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1 President Biden Goes After Republicans During State Of The Union Address
President Joe Biden was late to his own State of the Union address last night, but gave what some are calling a fiery, rousing speech once he arrived. Biden addressed multiple topics during the 67-minute speech, and while he never called former President Donald Trump by name, Biden mentioned “my predecessor” 13 times, including before he delivered the line “You can’t love your country only when you win.” In the Republican response after the State of the Union, Katie Britt called Biden’s border policies “despicable” as she addressed the nation from her kitchen table, using the location to call attention to what’s known as the “kitchen table issues” important to Americans.
2 Bill To Ban TikTok In US Passes House Committee Vote 50-0
A bill that could lead to the banning of popular social media app TikTok took a big step forward yesterday. The bill was advanced out of a House committee yesterday in a unanimous 50-0 bipartisan vote, and House Speaker Mike Johnson said the bill could soon come up for a full vote. The White House has provided support in drafting the bill, a rare example of bipartisan cooperation in Washington. The bill would require ByteDance Ltd. to divest TikTok and other applications it controls within 180 days of the bill being enacted or have them prohibited in the US. The bill would also create a process for the executive branch to prohibit access to an app owned by a foreign adversary if it poses a threat to national security. TikTok pushed a notification to its US users 18 and over yesterday, prompting them to call their representatives to protest the bill. The notification told users to “speak up now – before your government strips 170 million Americans of their Constitutional right to free expression.” Users flooded the offices of lawmakers with calls in response, with some offices shutting off their phones because of the volume. The effort appeared to have backfired, with Rep. Mike Gallagher saying the move was “about intimidating members considering the bill, but tomorrow it could be misinformation or lies about an election, about a war, about any number of things.”
3 Texas Officials Say Downed Power Lines Started Smokehouse Creek Fire
Investigators with the Texas A&M Forest Service said yesterday that they had determined the Smokehouse Creek Fire, which has so far burned over a million acres of land in the Texas Panhandle and killed two people, was caused by downed power lines that ignited both that fire and the Windy Deuce Fire. Xcel Energy issued a statement yesterday saying that their facilities “appear to have been involved in an ignition,” but disputed claims that it acted negligently. The official report from the Forest Service didn’t say if the power lines that started the fire belonged to Xcel Energy. The Smokehouse Creek fire was reported to be 74-percent contained as of yesterday morning.