- Fox News’s Laura Ingraham as a giant screen of Trump waving to fans is projected next to her in the frame

Tonight, President Biden will deliver his final State of the Union address before the November election. He has his work cut out for him. 
 

• Biden heads into tonight’s big speech while down in the polls against disgraced former president Donald Trump in seven key swing states. There seems to be a kind of collective amnesia among a frightening percentage of the American electorate about just how bad Trump was. Biden’s steadfast support for Israel’s military campaign in Gaza has cost him support among young voters and Arab Americans. The stunning economic recovery and slate of progressive legislative victories of the Biden era are seemingly no match for lingering discontent about immigration and Gaza in the minds of many voters. In the five months since the October 7 Hamas attack that killed 1,200 Israelis, the death toll in Gaza has now surpassed 30,000, and emaciated children are filling the enclave’s overburdened and under-resourced medical centers. Even many Democrats who initially rallied around Biden as he drew Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu close are now pleading with the president to put more pressure on the ultra-right-wing Netanyahu government and publicly call for a Ramadan ceasefire and more humanitarian aid to be allowed into Gaza.
   

• One of the most prominent Jewish Democrats in Congress, Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD) said: “Nobody can question Biden’s commitment to the security of Israel.” But he added: “Now is the time when the world needs to see American leadership for peace.” He continued, even more bluntly, referring to Netanyahu and his governing coalition: “Democrats feel we don’t take orders from right-wing politicians in America, and we shouldn’t be taking orders from right-wing politicians in any other country.” Sens. Cory Booker (D-NJ) and Michael Bennet (D-CO) returned from the Middle East on Wednesday and, in a statement, spoke out against “extremist settler violence against Palestinian civilians” in the occupied West Bank and the “urgent need for a far more robust and consistent” humanitarian presence in Gaza. On Tuesday night, “Uncommitted” won 19 percent of the vote in Minnesota’s Democratic primary, a protest of Biden’s policies in Gaza. 
   

• One big tent pole in Biden’s address will undoubtedly be reproductive rights, which represents a crucial way he can distinguish himself from his opponent this November. Democratic members of Congress have invited the first child born via IVF to attend the speech. They’re also bringing the doctor who provided an abortion to a 10-year-old rape victim who was denied one in Ohio in the immediate wake of the Dobbs decision, along with two women who were forced to flee their home states to seek abortions after learning that their fetuses had fatal abnormalities. These women and several others are meant to highlight the cross-section of American women who have become entangled in the politics of reproductive restrictions, often unwittingly.

As in years past, the opposition party (in this case, Republicans) will deliver a rebuttal to the president’s State of the Union.
 

• The GOP has selected 42-year-old freshman Sen. Katie Boyd Britt (R-AL) to deliver the Republican rebuttal to Biden’s address. You may be asking “Uh, who is that?” Britt was sworn in last year as the first woman Alabama ever elected to the Senate, having replaced Sen. Richard Shelby (R-AL) for whom she served as chief of staff. She’s also married to former NFL player Wesley Britt. She currently serves as a member of the Senate Appropriations Committee and is the ranking Republican on the Homeland Security appropriations subcommittee. 
   

• But who cares about all that! It stands to reason that she was selected for her (relative) youth, and the fact that she is a woman representing Alabama, site of the recent disastrous state supreme court ruling effectively outlawing IVF. Britt makes a big song-and-dance out of her Christian faith and opposes abortion. Selecting her to deliver the rebuttal is a strategic effort to put a (again, relatively) friendly, female face to the party as they try to get back all of the women voters they have scared off. The last thing Republicans want is for Democrats to use this IVF ruling to their political advantage, so Britt is meant to put a “Hey, look! We’re not monsters after all!” spin on things after years of news revealing that anti-choice conservatives are, in fact, monsters. Following the ruling, Britt put out a statement saying: “Ultimately, IVF creates life and grows families, and it deserves the protection of the law.” She is also credited with convincing Trump to publicly embrace IVF. Still loves abortion bans, though!

President Biden has to win back a not-insignificant number of voters if he wants to keep his job come November. We hope he uses his State of the Union to show all of us that he’s listening, and is willing to change course when necessary to meet the moment.

After a long, tough week, we’re all looking forward to the same thing: political analysis. Tune in to Pod Save America this week to hear the guys cover Super Tuesday results and Biden's State of the Union address. Make sure to listen & follow on Amazon Music so you never miss an episode.

Voters in San Francisco went to the polls on Tuesday and embraced two conservative policies aimed at curbing homelessness, drug addiction, and crime. Several news outlets have highlighted how “unusual” this is for a city regarded as a stalwart of liberalism. But what it may represent above all is a misunderstanding of what true “progressivism” means. Today, San Francisco is rich. Like, really rich. The household median income in the City by the Bay was $136,689 in 2022, almost double that of the median income in New York City. The advent of Silicon Valley giants like Google and Salesforce pumped unbelievable wealth (and libertarian tech executives) into the city in the hands of a few, and gentrification and a predatory housing market broadened inequality there. San Francisco now has some of the highest rates of homelessness of any American city. The initiatives passed Tuesday will require drug screening for government assistance recipients and will give local police more surveillance power and less oversight. Both measures are pretty explicitly right-wing and do nothing to address systemic issues like homelessness and addiction. But this isn’t all that new for the city. For decades, San Francisco voters and legislators have criminalized anything associated with homelessness, like panhandling and even sitting or lying on a public sidewalk. We don’t have to change our definition of “liberal.” But it may be time to acknowledge that the “liberal San Francisco” of our collective imagination no longer jives with reality, and hasn't for some time.

Biden plans to announce that the U.S. Military will construct a temporary port on Gaza’s Mediterranean coast to deliver humanitarian aid to the enclave in his State of the Union address tonight. 

Negotiators representing Hamas left Egypt on Thursday without a breakthrough in ceasefire talks, the group said. Egypt, Qatar, and the United States have been trying to mediate a ceasefire deal before the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, which may begin on March 10, when they fear violence might escalate further. 

Gov. Kay Ivey (R-AL) signed a GOP-proposed bill to protect IVF into law on Wednesday night after weeks of backlash from the state Supreme Court ruling that embryos should be considered children, effectively banning the procedure. 

Sweden became a full member of NATO on Thursday, in a blow to Russia. 

More than two years into the United States’s wartime alliance with Ukraine, there are mutual feelings of dissatisfaction and growing frustrations between the two countries over differing military strategies and stalled aid, the New York Times reports.

How can you tell it’s an election year? Well, a bunch of fake “American” news websites created by Russian developers to push Kremlin propaganda have appeared in recent weeks. 

Lawmakers in Congress stripped $1 million earmarked for an LGBTQ+ community center in Philadelphia after a letter from Sen. John Fetterman’s (D-PA) office requested it be removed. But then Fetterman said that his staff had made the decision without his input, and implied that the conservative social media account Libs of TikTok, which had criticized the funding, had influenced the decision. Man what is going on with that guy?  

American intelligence agencies will brief Donald Trump on national security matters once he officially secures the GOP nomination this summer, despite (pretty fucking significant) concerns about his handling of classified information. The practice of an incumbent administration sharing national security intel with presidential party nominees dates back to 1952. But no nominee has ever faced criminal charges related to alleged mishandling of state secrets before. Seems like kind of an important consideration!

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Disgraced former president Donald Trump has been ordered to pay a $382,000 legal penalty to Orbis Business Intelligence founded by Christopher Steele for making defamatory statements against the company and Steele. Democrats hired Steele for opposition research about Donald Trump in the runup to the 2016 election. 

Trump also lost his bid to delay paying $83 million to New York writer E. Jean Carroll for defamation.