Following the weekend shoot-down of a Chinese surveillance balloon that drifted through
U.S. airspace for days, senior Republicans said that while Beijing was trying to send a message of American weakness, President Biden had been hesitant to take actions that could be seen as provocative. Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) charged that the U.S. should have shot down the balloon as soon as it entered American airspace over Alaska's Aleutian Islands.