State of the Union Message (US)

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    Justices can find these speeches to Congress to be a trial.

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    Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. makes a point of going to the State of the Union address. But he does not enjoy it, once calling it “a political pep rally.”He was there again on Tuesday, accompanied by Justices Brett M. Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett, both appointed by President Trump; Justice Elena Kagan, appointed by President Barack Obama; and Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, a Reagan appointee who retired in 2018.“I’m not sure why we are there,” Chief Justice Roberts, who was appointed by President George W. Bush, said in 2010, adding: “The image of having the members of one branch of government standing up, literally surrounding the Supreme Court, cheering and hollering while the court, according to the requirements of protocol, has to sit there expressionless, I think, is very troubling.”But the chief justice has continued to attend, while other members of the court have long ago stopped going. Justice Clarence Thomas, who has said that he could not abide “the catcalls, the whooping and hollering and under-the-breath comments,” has not gone for more than a decade.Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. called the addresses “very political events” and “very awkward,” adding, “We have to sit there like the proverbial potted plant most of the time.”He did speak, sort of, in 2010 in response to President Obama’s criticism of the Citizens United campaign finance decision, then just a few days old. He mouthed the words “not true.” He has not been back since.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Why Trump’s Speech to Congress Tonight Isn’t a State of the Union Address

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      President Trump’s address later on Tuesday to a joint session of Congress may look like a State of the Union speech and sound like a State of the Union speech, but it will not be one — at least not technically.Under the Constitution, the president is mandated “from time to time” to “give to the Congress information of the state of the union.” None other than George Washington delivered the first such speech in 1790.Since then, however, the injunction has been interpreted in various ways. Some presidents, especially in the 19th century, delivered written addresses to Congress. Others did not deliver an annual address, while some also chose to speak at the end of their terms.But starting with former President Ronald Reagan in 1981, all presidents have delivered high-profile speeches to Congress shortly after their inauguration, and then again each year.Those speeches early in the term are not considered State of the Union addresses, and the American Presidency Project at U.C. Santa Barbara flags them with an asterisk in its roundup of presidential speeches to Congress.The organization argues that the distinction makes little difference.“The impact of such a speech on public, media and congressional perceptions of presidential leadership and power should be the same as if the address was an official State of the Union,” it said. More

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      Large Grocers Took Advantage of Pandemic Supply Chain Disruptions, F.T.C. Finds

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      A report found that large firms pressured suppliers to favor them over competitors. It also concluded that some retailers “seem to have used rising costs as an opportunity to further hike prices.”Large grocery retailers took advantage of supply chain disruptions to beat out smaller rivals and protect their profits during the pandemic, according to a report released by the Federal Trade Commission on Thursday.The report found that some large firms “accelerated and distorted” the effects of supply chain snarls, including by pressuring suppliers to favor them over competitors. Food and beverage retailers also posted strong profits during the height of the pandemic and continue to do so today, casting doubt on assertions that higher grocery prices are simply moving in lock step with retailers’ own rising costs, the authors argued.“Some firms seem to have used rising costs as an opportunity to further hike prices to increase their profits, and profits remain elevated even as supply chain pressures have eased,” the report read.The report’s release comes as the F.T.C. cracks down on large grocery retailers. Last month, the commission and several state attorneys general sued to block Kroger from completing its $25 billion acquisition of the grocery chain Albertsons. They argued that the deal would weaken competition and likely lead to consumers paying higher costs.The independent federal agency’s actions have helped bolster the Biden administration’s efforts to address rising prices. In recent weeks, President Biden has taken a tougher stance on grocery chains, accusing them of overcharging shoppers and earning excess profits. Although food prices are now increasing at a slower rate, they surged rapidly in 2022 and have not fallen overall. As a result, the high cost of food has continued to strain many consumers and posed a political problem for the administration.Mr. Biden has also tried to tackle the issue by fixating on food companies, denouncing them for reducing the package sizes and portions of some products without lowering prices, a practice commonly called “shrinkflation.” During his State of the Union address earlier this month, Mr. Biden again called on snack companies to put a stop to the practice.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Fine, Call It a Comeback

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      If the Joe Biden who showed up to deliver the State of the Union address last week is the Joe Biden who shows up for the rest of the campaign, you’re not going to have any more of those weak-kneed pundits suggesting he’s not up to running for re-election. Here’s hoping he does.But that’s not the only thing from Thursday night that I hope Biden holds onto. So far, the Biden team has been more sure-footed attacking Donald Trump’s threat to democracy than it has been defending Biden’s incumbency. That reflects a strange problem they face. By virtually any measure save food prices, Biden is presiding over a strong economy — stronger, by far, than most peer countries. As Noah Smith has noted, the Biden economy looks far better than Ronald Reagan’s “Morning in America”: Unemployment is lower, inflation is lower, interest rates are lower, stock market returns are better.But Americans feel otherwise. The most recent Times/Siena poll found that 74 percent of registered voters rated the economy either “poor” or “fair.” By a 15-point margin, voters said Trump’s policies helped them personally. By a 25-point margin, they said Biden’s policies hurt them personally.Voters seem to remember the tail end of Trump’s third year, when the economy was strong, and not the utter calamity of his fourth year, when his Covid response was chaos and the economy was frozen. In November of 2020, unemployment was 6.7 percent and Trump had just turned a White House celebration into a superspreader event. Republicans who say Americans should ask whether they’re better off than they were four years ago should be careful what they wish for.But Biden is in a tough spot. You don’t want to run for re-election telling voters they’re wrong and the economy is actually great. Nor can you run for re-election telling voters that they’re right and the economy is bad. Biden has often seemed a little unsure what to say about his own record. Thursday night, he figured it out.“I came to office determined to get us through one of the toughest periods in the nation’s history,” Biden said. “We have. It doesn’t make news, news — in a thousand cities and towns, the American people are writing the greatest comeback story never told.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Biden Expresses Regret for Calling an Undocumented Immigrant ‘an Illegal’

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      President Biden expressed regret on Saturday for using the word “illegal” to describe an undocumented immigrant who has been charged in the killing of a 22-year-old nursing student in Georgia, agreeing with his progressive critics that it was an inappropriate term.Mr. Biden used the word during an unscripted colloquy with Republicans during his State of the Union address on Thursday night, and then came under fire from immigration supporters who consider the term dehumanizing. Among those who said he should not have used it were several congressional Democrats.“I shouldn’t have used ‘illegal’; it’s ‘undocumented,’” Mr. Biden said on Saturday in an interview with Jonathan Capehart on MSNBC, during which he addressed his disagreements with former President Donald J. Trump.“And look, when I spoke about the difference between Trump and me, one of the things I talked about in the border was his, the way he talks about ‘vermin,’ the way he talks about these people ‘polluting the blood,’ ” he said, adding, “I talked about what I’m not going to do. What I won’t do. I’m not going to treat any, any, any of these people with disrespect.”He continued: “Look, they built the country. The reason our economy is growing. We have to control the border and more orderly flow, but I don’t share his view at all.”Mr. Capehart asked if that meant he regretted using the word “illegal.”“Yes,” Mr. Biden answered.The president’s reply went further than when he was first asked about the matter by reporters on Friday. He did not explicitly take back the term at that point, noting that the immigrant charged in the murder in Georgia was “technically not supposed to be here.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Providing Both Bombs and Food, Biden Puts Himself in the Middle of Gaza’s War

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      The president’s decision to send aid by air and sea represents a shift prompted by the growing humanitarian crisis. But it raised uncomfortable questions about America’s role.From the skies over Gaza these days fall American bombs and American food pallets, delivering death and life at the same time and illustrating President Biden’s elusive effort to find balance in an unbalanced Middle East war.The president’s decision to authorize airdrops and the construction of a temporary port to deliver desperately needed humanitarian aid to Gaza has highlighted the tensions in his policy as he continues to support the provision of U.S. weaponry for Israel’s military operation against Hamas without condition.The United States finds itself on both sides of the war in a way, arming the Israelis while trying to care for those hurt as a result. Mr. Biden has grown increasingly frustrated as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel defies the president’s pleas to do more to protect civilians in Gaza and went further in expressing that exasperation during and after his State of the Union address this past week. But Mr. Biden remains opposed to cutting off munitions or leveraging them to influence the fighting.“You can’t have a policy of giving aid and giving Israel the weapons to bomb the food trucks at the same time,” Representative Ro Khanna, Democrat of California, said in an interview the day after the speech. “There is inherent contradiction in that. And I think the administration needs to match the genuine empathy and moral concern that came out last night for Palestinian civilian lives with real accountability for Netanyahu and the extreme right-wing government there.”The newly initiated American-led air-and-sea humanitarian campaign follows the failure to get enough supplies into Gaza by land and represents a sharp turnaround by the administration. Until now, American officials had eschewed such methods as impractical, concluding that they would not provide supplies on the same scale as a functional land route and would be complicated in many ways.Airdrops are actually dangerous, as was made clear on Friday when at least five Palestinians were killed by falling aid packages, and they can create chaotic, hazardous situations without a stable distribution system on the ground. The construction of a temporary floating pier will take 30 to 60 days, if not longer, according to officials, and could entail risk for those involved, although Mr. Biden has stipulated that it be constructed offshore with no Americans on the ground.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Address Showed Biden Seeking Tricky Balance on Immigration

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      The president used his State of the Union speech to try to demonstrate that he could be tough on the border without demonizing immigrants.Confronting the fraught politics of immigration, President Biden wants to focus attention on the decision by Republicans in Congress, egged on by former President Donald J. Trump, to block a bipartisan deal that would provide an infusion of money for border security and allow the president to close off the border to asylum seekers.On the defensive, Republicans have escalated their longstanding effort to tie migrants to heinous crimes.Both strategies were on full display on Thursday night as Mr. Biden delivered his State of the Union address. He made his case that it is Republicans who are now responsible for the problems at the border, while Republicans portrayed his policies as responsible for the death of Laken Riley, a 22-year-old nursing student from Georgia who was killed in February, allegedly by a Venezuelan migrant.The dynamic has Mr. Biden, who heading into the general election campaign has signaled a harder line on immigration, walking a careful path, as his clash with Republicans on Thursday night demonstrated. He at once promised to bring back “order” at the border while also vowing not to assail migrants in the manner of Mr. Trump and his allies.“I will not demonize immigrants saying they are poison in the blood of our country,” Mr. Biden said in his address before a joint session of Congress, referring to statements by Mr. Trump that have echoes of white supremacy.“Unlike my predecessor, I know who we are as Americans, and we’re the only nation in the world with the heart and soul that draws from old and new,” Mr. Biden said. “Home to Native Americans whose ancestors have been here for thousands of years, home to people from every place on Earth.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      How Did Biden Do at the State of the Union? Readers Weigh In.

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      We asked 10 Times columnists and contributors to watch the State of the Union address on Thursday and rate President Biden’s performance. (A rating of one meant that the night was a disaster, 10 that it was a triumph.) Most were impressed. Some were a bit surprised. “Where has this Joe Biden been hiding these past three years?” Bret Stephens asked. Michelle Goldberg wrote, “What an unexpectedly rousing speech!”We also wanted to know what our readers thought, so we asked you to rate the speech and share what you thought were the best and worst moments. More than 1,000 of you wrote back. Here are a selection of your responses, edited for length and clarity:Rating Biden’s speech10: I found myself clapping alone in my living room and thinking, “Give ’em hell, Joe.” The Republicans needed a smack down. And his staring down the Supreme Court justices while quoting Samuel Alito? Women will show up and vote in record numbers. — Marguerite Dee, 72, Tampa, Fla.6: Was it feisty or angry? While I support most of President Biden’s positions, the delivery came across as an old man yelling at kids to get off his lawn. I wanted more calm and confidence to reinforce he is still up to the job. — Mike Wade, 67, Berlin, Md.10: Biden was spot on. With our reproductive and voting rights at stake, health care and the middle class being threatened with dissolution, what a comfort to see our president at his pugilistic best defending the very essence of America, and leaning forward to consolingly whisper, “I won’t let them.” — Brandi Lynn Ryder, 51, Sonora, Calif.2: He’s out of touch with younger voters like me. We don’t want the A.C.A., we want universal health care. He talks about walls of the past — what about walls he supports today? He kept repeating “history is watching.” He’s not wrong. — Daphna Thier, 36, BrooklynWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      America’s Reaganesque Mom: How to Praise Katie Britt, Even Before She Speaks

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      Talking points from the Alabama senator’s team, helpfully sent out before the State of the Union address, suggested how to extol her delivery of the Republican response.Senator Katie Britt’s team hopes viewers see her response to President Biden’s State of the Union as Reaganesque — but also, very maternal.Before President Biden even arrived at the Capitol on Thursday night, a close ally of the Alabama Republican sent a document of talking points to conservative influencers suggesting words of praise they could offer after Ms. Britt’s speech.“She came off like America’s mom — she gets it,” the document helpfully suggests. “She’s one of us. That’ll be families’ takeaway watching this.”But Ms. Britt also came across like Ronald Reagan, it declared. “The conclusion of her border section was a real ‘Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall,’ moment,” another talking point said, referring to Reagan’s historic speech in Berlin.Ms. Britt, who at 42 is the youngest Republican woman ever elected to the Senate, is on Donald J. Trump’s short list of potential running mates, according two people with direct knowledge of the list.The talking points compared her State of the Union response to some of the most famous oratory in American history, calling it “reminiscent of Reagan’s message of that Shining City on a Hill.”Comparing Ms. Britt to Mr. Biden, the document suggested saying that “it wasn’t just the massive age gap/contrast between the two” but that Ms. Britt “exposed a relatability gap — a truly generational schism.”Mr. Biden is 81. Mr. Trump is 77.A spokesman for Ms. Britt did not immediately respond to a request for comment.“His speech was tone deaf,” the talking points declared, before either Mr. Biden or Ms. Britt had uttered a word. “Hers was the perfect pitch.” More