Nearly two years ago, Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine unified European nations, reinvigorated the trans-Atlantic alliance and forged a spirit of rare bipartisanship in Washington. Now that resolve is fraying. President Joe Biden’s administration and the European Union are struggling to deliver aid for Ukraine’s military and budget, with even some of the country’s staunchest supporters expressing doubts about its battlefield prospects and calling for negotiations to end the war.

I was stunned by the early morning headline that appeared in my email. According to The New York Times, Israeli officials had known about Hamas’ plan for more than a year before it launched its Oct. 7 attacks.

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott is up to it again, signing an unlawful new state law to make crossing into the country illegally a state misdemeanor. We don’t expect it to last much beyond when the ink has dried.

I went hunting once—on a friend’s farm in southwest Georgia. Some 50 years after I fired into a squirrel’s nest, I recall the shock of seeing them plummet lifelessly to the ground as vividly as if it were only a moment ago. I’m thinking about it now.

In this space we do the talking, about what the Daily News deems important and worthy. But today we are giving a good chunk of our space to Secretary of State Tony Blinken. America’s top diplomat gave his year-end press conference Wednesday before he left for another trip to the Mideast for the Israel-Hamas war that the terror gang launched from Gaza on Oct. 7.

Once again, the U.S. Supreme Court finds itself at the center of a national case involving access to abortion, this time around the drug mifepristone, which along with misoprostol forms part of the regimen for a so-called medication abortion. Its ruling is expected in June, and that ruling should be clear, if only to help clean up the mess it created with its overturning of Roe v. Wade a year and a half ago.

In his New York Times newsletter, business reporter Peter Coy in September argued that the only real solution for the nation’s rising debt crisis is “more tax revenue.” In other words, the government needs to take more money from Americans who work for a living.

The move by House Republicans Wednesday to formally open an impeachment inquiry against President Joe Biden was perhaps predictable back in January 2021 — with then-President Donald Trump’s second impeachment, for his role in the Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol — or even as far back as December 2019, with Trump’s first impeachment, for trying to strong-arm Ukraine’s government into helping him win reelection.

It took nearly three decades, but world leaders this week finally acknowledged the obvious: There is no way to slow climate change without winding down fossil fuels.

In exchange for approving a supplemental national-security bill providing aid to Israel and Ukraine, Republican lawmakers are insisting on a far-reaching crackdown on the flow of migrants at the US’s southern border. Many Democrats continue to resist the GOP’s demands. They should reconsider.

It’s not surprising that dozens of members of the U.S. House of Representatives are choosing to leave the dysfunctional chamber rather than seek another term. The politics are toxic. The rhetoric is ugly. And it seems that members aren’t interested in doing much besides fighting the culture wars — and one another.

Life is difficult enough for any child who ends up in foster care, and perhaps especially so for teenagers who are questioning their sexual identity. It should go without saying that foster parents in such a situation should be knowledgeable about LGBTQ issues and supportive of the child’s emotional and medical needs and preferences.

The politically inspired impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden has failed to produce any convincing evidence that Biden has committed the “high crimes and misdemeanors” required by the U.S. Constitution for the conviction and removal of a chief executive. So naturally Speaker Mike Johnson is proposing a floor vote, likely next week, to authorize the inquiry as a “necessary step.”

As President Joe Biden founders in the polls, he’s decided to revive a hackneyed progressive standby: The rampant inflation Americans have experienced under his administration is actually the fault of evil corporations.