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Rep. Boebert heckles Biden during his State of the Union remarks on protecting veterans

Rep. Lauren Boebert, R-Colo., heckled President Biden during Tuesday’s State of the Union, just before he recalled his late son Beau Biden’s brain cancer.

Biden was in the middle of calling on Congress to pass legislation to help Iraq and Afghanistan War veterans suffering from exposure to toxic burn pits that were used to incinerate waste, with troops often using jet fuel as an accelerant.

“When they came home, many of the world’s fittest and best-trained warriors were never the same: Headaches. Numbness. Dizziness,” Biden said. “A cancer that would put them in a flag-draped coffin.”

“You put them there!” Boebert yelled, according to reporters in the House Chamber.

"Thirteen of them," she added in a reference to the 13 U.S. service members who died last year in a bomb attack in Kabul, Afghanistan.

Biden briefly paused before continuing his speech.

President Biden makes an impassioned plea.
President Biden delivers his State of the Union address in the Capitol on Tuesday. (Jim Lo Scalzo/Pool via Reuters)

“I know. One of those soldiers was my son Major Beau Biden,” the president said. “I don’t know for sure if the burn pit that he lived near in Iraq, and earlier than that, in Kosovo, was the cause of his brain cancer, or the diseases of so many of our troops, but I am committed to finding out everything we can.”

Beau Biden died in 2015 of brain cancer at age 46.

Last year, Rep. Mark Takano, D-Calif., chairman of the House Veterans’ Affairs Committee, introduced bipartisan legislation that would streamline the Veteran Administration’s review process to recognize toxic exposure as a cost of war.

The bill, the Honoring Our Promise to Address Comprehensive Toxics Act, passed out of committee last summer, but has yet to receive a full vote in the House.

On Monday, the Biden administration released a statement calling on Congress to pass the legislation.

Reps. Lauren Boebert in black, shouts loudly as Marjorie Taylor Greene stands to scream.
Reps. Lauren Boebert, R-Colo., Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., heckle President Biden during his State of the Union address on Tuesday. (Evelyn Hockstein/Pool via AP)

Boebert’s tenure in Congress has been heavily focused on opposing Biden.

By the end of her first month in office, the Colorado Republican, who previously embraced the pro-Trump QAnon conspiracy theory, had introduced four bills opposing executive orders issued by Biden regarding a range of issues, from mask mandates, to U.S. reentry into the Paris climate agreement and funding for the World Health Organization.

In June 2021, she introduced a bill to censure Biden “for his dereliction of duty at our Southern border.”

Last September, Boebert introduced articles of impeachment against Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris over the Biden administration’s handling of the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan.

“Joe Biden willfully abandoned his duty as president of the United States and violated his constitutional oath to ‘take care that the laws be faithfully executed, by failing to ensure the national security of the United States and its citizens,” Boebert said at the time.

Her impeachment bill has yet to receive a vote.