GOP divided over whether heckling Biden hurts them

Published

3 years ago

February 9, 2023

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House Republicans are divided on whether the raucous heckling of President Biden during his State of the Union address on Tuesday night was inappropriate — or whether it helped them effectively communicate their position to the American public.

Many Republicans thought the uproar in response to Biden’s comment accusing Republicans of wanting to sunset Social Security and Medicare was justified, blaming the president for “instigating” a desired reaction that would put Republicans in a bad light. But some expressed doubts about the rowdiness that followed.

The claim about Social Security was the first to draw such an audible reaction from Republicans, who are fighting for spending cuts as a condition of raising the debt ceiling and seeking to sell those cuts to the American public.

“He started off, I thought, wonderfully. … But then you can’t stand up there and blatantly lie,” Rep. Lisa McClain (R-Mich.) said. “So as much as I wish we had had more decorum, OK, you are instigating that behavior. So it starts with the leader.”

Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) also put the blame on Biden.

“The president was trying to goad the members, and the members are passionate about it,” McCarthy said on Fox News Wednesday morning. “But the one thing that the president was saying was something that he knew was not true.”

Though Republicans have sought for decades to privatize Social Security and cut Medicare — and Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) released a proposal last year to sunset all federal programs after five years — McCarthy has repeatedly said that cuts to entitlement programs are “off the table” in debt ceiling talks, which he launched with Biden last week.

Rep. Garret Graves (R-La.) said while he thought the president deserves respect, he understands why some members found it difficult to “uphold decorum.”

“The office of the president deserves respect, period, agree or disagree,” he said.

“I got a little uneasy in my seat and pretty frustrated listening to some of the allegations that are just patently false,” Graves added.

Once the vocal pushback started, though, it didn’t stop. Later in the speech, some Republicans chanted “secure the border” and Rep. Andy Ogles (R-Tenn.) yelled “It’s your fault” when Biden mentioned fentanyl deaths.

Some thought the uproar went too far.

“I think it’s important that proper decorum be addressed not only in the chamber, but everywhere we go. And we should hold ourselves to a higher ground,” said Rep. Dave Joyce (R-Ohio), chair of the more centrist Republican Governance Group. “That’s something we shouldn’t engage in, and we should at least show the respect that’s due and owed [to] the office of president when he comes to our chamber to speak.”

The most high-profile of the hecklers Tuesday night was Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), a conservative firebrand who stood and yelled that Biden was a “liar” when the president accused Republicans of wanting to eliminate Social Security and Medicare.

The episode was reminiscent of Rep. Joe Wilson’s (R-S.C.) outburst during the State of the Union in 2009, when he shouted “you lie” to protest then-President Obama’s claim that Democrats had no designs to provide health care to undocumented immigrants.

House Democrats formally reprimanded Wilson on the floor, and the South Carolina Republican quickly apologized for letting “my emotions get the best of me.”

Greene is conceding no such fault.

“I let him know exactly how the people feel. I got more text messages last night and this morning than I did on my — probably winning both elections,” Greene told reporters outside the Capitol on Wednesday. “So, no, I have no regrets.”

McCarthy is just starting negotiations with Biden on the debt limit fight, and he projected ahead of the address that Republicans would be civil and not play “childish games” during the State of the Union.

Republican members were reminded in a morning conference meeting that there would be hot mics and cameras, and McCarthy pledged that he would not rip up a copy of Biden’s speech — in reference to then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) tearing in half a copy of former President Trump’s speech.

While McCarthy, in his Fox interview, largely defended the hecklers, he also expressed some disappointment that they had taken “the bait” in the form of Biden’s entitlements jab.

“We need to be smart,” he said. “Don’t take the bait.”

Greene, however, had other ideas.

“I wasn’t goaded into anything,” she said. “I was reacting based on how the American people feel. They’re fed up with President Biden. And I don’t have any problems with Speaker McCarthy; he’s doing a great job.”

She said McCarthy has not spoken to her since Tuesday’s speech.

Multiple times, McCarthy appeared to be shushing his conference as they jeered Biden — gestures captured by the C-SPAN cameras for the public to see — and some moderate Republicans praised the Speaker for trying to keep his conference in order.

“Kevin McCarthy’s, I think he’s doing a great job of trying to be a statesman, stand above the fray,” moderate Rep. Don Bacon (R-Neb.) said. “I’ve been impressed with what he’s been doing since he won the Speaker’s fight on Jan. 7.”

It remains to be seen whether the rowdy response will affect debt ceiling negotiations, but initial polling and research show a largely positive reaction to Biden’s speech, while independents were turned off by the back-and-forth — not welcome signs for Republicans.

A CNN flash poll found 72 percent of adult viewers, including 67 percent of independents, had a very or somewhat positive reaction to Biden’s speech.

Lee Carter, president at the communications consulting firm Maslansky + Partners, said in an analysis of live voter opinion data on Fox News that when Biden was heckled while talking about fentanyl and the border, both Republicans and Democrats gave the speech a grade of a “B” – but independent voters put it at a “D.” Watch live: House panel holds hearing on oversight, ‘weaponization’ of Justice Department Watch live: Jeffries holds weekly press conference

“The independents were really turned off by the whole exchange, and that’s one of the themes that you saw for the night,” Carter said. “The way that the Republicans behaved really did turn off a lot of independent voters.”

“What people were saying over and over again was, there should be some amount of decorum. You can fight back, you can slap back, there’s a lot of other times and places to do it,” Carter said. “They just didn’t like the sort of coliseum feel that was happening last night.”

Mychael Schnell and Aris Folley contributed.

US

At least two dead and eight critically injured in US university shooting

Published

14 mins ago

December 14, 2025

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At least two dead and eight critically injured in US university shooting

At least two people have been killed and eight others critically injured in a shooting on the campus of Brown University in Rhode Island, officials have said.

The incident is believed to be unfolding near an engineering building on the campus, according to the school’s alert system.

Providence Police and the Rhode Island State Police are responding.

It is unclear at the moment whether arrests have been made.

Brown University says no suspects are in custody and that additional shots may have been fired.

US President Donald Trump corrected an earlier post he shared online, clarifying that a suspect was not in custody. In his previous post, he had stated that a suspect was in custody.

University officials initially told students and staff that a suspect was in custody, but later said this was not the case and police were still searching for a suspect or suspects.

Officials noted that the information remained preliminary as investigators try to determine what has occurred.

Police are actively investigating and still gathering information from the scene, said Kristy DosReis, the chief public information officer for the city of Providence.

The shooting was reported near the Barus & Holley building, a seven-storey structure that houses the School of Engineering and Physics Department, according to the school’s website.

It includes 117 laboratories, 150 offices and 15 classrooms.

Brown is a private university with roughly 7,300 undergraduate students and more than 3,000 graduate students.

Providence Council member John Goncalves, whose ward includes the Brown campus, said: “We’re still getting information about what’s going on, but we’re just telling people to lock their doors and to stay vigilant.

“As a Brown alum, someone who loves the Brown community and represents this area, I’m heartbroken. My heart goes out to all the family members and the folks who’ve been impacted.”

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UK

Specialist teams and online investigators deployed across England and Wales to tackle ‘national emergency’ of violence against women and girls

Published

14 mins ago

December 14, 2025

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Specialist teams and online investigators deployed across England and Wales to tackle 'national emergency' of violence against women and girls

Specialist investigation teams for rape and sexual offences are to be created across England and Wales as the Home Secretary declares violence against women and girls a “national emergency”.

Shabana Mahmood said the dedicated units will be in place across every force by 2029 as part of Labour’s violence against women and girls (VAWG) strategy due to be launched later this week.

The use of Domestic Abuse Protection Orders (DAPOs), which had been trialled in several areas, will also be rolled out across England and Wales. They are designed to target abusers by imposing curfews, electronic tags and exclusion zones.

The orders cover all forms of domestic abuse, including economic abuse, coercive and controlling behaviour, stalking and ‘honour’-based abuse. Breaching the terms can carry a prison term of up to 5 years.

Nearly £2m will also be spent funding a network of officers to target offenders operating within the online space.

Teams will use covert and intelligence techniques to tackle violence against women and girls via apps and websites.

A similar undercover network funded by the Home Office to examine child sexual abuse has arrested over 1,700 perpetrators.

Abuse is ‘national emergency’

Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood said in a statement: “This government has declared violence against women and girls a national emergency.

“For too long, these crimes have been considered a fact of life. That’s not good enough. We will halve it in a decade.

“Today we announce a range of measures to bear down on abusers, stopping them in their tracks. Rapists, sex offenders and abusers will have nowhere to hide.”

The target to halve violence against women and girls in a decade is a Labour manifesto pledge.

The government said the measures build on existing policy, including facial recognition technology to identify offenders, improving protections for stalking victims, making strangulation a criminal offence and establishing domestic abuse specialists in 999 control rooms.

Labour has ‘failed women’

But the Conservatives said Labour had “failed women” and “broken its promises” by delaying the publication of the violence against women and girls strategy.

Shadow Home Secretary, Chris Philp, said that Labour “shrinks from uncomfortable truths, voting against tougher sentences and presiding over falling sex-offender convictions. At every turn, Labour has failed women.”