By Mary Clare Jalonick, Associated Press
WASHINGTON (AP) — Sen. Katie Britt called President Joe Biden a “dithering and diminished leader” in the Republican rebuttal to his State of the Union address Thursday evening.
The first-term Alabama Republican, the youngest woman in the Senate, delivered a stinging election-year critique of the president while sitting at her own kitchen table. She argued that “the country we know and love seems to be slipping away.”
Britt, a 42 year-old former congressional staffer and mother of two, was elected to the Senate in 2022 with former President Donald Trump’s endorsement. She promised to come to Washington as a “momma on a mission” and has carved out a unique role in the GOP conference as an adviser to Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell and an experienced former aide on the Senate Appropriations Committee.
It’s the third year in a row that Republicans have picked a woman to speak to the nation after Biden leaves the podium — and Britt’s remarks echo the same dark vision for the future under Biden and Democrats laid out by Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders in 2023 and Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds in 2022.
“For years, the left has coddled criminals and defunded the police — all while letting repeat offenders walk free,” Britt said in her response. “The result is tragic but foreseeable — from our small towns to America’s most iconic city streets, life is getting more and more dangerous.”
She criticized Biden’s foreign policy, including his chaotic 2021 withdrawal from Afghanistan and talk of a renewed nuclear deal with Iran. She did not mention Ukraine’s war with Russia, as Biden has aggressively pushed the Republican-led House to take up a Senate-passed aid package.
Britt’s rebuttal came as her state has drawn national attention for a state Supreme Court ruling in February that frozen embryos can be considered children under state law. That ruling blocked access to in…
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