 30,000 Palestinians have been killed, “many of whom are not Hamas.”
“Israel has an added burden because Hamas hides and operates among the civilian population, like cowards – under hospitals, daycare centers and all the like,” Biden said. “But Israel also has a fundamental responsibility to protect innocent civilians in Gaza.”
Biden said the United States would lead an effort to get more humanitarian assistance through a temporary pier installed off the coast, but he called on Israel to “do its part” and allow more aid into Gaza.
“To the leadership of Israel I say this: Humanitarian assistance cannot be a secondary consideration or a bargaining chip,” Biden said. “Protecting and saving innocent lives has to be a priority.”
“As we look to the future, the only real solution to the situation is a two-state solution over time,” Biden said.
Democratic Reps. Cori Bush of Missouri, Ilhan Omar of Minnesota and Rashida Tlaib of Michigan held up small posters that called for an immediate ceasefire.
Hours before the president’s address, pro-Palestinian activists blocked roads leading to the U.S. Capitol, according to media reports.
Many activists have pushed for Biden to call for a permanent ceasefire, as Israel’s assault on Gaza since October. Voters across numerous primary states in this week’s Democratic 2024 Super Tuesday cast “uncommitted” ballots as a protest of Biden’s continued support of Israel’s bombardment in Gaza.
By Jacob Fischler
First-term U.S. Sen. Katie Britt of Alabama delivered the Republican response to President Joe Biden’s State of the Union address Thursday night, and laid blame on Biden for a host of national and international crises — what she said is chaos at the border, in cities, in the economy and among U.S. allies.
Britt stuck mostly to familiar GOP talking points. She panned Biden’s handling of immigration, the economy, crime and foreign policy, while questioning if the 81-year-old is up to the challenge of leading the country.
But the Alabamian delivered some critiques in a more congenial Southern manner than many other national Republicans are prone to use.
“The American people are scraping by while the President proudly proclaims Bidenomics is working,” she said. “Goodness, y’all. Bless his heart. We know better.”
Seated at a kitchen table, Britt said her most important job was as “a wife and mother to two school-aged children,” and framed much of her criticism as anxiety about her children’s generation.
Biden has overseen an eroding American dream, Britt said, delivering in gentler language a central campaign theme for presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump.
“The country we know and love seems to be slipping away,” she said. “It feels like the next generation will have fewer opportunities — and less freedom — than we did. I worry my own children may not even get a shot at living their American dreams.”
The country can “do better,” Britt said.
Coming eight months before a presidential election, the State of the Union and Britt’s response were marked by heavy doses of campaign rhetoric, and Britt asked voters to reject Biden at the ballot box.
“There is no doubt we’re at a crossroads. We all feel it,” she said.
“But here’s the good news: We the people are still in the driver’s seat. We get to decide whether our future will grow brighter, or whether we settle for an America in decline. Well, I know which choice our children deserve — and the choice the Republican Party is fighting for.”
Immigration, foreign policy
As Trump and other Republicans have for the past year, Britt made a surge of migrants at the U.S.-Mexico border a central criticism of the president.
Biden came into office with “the most secure border of all time,” but squandered it with a host of executive orders meant to soften the approach to immigration Trump, his predecessor, oversaw, Britt said.
Britt said fentanyl and coming across the border and “senseless murders” were responsible for “empty chairs at kitchen tables just like this one.”
Britt cited Laken Riley, a nursing student in Georgia killed by a Venezuelan immigrant with a previous conviction for shoplifting.
Biden mentioned Riley during his address, which still didn’t satisfy Republican critics who urged him to “say her name.”
“Tonight, President Biden finally said her name,” Britt said. “But he refused to take responsibility for his own actions. Mr. President, enough is enough.”
Biden also squandered U.S. geopolitical advantages, Britt said, first with a chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan and then by entertaining a new deal to prevent Iran from gaining nuclear weapons.
“We’ve become a nation in retreat,” she said. “And the enemies of freedom see an opportunity.”
She described an unsafe world stage, highlighting U.S. casualties in the Middle East since war between Israel and the militant group Hamas began in October. She referenced the deaths of three U.S. soldiers in Jordan and two Navy seals off the coast of Somalia in January.
Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine also showed world affairs were dangerous, Britt said.
But she did not address Biden’s call roughly an hour earlier for Congress to approve funding for Ukraine. Republicans in Congress have stymied the administration’s request for additional aid to help Ukraine fight Russia’s invasion.
IVF, economy and crime
Britt said Republicans support nationwide access to in vitro fertilization, a common fertility treatment that has been in the national spotlight for more than a week after the Alabama Supreme Court issued a decision holding that excess embryos routinely created during IVF had the same legal rights as children.
“We strongly support continued nationwide access to in vitro fertilization,” Britt said. “We want to help loving moms and dads bring precious life into this world.”
While the president pointed to dropping unemployment, flattening inflation and rising wages, Britt said Biden’s message was divorced from the reality for families still “struggling to make ends meet” with the high costs of necessities such as housing and childcare.
Britt also played on voters fears’ of crime, blaming a perceived rise in violence on a liberal political ideology that accepts criminality and opposes police funding.
“For years, the left has coddled criminals and defunded the police – all while letting repeat offenders walk free. The result is tragic but foreseeable—from our small towns to America’s most iconic city streets, life is getting more and more dangerous.”
The actual crime statistics painted a less clear picture. While the interview-based annual criminal victimization survey conducted by the federal Bureau of Justice indicated an increase in violent crime from 2021 to 2022, FBI crime statistics compiled from local police reports across the country showed a drop in the national violent crime rate and the murder rate.
Unifying all of Britt’s criticisms of Biden’s policy choices was the idea that Biden was a weak leader, perhaps hobbled by age.
“Right now, our Commander in Chief is not in command,” she said. “The free world deserves better than a dithering and diminished leader.”
Launching pad?
The State of the Union response, delivered by a member of the opposing party to the president, is seen as a plum assignment for young politicians with ambitions beyond their current office.
Florida Republican Marco Rubio delivered a response in 2013, two years before he’d run for president.
Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s response to Donald Trump in 2020 raised her national profile enough that Biden reportedly vetted her as a running mate that year.
And South Carolina’s Tim Scott gave the response to Biden in 2021, two years before announcing his White House run.
Britt’s response was likely the largest audience she’s addressed since succeeding longtime Sen. Richard Shelby in 2023. Britt, 42, worked for Shelby for five years, including two as the powerful appropriator’s chief of staff.
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