State of the Union 2022 - Boebert doubles down on heckle as veteran’s widow calls for her removal

Senator Joe Manchin, who along with Kyrsten Sinema is responsible for obstructing Joe Biden’s agenda in Congress, spent last night’s State of the Union seated among Republican colleagues rather than with his own party.

This made for awkward viewing, not least when Mr Biden banged the drum for the climate and social spending package Mr Manchin scorned after months of negotiations.

Donald Trump’s Save America PAC has sent out a fundraising email off the back of last night’s speech by Joe Biden. It follows one of the organisation’s usual templates, thinly disguising a call for donations as a click-through “survey” while bombarding the reader with bold, underlined and italic text (sometimes all three at once).

Here’s the message:

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, whose incendiary political leadership in the 1990s sent the GOP down the path to where it is today, has torn into Joe Biden’s speech, telling Fox News’s Sean Hannity: “This was a very dangerous speech because either Joe Biden believed in the speech, in which case he's out of touch with reality, or it was a deliberate lie to the American people, lie after lie after lie.”

Mr Gingrich also said that “this is the last time we'll see Nancy Pelosi at a State of the Union”. She has in fact announced she’s running for re-election this year in her ultra-safe San Francisco district.

Andrew Kaczynski digs up a piece of extra-resonant State of the Union ephemera:

The hosts of The View earlier discussed the heckling of Joe Biden during last night’s address – and they didn’t hold back.

President Joe Biden did not mention student loans at all in his State of the Union address, much to the dismay of many progressive Democrats, who have wanted him to cancel student loans.

Mr Biden only mentioned higher education briefly in his remarks.

“Let’s increase Pell Grants and increase our historic support of HBCUs, and invest in what Jill – our first lady who teaches full-time – calls America’s best-kept secret: community colleges,” he said. Mr Biden’s wife Dr Jill Biden is a professor at a community college.

Republican Representative James Comer said he shared the frustrations of Lauren Boebert and Marjorie Taylor Greene who heckled President Joe Biden during the State of the Union speech.

The congressman refused to outright condemn their behaviour during an appearance on MSNBC and even went as far as claiming he had heard Democrats behave the same way during the Trump administration.

Judiciary Committee Chair Senator Dick Durbin has announced that hearings to consider the nomination of Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson to the Supreme Court will begin on 21 March and last four days.

President Biden spoke of her nomination during the State of the Union address.

NBC News anchor Chuck Todd argued that Joe Biden’s State of the Union Address may not “age well” because it did not include enough war rallying for Ukraine.

Graig Graziosi reports.

The White House has confirmed further sanctions against Russia and Belarus following the State of the Union speech in which President Joe Biden said more measures were coming.

Rolling out today are:

• Sweeping restrictions on Belarus to choke off its import of technological goods in response to its support of Putin’s war of choice.
• Full blocking sanctions on 22 Russian defense entities, imposing significant costs on weapon development and production companies.
• Export controls targeting oil refining, a key revenue source that supports the Russian military, that will impede Russia’s refining capacity over the long term.
• Measures targeting entities that support the Russian and Belarusian militaries.
• Banning Russian aircraft from entering and using domestic US airspace.

As the President announced during his address to Congress, the US will close off American air space to all Russian flights – further isolating Russia – and adding an additional squeeze on its economy. This includes aircraft certified, operated, registered or controlled by any person connected with Russia. This includes revoking all Russian airlines’ – both passenger and cargo – ability to operate to and from US destinations, as well as refusing entry of any Russian-operated aircraft into US airspace.