OPINION: This article may contain commentary which reflects the author's opinion.
President Joe Biden was caught on a hot mic after the State of the Union address to the nation where he said something that caught the attention of many. After his speech on Tuesday, as he was leaving the joint session of Congress when he spoke to NJ Sen. Bob Menendez about Cuba.
“Bob, I gotta to talk to you about Cuba,” the president said to the New Jersey senator.
“OK,” the senator said incredulously.
“I’m serious,” the president said in the video that caught the attention of Republican Florida Sen. Marco Rubio.
“It looks like Biden wants to talk to someone about #Cuba,” the senator said.
It looks like Biden wants to talk to someone about #Cuba pic.twitter.com/RO7r8xP0zI
— Marco Rubio (@marcorubio) February 8, 2023
The New Jersey senator has been at odds with the Biden administration on several occasions over Cuba, who Sen. Menendez has had a hardline stance against.
In May, 2022 Sen. Menendez broke from president Biden when the president relaxed restrictions on group tours to Cuba, The New Jersey Globe reported.
“I am dismayed to learn the Biden administration will begin authorizing group travel to Cuba through visits akin to tourism,” he said. “To be clear, those who still believe that increasing travel will breed democracy in Cuba are simply in a state of denial. For decades, the world has been traveling to Cuba and nothing has changed.”
“From Tehran to Havana to Pyongyang, history shows us negotiations based on unilateral concessions have a failed track record of producing actual changes to the behavior of authoritarian regimes,” he said. “Giving Maduro a handful of undeserved handouts just so his regime will promise to sit down at a negotiating table is a strategy destined to fail.”
As President Joe Biden prepared to give his second State of the Union address Tuesday evening, he likely noticed not all of the U.S. Supreme Court justices were present for his speech. Reports on Wednesday noted that four of them skipped the event.
In opening his address, the president greeted five justices — John Roberts, Elena Kagan, Brett Kavanaugh, Amy Coney Barrett, and Ketanji Brown Jackson — but Clarence Thomas, Sam Alito, Sonia Sotomayor, and Neil Gorsuch did not attend.
It’s not clear at this point why they skipped out on the SOTU.
“The story of America is a story of progress and resilience,” Biden said to begin his address after recognizing Brown Jackson, whom he nominated. “Of always moving forward. Of never giving up. A story that is unique among all nations. We are the only country that has emerged from every crisis stronger than when we entered it. That is what we are doing again.”
Biden has been critical of the court, in general, over the past several months, especially after a majority ruled in June to overturn Roe v. Wade and send the issue of abortion back to the states.
In October, during a virtual fundraiser for Rep. Lisa Blunt Rochester, a Democrat from the president’s home state of Delaware, he said that the Supreme Court is “more of an advocacy group these days,” The Independent reported.
“I view this off-year election as one of the most important elections that I’ve been engaged in because a lot can change because the institutions have changed,” he said. “The Supreme Court is more of an advocacy group these days than it is… evenhanded about it.”
Last summer, the Biden administration was criticized by governors from surrounding states for allowing protests to occur in front of some justices’ homes after they decided to overturn Roe v. Wade, the 1973 case that legalized abortion in all 50 states.
The GOP governors of Maryland and Virginia responded to a letter from the Supreme Court’s highest-ranking security official after he called on them to utilize their own law enforcement resources to prevent protests at the homes of the justices.
“The governor agrees with the Marshal that the threatening activity outside the Justices’ homes has increased,” Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin spokesperson Christian Martinez said in response to a letter from Supreme Court Marshal Gail Curley that called on the governor to “enforce state law” prohibiting picketing outside the homes of the justices, Fox News reported.
“He welcomes the Marshal of the Supreme Court’s request for Fairfax County to enforce state law as they are the primary enforcement authority for the state statute,” the statement continued.
But Youngkin himself called on U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland to “do his job” by “enforcing the much more robust federal law.”
“Every resource of federal law enforcement, including the U.S. Marshals, should be involved while the Justices continue to be denied the right to live peacefully in their homes,” the GOP governor added.
