| Welcome to The Daily 202! Tell your friends to sign up here. On this day in 1945, Soviet troops liberated the Nazi concentration camps at Auschwitz and Birkenau in Poland. | | |  | The big idea | | Hello. There are (a few) American forces in Ukraine |  Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis could potentially be drawn into the Ukraine conflict: there are roughly 200 Florida National Guard troops currently there on a training mission. (Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images) | | | President Biden's decision to put 8,500 troops on high alert, potentially for deployment to NATO allies on Russia's borders, has put the spotlight back on the uncomfortable fact that America already has military people in uniform inside Ukraine. Florida National Guard, to be precise. They number fewer than 200 and aren't there to fend off Russian troops — they're training and advising Ukraine's military. And they're reportedly in western Ukraine, far from the eastern border, where Russian President Vladimir Putin has massed an I-can't-believe-it's-not-an-invasion-force. But their presence adds an important wrinkle to the conversations in Washington and European capitals about whether Russia will invade, and how to respond, because of the possibility, however remote, that those American personnel might be in danger. "I'm not going to speculate about what we would or wouldn't do if there's an incursion," Pentagon spokesman John Kirby said two weeks ago. "We will make all the appropriate and proper decisions to make sure our people are safe in any event." | The DeSantis factor (yes, there is one) | | And they add another political dimension to the standoff. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) has repeatedly clashed with the White House on the road to what could be a 2024 presidential campaign. His office did not return an email asking to discuss foreign policy. DeSantis doesn't have any direct control of the contingent's deployment or possible retreat. But while the guard is on a federal mission, they remain DeSantis's constituents. | | Republicans have broadly taken three tracks on Ukraine. Some have simply accused Biden of not doing enough to deter Putin. Others have worked with Democrats to toughen a potential sanctions package. Another camp has called into question why America needs to help Ukraine at all. The National Guard deployment stretches back to 2015, under President Barack Obama. It was designed to help that former Soviet republic in the event Russia escalates beyond invading and annexing the Crimea region (as it did in 2014) and agitating separatists in eastern regions. Now the question is increasingly what happens if Putin, who regularly deplores the collapse of the Soviet Union, decides he must act militarily to smother a fledgling democracy with aspirations to join NATO, the alliance designed to deter the USSR. | | For now, U.S. officials aren't suggesting a change in course is imminent. "No decision has been made to change their mission or to remove them," Kirby said in an email to The Daily 202. "We consider their safety a paramount concern and we will obviously monitor events very closely to determine if any change to their presence and mission needs to change." On Jan. 18, Kirby said at the Pentagon briefing there were no plans to increase the size of the U.S. military presence in Ukraine. "There are no planned additional rotational troops to Ukraine at this time, no changes to what the Florida National Guard is doing on the ground." The White House declined to say whether Biden planned to speak to the deployed members of the 53rd Infantry Brigade Combat Team, keep them in Ukraine, had mentioned them to Putin in their conversations about the standoff, or discussed the matter with DeSantis. But Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin included the force in a round of pre-Christmas calls to U.S. forces deployed around the world. "President Biden has been clear that U.S. forces will not be sent to Ukraine to fight in the event of a further invasion by Russia. The National Guard troops currently there are for training purposes only," Kirby said by email. "We will make decisions about their presence at the appropriate time. Their safety and security remain paramount concerns." | | As for the standoff, it may be entering a new phase, my colleagues Robyn Dixon, Karoun Demirjian, Bryan Pietsch and Rick Noack reported Wednesday. "The United States and NATO on Wednesday delivered written responses to the Kremlin's demands for security guarantees that would curtail the military alliance's further expansion and activities in Eastern Europe, as tensions continued to escalate over Russia's buildup along its borders with Ukraine," they wrote. "The responses, which U.S. Ambassador to Russia John J. Sullivan hand-delivered to Russia's Ministry of Foreign Affairs, "sets out a serious diplomatic path forward, should Russia choose it," Secretary of State Antony Blinken told reporters. The document also lays out concerns 'about Russia's actions that undermine our security' and it offers 'our own proposals for areas where we may be able to find common ground,' he added." "The initial response to the proposals from some influential lawmakers in Russia was one of scorn. Russian parliament member Vladimir Dzhabarov, a senior figure on the Federation Council's foreign affairs committee, said Russia had made its red lines regarding NATO's expansion clear, and the United States' refusal to accept them had freed Russia to do whatever it saw as necessary. 'Now our hands are untied, and we can do as we want,' he told the Russian news agency Interfax." | | Pentagon spokesman John Kirby on the roughly 200 U.S. troops already in Ukraine | "No decision has been made to change their mission or to remove them. We consider their safety a paramount concern and we will obviously monitor events very closely to determine if any change to their presence and mission needs to change." | | | | | | | | |  | What's happening now | | Russia signals 'little optimism' on resolving crisis as the West races to shore up support for Ukraine |  Russian army service members drive MT-LB multipurpose amphibious armored carriers past tanks during drills at the Kuzminsky range in the southern Rostov region on Wednesday. (Sergey Pivovarov/Reuters) | | | "Dmitry Peskov, the Kremlin spokesman, said Putin has studied the proposals and that his response will be swift — raising the prospect of further dialogue even as more Western military aid arrives in Ukraine amid fears that Russia could push across the border at any time," Robyn Dixon and Rachel Pannett report. | Breyer expected to formally announce retirement plans, appear with Biden | | "Justice Stephen G. Breyer is expected Thursday to formally announce his plans to retire at the end of the Supreme Court's current term and is scheduled to appear alongside President Biden at the White House. The White House announced that Biden will deliver remarks about the Supreme Court at 12:30 p.m.," John Wagner reports. | U.S. economy grew 5.7 percent in 2021, fastest full-year clip since 1984, despite ongoing pandemic | | "The growth was uneven, with a burst of government spending helping propel a fast start, even as a surge in new cases and deaths in the second half of the year created new pressures. The economy grew by 6.9 percent from October to December, the Bureau of Economic Analysis said Thursday, a sharp acceleration from 2.3 percent in the previous quarter," Rachel Siegel and Andrew Van Dam report. | Sign-ups in Affordable Care Act marketplaces reach record 14.5 million | | "The popularity of ACA health plans is a substantial slice of good news for President Biden, who has made expanding access to affordable health insurance one of his principal domestic policy aims, while some approaches he favors to achieve that goal have stalled on Capitol Hill," Amy Goldstein reports. | As antisemitism rises in the pandemic, the world remembers the Holocaust | | "Holocaust survivors and politicians warned about the resurgence of antisemitism and Holocaust denial as the world remembered Nazi atrocities and commemorated the 77th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz concentration camp on Thursday," the Associated Press's Samuel Petrequin reports. | | |  | Lunchtime reads from The Post | | Breyer's retirement gives Biden a fresh opportunity for a badly needed victory |  Members of the Supreme Court pose for a group photo at the Supreme Court in Washington on April 23, 2021. (Erin Schaff/the New York Times via AP) | | | "His plate overflowing with troubles and his political standing significantly weakened, the last thing President Biden might have wanted now was another challenge, another distraction, another big battle to contest. The pending retirement of Supreme Court Justice Stephen G. Breyer, however, could be just the kind of diversion the president would welcome," Dan Balz writes. | - "With so much swirling around Biden, Breyer's retirement could provide a modest circuit breaker for a president who badly needs something to rally his party — to draw clear contrasts with the Republicans, rather than continuing to be hamstrung by a focus on Democratic infighting. And if he is successful getting his eventual nominee confirmed, he would have a much-needed victory in Congress. All that assumes that he will find a nominee around whom all elements of his party can unite and who can command 50 votes in a divided Senate."
| Conspiracy theorists, banned on major social networks, connect with audiences on newsletters and podcasts | | "Joseph Mercola, a leading anti-vaccine advocate whose screeds have been restricted by YouTube and Facebook, this month warned that the unvaccinated might soon be imprisoned in government-run camps. The week before, he circulated a study purporting to use government data to prove that more children had died of covid shots than from the coronavirus itself," Elizabeth Dwoskin reports. "Shut down by major social media platforms, Mercola has found a new way to spread these debunked claims: on Substack, the subscription-based newsletter platform that is increasingly a hub for controversial and often misleading perspectives about the coronavirus." | You shouldn't expect a scorched earth fight over Breyer's replacement. Here's why. |  Supreme Court Associate Justice Stephen G. Breyer, appointed by President Bill Clinton, sits with fellow Supreme Court justices for a group portrait at the Supreme Court Building on Nov. 30, 2018. (J. Scott Applewhite/AP) | | | "A survey on Wednesday of some of the top officials and activists in that universe indicates that they aren't planning a vicious political fight over President Joe Biden's pick to replace retiring Justice Steven Breyer. At least not yet," Politico's Meredith McGraw and Hailey Fuchs report. "Top officials at conservative judicial groups said they viewed the current landscape as less than conducive to a successful bare-knuckled confirmation fight. A Breyer retirement was long expected, Republicans do not control the Senate and, most importantly, a new justice would not shift the court's ideological balance, let alone its majority." | | |  | The latest on omicron | | U.S. coronavirus hospitalizations slow, with the Northeast showing a steep decline | | "The winter surge of coronavirus hospitalizations that reached all-time highs in the United States is showing signs of slowing, reflecting sharp declines in states of the Northeast that were the first to be battered by the highly transmissible omicron variant," Fenit Nirappil, Katie Shepherd and Dan Keating report. | | |  | The Biden agenda | | Breyer's retirement and Biden's calculated silence |  President Biden speaks during a meeting with private sector chief executive officers to discuss his Build Back Better agenda in the State Dining Room of the White House on Wednesday. (Leigh Vogel/UPI/Bloomberg News) | | | "Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer's retirement plans were publicly revealed before the White House or the justice himself was expecting it, leading to a muted response from Biden and his aides. The White House — which had learned of Breyer's plans last week, though the justice did not inform the President directly — had been preparing for the moment for more than a year. But a subdued reaction from Biden was indicative of something he has made clear for months: He won't abide any pressure from his team, however subtle, on Breyer to step down," CNN's Kevin Liptak, Phil Mattingly, Jeff Zeleny and Kaitlan Collins report. | Biden fails to change course on fossil fuels, despite a bold campaign pledge | | "One year after announcing a halt to any new federal oil and gas leasing, Biden has outpaced Donald Trump in issuing drilling permits on public lands. After setting a record for the largest offshore lease sale last year in the Gulf of Mexico, the Interior Department plans to auction off oil and gas drilling rights on more than 200,000 acres across Western states by the end of March, followed by 1 million acres in the Cook Inlet, off the coast of Alaska," Anna Phillips reports. | Critics see old patterns in the Biden administration's new approach to extremism. | | "Billed as an entirely new approach to prevention, top officials say [a new program at the Department of Homeland Security called the Center for Prevention Programs and Partnerships] puts local communities at the center in the fight against the spread of ideologies that inspire targeted violence and terrorism. But some outside observers worry that it closely resembles earlier problematic anti-terrorism efforts at DHS, and that it falls short of meeting a post-Jan. 6 reality in the U.S.," NPR's Odette Yousef reports. | | |  | Mask orders in Virginia school districts, visualized | | | "A Washington Post analysis shows that the majority of Virginia public school districts — enrolling more than two-thirds of the state's students — have opted to disobey Youngkin's mask-optional order. As of Wednesday, two days after the order was supposed to take effect, 69 districts, or 53 percent, are still requiring masks for all students inside schools," our colleague Hannah Natanson reports. | | |  | Hot on the left | | These Democratic donors are plotting to finance a primary challenge to Kyrsten Sinema |  Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.) boards an elevator during a vote at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 13. (Elizabeth Frantz/Reuters) | | | "Some of the donors who now aim to finance a campaign against the moderate Democrat from Arizona contributed to her first Senate campaign in 2018, according to people familiar with the matter. Certain financiers who want to unseat Sinema signed a recent letter to her in which they suggested her campaign should return their donations if the senator imperils voting rights legislation," CNBC's Brian Schwartz reports. | | |  | Hot on the right | | Will the Republican rift on Ukraine undercut the U.S.'s appeals to allies? | | "As President Biden tries to forge a united allied response to Russian aggression in Ukraine, unity on the home front is strained by a Republican Party torn between traditional hawks in the leadership and a wing still loyal to Donald J. Trump's isolationist instincts and pro-Russian sentiment," the New York Times's Jonathan Weisman reports. "Republican leaders, by and large, have struck an aggressive posture, encouraging Mr. Biden to get tougher on Russia, through immediate sanctions on Russian energy exports and more lethal aid to Ukraine's military. But that message has been undermined by the party's far right, which has questioned why the United States would side with Ukraine at all, and has obliquely suggested with no evidence that the president is bolstering his son Hunter Biden's business interests." | | |  | Today in Washington | | | At noon, Vice President Harris will attend the inauguration ceremony for Honduran President-elect Xiomara Castro. At 12:30 p.m., Biden will deliver remarks on the retirement of Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer with Breyer in attendance. Harris will hold a bilateral meeting with Castro at 3:05 p.m. At 3:30 p.m., Biden will receive his weekly economic briefing. Harris will depart Honduras for D.C. at 6:20 p.m. | | |  | In closing | | Amy Schneider's history-making 'Jeopardy!' streak comes to an end |  Contestant Amy Schneider on the set of "Jeopardy!" After 40 games, Schneider's winning streak has ended. (Casey Durkin/Sony Pictures Television via AP) | | | Schneider's 40-game winning streak ended with the episode that aired Wednesday night. She blanked on the clue "The only nation in the world whose name in English ends in a 'h,' it's also one of the 10 most populous," but still secured herself "a spot in 'Jeopardy!' lore with the second-most consecutive wins of all time on the long-running quiz show," Emily Yahr reports. | | Thanks for reading. See you tomorrow. | | |
