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.