![How Biden's political future could rest on Ukraine](https://cdn.cnn.com/cnnnext/dam/assets/220224135018-02-biden-ukraine-remarks-0224-super-tease.jpg)
How Biden's political future could rest on Ukraine
CNN
President Joe Biden is confronting an international crisis of an enormous magnitude. While Biden played a proactive role in trying to deter Russian President Vladimir Putin from invading Ukraine, it wasn't enough to stop the largest conventional military attack in Europe since World War II.
Russia's full-scale attack on Ukraine -- which comes at a moment when Biden is already struggling domestically with rising inflation, a turbulent stock market and low approval ratings -- poses an immense challenge, both in terms of policy and politics.
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Amid Democrats’ shock and bickering over how much to respond to President Donald Trump is a deeper question rippling through leaders across the Capitol and across the country: How much should they rely on the same institutional and procedural maneuvers they used during the first Trump term, and how much are they willing to wield their own wrecking balls?
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In less than a month in office the Trump administration has simultaneously dismantled foreign aid programs that support fragile democracies abroad and put on leave federal workers who protect US elections at home in a move that current and former officials say abandons decades of American commitments to democracy.
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Sen. Mitch McConnell was a generational force for the Republican Party — using procedural tactics and political will to stymie much of former President Barack Obama’s agenda, hand President Donald Trump key first-term political victories and deliver a 6-3 conservative Supreme Court majority. Now he’s the odd man out.