They have argued viciously in Congress over just about everything: Whether the Capitol insurrection should be investigated or brushed aside.
If the President’s choice for the Supreme Court should be the first Black woman. Even over whether or not to wear masks under the dome.
But as lawmakers gather for President Joe Biden’s first State of the Union address amid the gravity of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, they have mustered a rare and remarkable bipartisan resolve, determined to hold the US and its allies together in the defense of a Western-oriented democracy.
Factions on the right and left have broken off, most definitively over the long wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, creating oddball political alliances in the US and chiselling away at a shared mission.
The revival of a robust majority that’s largely supportive of Biden’s strategy toward Russia is even more striking because it is shaping up as one of the most significant rejections of Donald Trump’s embrace of Putin and the former president’s praise of Putin’s tactics as Russia invaded Ukraine. We’re all together at this point and we need to be together about what should be done, said Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky.
This year is particularly fraught amid ongoing Covid restrictions and a Capitol still largely shuttered to the public in part because of the security concerns in the aftermath of the deadly 6 January, 2021, assault by Trump supporters trying to stop Congress from certifying Biden’s election.
It’s a big worry of mine, said Rep. Adam Kinzinger, R-Ill., who said he hoped his side of the aisle is respectful and doesn’t yell out stupid things.
Leading Republican lawmakers have derided what defense hawks view as Biden’s initial reluctance to impose sanctions to deter Putin’s advance on Ukraine. Others have criticized the White House climate change agenda as creating an energy policy that boosts Russian exports, including via the Nord Stream 2 pipeline to Germany, now scrapped over the war. We all know what Putin wants, and he said so publicly: He wants to reconstitute the USSR and pull back in his orbit all the countries that were in it before, said Sen.
Jim Risch of Idaho, the top Republican on the Foreign Relations Committee. This is a seminal moment. Republican Rep. Mo Brooks, who rallied with Trump supporters ahead of last year’s assault on the Capitol and has won Trump’s endorsement in the Alabama Senate primary, lambasted Putin’s invasion as barbaric and evil.