Only a little more than a week ago, President Joe Biden's first State of the Union address was focused largely inward, looking at the economic and public health woes besetting the U.S. But Russia's invasion of Ukraine and the war that has ensued changed all that.
The speech and the war in Ukraine gave Biden both the platform and the urgent reason to talk about the fight between democracy and autocracy not as an abstraction but as an urgent reality.
Though Ukraine initially weighed heavily in the address, Biden pivoted to other issues that concern countless Americans, such as the economy's inflation and the coronavirus pandemic.
Below is an annotated version of Biden's prepared remarks.
