Facing a Republican-controlled House, a looming partisan budget battle and a swarm of GOP-led investigations, Joe Biden's 2023 State of the Union address looks to be a tightrope walk. Political and ideological tension in a divided Congress has reached a level not seen in many decades — but if White House briefings are any indication, Biden's determined to waltz right over them with an optimistic grin on his dad-visage.
Biden has only just begun his awkward courtship with House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, following the latter's week-long torment at the hands of his own party's radicals — but the two are still at the delicate "you show me yours, I'll show you mine" phase of budget talks. Meanwhile, 20 GOP attorneys general are threatening pharmacists who distribute abortion pills under new FDA approvals. And Democrats are mounting a ferocious defense of Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., the "Squad" member who was booted from the House Foreign Affairs Committee on a party-line vote. And that's not to mention the House Oversight Committee's investigative insurgency, targeting the Justice Department's open case files and the president's own son.
