President Joe Biden’s first State of the Union address featured, in its opening minutes, something that’s been increasingly rare in recent years: sustained bipartisan applause. Republicans especially usually make a big show of booing and heckling Democratic presidents, but Biden’s address opened with remarks on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine that united the parties in applause.
Vladimir Putin “badly miscalculated,” Biden said. “He thought he could roll into Ukraine and the world would roll over. Instead he met a wall of strength he never imagined. He met the Ukrainian people.” Biden went on to detail how “We spent months building a coalition of other freedom-loving nations from Europe and the Americas to Asia and Africa to confront Putin. I spent countless hours unifying our European allies. We shared with the world in advance what we knew Putin was planning and precisely how he would try to falsely justify his aggression.” And he announced that the U.S. was closing its air space to Russia.
Biden announced a number of plans his administration is putting into action, such as getting 60 million barrels of oil released from strategic reserves of countries around the world to minimize the impact of cutting off Russian supply; the Justice Department creating the position of chief prosecutor for pandemic fraud; a crackdown on ocean carriers that have exploited the pandemic to make record profits by “overcharging American businesses and consumers”; new, higher standards for nursing homes, set by Medicare; another round of free rapid home tests from covidtests.gov; and the Department of Veterans Affairs expanding eligibility to veterans with nine respiratory cancers.
He also hailed the major legislation already passed under his leadership: the American Rescue Plan and the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act.