Some GOP lawmakers waited to talk with Biden after address - here's what they told him
CBSN
The pandemic may have shrunk the audience of lawmakers at President Biden's address to a joint session of Congress Wednesday night, but it didn't put a damper on their time-honored tradition of using the occasion to buttonhole the president after his speech.
It wasn't just Democrats — Republican lawmakers, too, were spotted waiting along Biden's path to raise issues that are important to them. Mr. Biden, a longtime former senator, seemed to be in no hurry to leave after his hour-long speech and could be seen talking with a number of lawmakers for some time afterward. Congresswoman Nicole Malliotakis, a freshman representative whose district covers Staten Island, New York, used her proximity to hand Mr. Biden her business card.Ashley White received her earliest combat action badge from the United States Army soon after the first lieutenant arrived in Afghanistan. The silver military award, recognizing soldiers who've been personally engaged by an attacker during conflict, was considered an achievement in and of itself as well as an affirming rite of passage for the newly deployed. White had earned it for using her own body to shield a group of civilian women and children from gunfire that broke out in the midst of her third mission in Kandahar province. All of them survived. She never mentioned the badge to anyone in her battalion.