Good morning!

On this date in 1977, Jimmy Carter, in just his second day in office, fulfilled a campaign promise by pardoning all Vietnam draft evaders. And in 1997, the House voted 395-28 to reprimand then-Speaker Newt Gingrich for ethical wrongdoing, a first in the institution’s history. Gingrich was also ordered to pay $300,000 to defray the costs of a three-year congressional ethics investigation.

The State of the Union:

• Here’s the text of Obama’s SOTU, and the video.
• Most news reports this morning use words like “defiant” or “combative” to describe the speech. The NYT editorial board’s reaction is a representative take.
• Vox’s Ezra Klein thinks it’s significant that this was the first SOTU Obama has given with a robust economy at his back — and that the country’s emergence from the 2008 crisis is influencing the White House’s agenda.
• Brian Beutler writes at TNR that this SOTU was “a single component of a project that’s much more meaningful than budget brinksmanship or the 2016 campaign” — steering the nation’s political debate away from the constraints of supply-side “Reaganomics.”
• At National Journal, James Oliphant agrees that “it was a stirring defense of Big Government and its capacity for elevating the stations of its less-fortunate citizens,” but thinks that kind of liberal rhetoric may alienate working-class voters.
• Obama openly mocked Congress’ climate change deniers, and called for more robust action to fight global warming. Joe Romm looks at that angle for ThinkProgress.
• File under “outreach.” MoJo’s Tim Murphy and Patrick Caldwell note that the Republicans’ Spanish-language response to the SOTU was a translation of Sen. Joni Ernst’s speech. They add that Ernst has long been an advocate of “English-only” policies.
• About one in five Americans say this year’s SOTU is “less important” than in years past, according to Pew. The research group also notes that the two words used most frequently by Americans to describe Obama are “good” and “incompetent,” reflecting the polarized state of the public. Two other new words that haven’t popped up in prior analyses are “dictator” and “impressive.”
  

Other news…

Related –> A new WSJ poll finds an “agenda-gap” between our leaders in Washington and the public at large. Among the most prominent differences: the American people put a very low priority on signing new trade deals.

“The president has no control” –> Shiite Houthi rebels have overrun the presidential palace in Yemen’s capital, and Josh Levs, Nick Paton Walsh and Laura Smith-Spark report for CNN that government officials say the move is “the completion of a coup.” AND: CNN also reports that “two U.S. Navy warships moved into new positions in the Red Sea late Monday to be ready to evacuate Americans from the US embassy in Yemen if an order comes to do so.”

Not a drop to drink –> Residents of several Montana towns have been told not to drink the water after 50,000 gallons of crude oil spilled from a broken pipeline into the Yellowstone River. Holly Yan reports for CNN.

A “smarter, more relevant” campaign –> Anne Gearan reports for WaPo that “Hillary Rodham Clinton is assembling a heavily research-driven campaign designed to prevent a repeat of her poor performance in 2008.”

Un procès contre stupidité –> Anne Hidalgo, the mayor of Paris, said that she intends to sue Fox News over the channel’s reports about supposed “no-go zones” where non-Muslims dare not enter. “The image of Paris has been prejudiced,” she told CNN, “and the honor of Paris has been prejudiced.”

Fiscal conservatism at work –> A GOP bill that would ban abortions after 20 weeks of gestation could add up to $500 million to federal deficits over the next 10 years, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office. CBO projects that 45 percent of the additional, unwanted childbirths resulting from the bill would be paid for by Medicaid. Rebecca Shabad reports for The Hill. AND: Katie Klabusich writes at RH Reality Check that with the current make up of the Supreme Court, reproductive rights are under threat nationwide. She says that it’s no longer the case that people living in “blue” states can think of the assault on legal abortion as merely a “red” state problem.

“Going international” –> Nobody is sure how many people were killed in a massacre perpetrated in Nigeria by the extremist group Boko Haram last week. But Joshua Keating reports for Slate that the insurgency is a major threat to the country’s stability as it prepares for national elections, and adds that the clashes are spilling over borders and “fast becoming a major international conflict.”

Because why not? –> Looking for something a little lighter for your reading pleasure? Vox offers answers to nine questions about penguins you were too embarrassed to ask.

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