Republican Katie Britt, the junior senator from Alabama and a native of the Wiregrass, made one thing clear to the crowd gathered Tuesday morning at the U.S. Space & Rocket Center in Huntsville to hear her speak at the 2024 Washington Update breakfast.

She’s a fighter.

Britt (R-Montgomery) used the word fight multiple times during her half-hour speech to roughly 900 politicians, government officials, business people, and media members at the Huntsville-Madison County Chamber’s Washington Update.

Britt wasted little time – less than a minute in – to make a reference to “fighting’’ and segued into her Republican response to President Joe Biden’s State of the Union address that was parodied two days later on “Saturday Night Live.”

“I have enjoyed an interesting first 14 months in office,’’ she said. “I have been honored and humbled to represent each of you to be fighting on your behalf. And unless you’ve been under a rock for the last 10 days, you know that a lot of people think I’ve been fighting with a little bit too much passion, right?”

Before becoming the first female senator from Alabama and currently the youngest member of that chamber, Britt was Chief of Staff for the long-serving Sen. Richard Shelby before he retired from the Senate. Britt did not take questions from the crowd. 

About 20 minutes into her speech, sandwiched between the freshman senator listing congressional highlights while juggling roles as a wife and mother along with GOP campaign talking points, Britt updated the crowd on what’s happening in the nation’s capital regarding Huntsville and the Tennessee Valley.

Britt’s appearance was rescheduled from earlier this month when she remained in Washington to help pass six bills.

“I was proud to work with our Alabama delegation. We secured about $784 million for good work that’s happening here in the state of Alabama,” she said.

Britt said the money in those bills would go to Redstone Arsenal, Huntsville Hospital, UAH, and the Artemis program.

“I’m of the belief that if you send your tax dollars up there (to D.C.), I need to do everything I can to bring them back to you,” she said.

Britt gave the standard GOP talking points and took shots at Biden and his administration. A sampling: illegal immigrants, the border wall not being built, homeland security or lack thereof, the media, the economic threat of China, and illegal election voting, all while also applauding former President Donald Trump’s stint in the White House.

She took a turn away from the former president, however, saying a priority for the country is to rein in Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and “stop Putin.” She also took a stand against Hamas in its war with Israel.

“Everyone in this room knows that Iran is the largest state sponsor of terrorism,” she said. “We know they fund Hamas in Gaza and the Houthis in Yemen; we know they fund Hezbollah in Lebanon. And so we know the more money they have, the more money they have to finance terrorism, the more money they have to advance their nuclear agenda.”

“I went with a bipartisan delegation and felt that was very important – five days to Israel to the Middle East. After October 7th, about two weeks afterward, many of you in this room have probably seen footage from that. It is something I would never be able to wipe from my memory. Those barbaric terrorists wore GoPro cameras on their chest and on their head so we don’t have to wonder about what happened. We can see what happened that day. You can watch women be raped. You can watch them burn parents alive in front of their children. You can watch them pull Holocaust survivors from their wheelchair. It is a level of evil that I had hoped did not exist on this planet.”

Britt won the election to take Shelby’s seat and was promptly named to the Committee on Appropriations; the Subcommittee on Commerce, Justice, Science and Related Agencies; the Subcommittee on Interior, Environment and Related Agencies; the Subcommittee on Homeland Security; the Subcommittee on Energy and Water Development; the Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services, Education and Related Agencies; the Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs; the Subcommittee on Financial Institutions and Consumer Protection; the Subcommittee on Housing, Transportation and Community Development; the Subcommittee on National Security and International Trade and Finance; and the Committee on Rules and Administration. 

Other selected quotes from Britt:

• “I wanna put this in perspective for you. So if you go back to the previous administration, President Trump instituted what we call bone crushing sanctions on Iran.”
• “I will tell you from my travels, our allies have lost a tremendous amount of respect for us. And our enemies no longer fear us as they should. It is my belief that as a result of weakness in the White House, when we traveled in the Middle East, we had some of our long-time allies say directly to us, the way you left Afghanistan sent shock waves, not just in this region but across the entire planet.”
• “We have to look at where we are as Americans, where this nation is. And if we’re honest about that, we are $34.5 trillion in debt. That means every single person in this nation would need to pay about $102,000 for us to pay that down. It’s not just morally irresponsible, it’s fiscally irresponsible and it’s unsustainable.”
• “I’m gonna keep fighting on the homeland front, because the story the media is not telling you is that there is a humanitarian and a national security crisis that’s happening on our border every single day. And it doesn’t have to be this way. President Biden came into office and within minutes he said, ‘We’re gonna halt construction of the border wall. We’re gonna stop all deportations and I’m going to announce a plan to get amnesty to millions.’ Those things act as a magnet to draw more and more people here.”
• “From 2011 to 2019, the depression rates in our teens more than doubled. It coincides with the rise of use of social media. I want you to hear the uncomfortable truth about what is happening to our youth. One in three high school young women said she actually considered taking her own life. Nine percent of our teenagers in high school actually attempted death by suicide. It is imperative that we wake up and we do the hard things.”
• “In (Biden’s) first 100 days, he executed 94 executive orders and he had the inherited the most secure border of all time.”