U.S. faces threats from Russia, China
Ukrainian servicemen walk on the road toward their base near the front line in the Donetsk region on Feb. 4, 2023.
Yasuyoshi Chiba | Afp | Getty Images
Biden takes the podium tonight as Russia’s brutal war in Ukraine enters its second year with tens of thousands of casualties and no end in sight.
While Russia poses an urgent threat to world peace, China presents an even longer and trickier challenge to the United States.
This was compounded by the high-altitude Chinese surveillance balloon that moved over the United States in the last week before it was shot down by the U.S. military.
Biden will address the U.S.-China relationship in the speech, but he will not announce new retaliatory actions against Beijing over the balloon, White House aides told NBC News.
Following Biden’s address, Arkansas Republican Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders will deliver the GOP response to the speech. This will be followed by a Republican Spanish-language response, delivered by the newly elected Rep. Juan Ciscomani of Arizona.
— Christina Wilkie
The state of the union is ‘not great,’ GOP House Speaker Kevin McCarthy says
US Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) speaks during a press conference in Statuary Hall at the US Capitol in Washington, DC, on February 2, 2023.
Saul Loeb | AFP | Getty Images
President Joe Biden is expected to lay out a hopeful and optimistic message in his address Tuesday night. But to House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., America’s lingering inflation woes paint a more dire picture of the state of the union.
“It’s not great,” McCarthy, the top Republican in Congress, said Tuesday morning on CNBC’s “Squawk Box.”
“I mean, people are worried. Every breakfast, people used to have eggs and think it was no big deal, just some protein. Now it’s almost a specialty because the price is so high,” McCarthy said.
Americans are “worried about the fuel, they’re worried about their jobs,” he said, “and then when you look at the latest…
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