Los Angeles Lakers forward LeBron James surpassed Kareem Abdul-Jabbar to become the NBA’s all-time leading scorer on Tuesday, setting the new mark with a fadeaway jumpshot late in the third quarter of a home game against the Oklahoma City Thunder.

James, who entered the game needing 36 points to break Abdul-Jabbar’s record of 38,387, sent the sold-out crowd into a frenzy when the shot splashed through the net to etch his name into the history books.

Lakers great Abdul-Jabbar, who took the title from Wilt Chamberlain with his signature skyhook on April 5, 1984, sat courtside at Tuesday’s game.

Play was stopped to recognize the achievement and to let James address the crowd.

“I just want to say thank you to the Laker faithful, you guys are one of a kind,” James said.

“To be able to be in the presence of such a legend as Kareem is unbelievable, it’s very humbling. Please give a standing ovation to ‘The Captain.'”

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(NewsNation) — In his State of the Union address Tuesday, President Joe Biden asked Congress for support to stop fentanyl trafficking across the southern border. This comes as Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders, leading the GOP response, said the U.S. is experiencing the worst border crisis in American history.

Among those at the Capitol listening to Biden’s address was a heartbroken father from Newton, New Hampshire. Before the remarks, the father, named Doug, had written the president and first lady about his daughter Courtney.

According to Biden, Courtney’s discovery of pills in high school spiraled into addiction and eventually her death from a fentanyl overdose. She was just 20 years old when she died.

It’s a tragic story Biden called “all too familiar to millions of Americans.” Republicans say fentanyl flowing across the U.S.-Mexico border is exacerbating overdose deaths.

“As a mom, my heart breaks for every parent who has lost a son or daughter to addiction. 100,000 Americans a year are now killed from drug overdoses, largely from fentanyl pouring across our southern border,” Huckabee Sanders said.

In describing the last eight years without his daughter, Doug told the president, “There is no worse pain.” It’s a pain with which thousands of Americans are grappling.

According to the president’s address, fentanyl is killing more than 70,000 Americans each year. It’s why Biden says he wants to launch a “major surge” at the border to stop the production, sale and trafficking of fentanyl.

To do that, Biden said he is aiming to bring more drug detection machines to inspect cargo and stop pills and powders at the southern border. He also advocated for cracking down on couriers such as FedEx, by inspecting more packages and handing down stronger penalties.

As Biden outlined his vision for the southern border and combating fentanyl trafficking, hecklers in the chamber could be heard shouting, “It’s your fault!”

NewsNation political editor Chris Stirewalt said the heckling was prompted by lawmakers wanting attention and fundraising dollars.

“The thing that those folks want is, they want to be identified for breaking decorum. They want to be identified for being awful to Biden. They want to do that because right now they’re on Steve Bannon’s podcast or whatever the heck they’re doing, and that’s worth fundraising dollars and that’s worth points for them. That’s worth things in deep, deep red districts. So we have a perverse incentive structure here that gets people to do things that they wouldn’t do in front of their mothers,” Stirewalt said.

Despite the boisterous responses during the address, Biden appeared to punt the responsibility of resolving border issues to Congress.

“America’s border problems won’t be fixed until Congress acts,” Biden said. “If you won’t pass my comprehensive immigration reform, at least pass my plan to provide the equipment and officers to secure the border, and a pathway to citizenship for Dreamers, those on temporary status, farm workers and essential workers.”

But the GOP says Biden not securing the border, among other political conflicts, means he is “unfit” to be commander in chief.

“The Biden administration refuses to secure the border and save American lives,” Huckabee Sanders said.

Biden’s remarks come as the House Committee on Oversight and Accountability held a hearing Tuesday to question sector chiefs on the front lines of the border about the flow of fentanyl into the U.S. The president said in the last several months, 23,000 pounds of fentanyl near the border have been seized.

Republicans rejected Democratic U.S. President Joe Biden’s call for bipartisanship in his State of the Union address on Tuesday, and instead accused him of stoking culture wars in a nation they described as deeply divided.

A day after Republican U.S. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy called on Biden to work together toward compromise on the debt and spending, Arkansas Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders delivered a partisan broadside during the party’s official rebuttal to Biden’s speech.

“In the radical left’s America, Washington taxes you and lights your hard-earned money on fire. But you get crushed with high gas prices, empty grocery shelves and our children are taught to hate one another on account of their race,” said Sanders, who was White House press secretary under former President Donald Trump.

“The Biden administration seems more interested in woke fantasies than the hard reality Americans face every day,” she said.

In his first State of the Union address to a Congress that includes a Republican-controlled House of Representatives, Biden touched on some hallmarks of America’s culture wars – assault weapons, abortion and transgender youth. But those issues represented only a small fraction of what was largely an economic speech.

Biden did pledge to work with Republicans, as during the last Congress when both chambers were controlled by Democrats.

The president’s congressional audience included Republican lawmakers who question his 2020 election victory over Trump and have begun moving forward with investigations of his family and administration.

“To my Republican friends, if we could work together in the last Congress, there is no reason we can’t work together and find consensus on important things in this Congress as well,”

Biden said.

Biden and McCarthy, who as speaker sat behind the president during the address, remain at loggerheads in their approaches to the $31.4 trillion debt ceiling, which must be addressed in coming months to avoid a first-ever default.

“Mr. Speaker, I don’t want to ruin your reputation, but I look forward to working with you,” Biden told McCarthy at the outset of his remarks.

Republicans hope to exact spending cuts from Biden in exchange for raising the debt ceiling.

But Biden, who said he wants to reduce the federal deficit by taxing the wealthy, made it clear that he would not be pushed into accepting Republican spending cuts. He drew boos and shouts of “liar” by asserting that some Republicans would like to “sunset” Social Security and Medicare.

McCarthy has vowed to remain resolute in demanding spending cuts from Biden. But with a razor-thin House majority and a fractured party conference, he had difficulty being elected speaker last month and could struggle to unite his members.

A Reuters/Ipsos poll completed on Sunday found just 43% of Republicans approve of McCarthy’s job performance. That’s a far lower rate of support from within his own party than Biden, who had the approval of 76% of Democrats.

The speech appeared to foreshadow a second presidential campaign Biden is likely to launch in coming weeks – a possibility that did not escape Trump, who has already launched his own 2024 White House bid.

In a two-minute pre-recorded video, Trump presented what he called “the real State of the Union” as that of an inflation-wracked nation overrun by drug-traffickers, killers, rapists, violent criminals and “millions and millions of illegal aliens.”

The former president, facing several investigations from federal and state prosecutors, also described himself as “a victim” of Biden’s Justice Department.

U.S. Senator Mitt Romney told embattled fellow Republican Representative George Santos on Tuesday that should not be in Congress and shouldn’t have taken a central seat at President Joe Biden’s State of the Union address.

Romney, an elder statesman of the party and former Republican presidential candidate, was seen having a brief exchange with Santos, who has made multiple false claims about his past on his way into the House of Representatives chamber before the address.

“He shouldn’t be in Congress and they’re going to go through the process and hopefully get him out,” Romney told reporters after the speech. “But he shouldn’t be there and if he had any shame at all he wouldn’t be there.”

Romney said he had told Santos as much.

Santos, who represents a New York district, had taken a seat along the center aisle of the chamber, which the president, members of this Cabinet, Supreme Court justices and senators use to enter the hall.

Santos is facing ethics complaints from fellow members of Congress, but the House Ethics Committee has yet to organize for the next two years and thus cannot launch any potential investigation, an aide to Speaker Kevin McCarthy said earlier on Tuesday.

Santos has apologized for “embellishing” his resume but has rebuffed calls for his resignation from constituents and fellow New York state Republicans, saying he would vacate his seat only if he loses the next election, in 2024.

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