| |  | At the White House | | What senators are hearing about Ukrainian refugees on their trips to Europe |  Ukrainian evacuees sit on a shuttle bus transporting refugees, after crossing the Ukrainian border with Poland at the Medyka border crossing on Monday. (Photo by Angelos Tzortzinis / AFP) | | | President Biden pledged earlier this month to welcome Ukrainian refugees "with open arms if, in fact, they come all the way here." And Vice President Harris said the United States is "absolutely prepared to do what we can and what we must to support Poland," where millions of Ukrainians have fled to in recent weeks to escape the Russian invasion. Those words may soon be put to the test. Biden is expected to face pressure to do more to help with Europe's fastest growing refugee crisis since World War II when he meets with Polish Prime Minister Andrzej Duda this week in Warsaw, where officials say the city is straining to meet the needs of Ukrainians. Pressure is also rising in Washington as the crisis worsens and several senators return from visits to the region. | - "If the Germans are taking these folks in, we ought to be taking them in; if the British are taking them, we ought to be taking them in — particularly if they have connections here," said Sen. Angus King (I-Maine), who returned Sunday from a trip to Poland and Germany. "My understanding is that that is being expedited — that they're getting a special status to come in as refugees. But again, that's another piece that we have to be sure we attend to."
| | The Biden administration has maintained that the majority of refugees want to relocate to neighboring countries and very few have, so far, come to the United States. But even if the numbers remain low, any appearance that Ukrainians are having trouble coming to the United States could be politically problematic for the administration. So could any feeling among European allies that Biden isn't doing enough to help them shoulder the influx of Ukrainians. | | To help with the crisis, the United States has provided more than $293 million in humanitarian assistance — including about $48 million to Poland — that helps with the "provision of food, safe drinking water, shelter, winterization services, livelihoods assistance, emergency health care, and other protection activities to those affected by Russia's further invasion of Ukraine," according to the U.S. State Department. The Biden administration has also announced temporary protected status for Ukrainians already in the United States by March 1 that will allow them to stay here legally and work for at least the next 18 months. One issue that is already flaring up, though, is how to handle Ukrainian families who have mixed immigration status. ABC News reported last week that for Ukrainians who don't have an immediate family member who is a U.S. citizen, the process of applying for a visa "could take months, even years." | - "That pool of people is also already limited. Immigrant visas only apply to immediate family members as defined under U.S. law – spouses, unmarried children under 21, and parents," Finnegan notes.
| | That means for someone like Liza, a Ukrainian American who is seeking to host her sister at her home in Massachusetts while the war is ongoing, the process could drag out. "After a seven-day trip to Poland from Kharkiv with her 6-month-old, my sister has had to apply for and is still waiting for a U.S. visa for her baby," said Liza, who asked The Early to withhold her last name to protect her family that remains in Ukraine. "Like many others, she left behind everything because she was forced to and not because she wanted to, to save her child's life. We just want them to be safe and surrounded by family but the process of getting there is proving very difficult." The State Department told The Early that it is "working to ensure our embassies and consulates in the region have sufficient staff and resources and are prioritizing consular support to U.S. citizens and their immediate family members." With U.S. consulates in Ukraine closed, the State Department has directed all Ukrainian visa applications to the U.S. Consulate General in Frankfurt, Germany. The current legal hurdles preventing Ukrainian seeking to come to the United States underscore long-standing issues with the country's refugee system, according to advocates. | - "To say U.S. immigration processing is backlogged is maybe an understatement and to say that the visa system is difficult to navigate is probably an understatement," Sunil Varghese, the policy director at International Refugee Assistance Project, told The Early. "I think what this kind of forced displacement situation has showed us is the need to have a robust refugee processing system in place but also having humanitarian protection as kind of a an underpinning of U.S. policy — and global policy."
| | Advocacy groups have noted that previous administrations have knocked down legal and bureaucratic hurdles before: "In 1999, the Clinton-Gore administration shared responsibility with Europe by overcoming all bureaucratic obstacles to quickly welcome 20,000 Kosvars who fled to Macedonia, proving that when the White House has the will to urgently resettle refugees, it can find a way," the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations noted in a letter to Biden last week. | King's takeaways from his trip |  Camp beds are set up for refugees who fled their native, war-torn Ukraine, in the Emmaus Kirche Protestant church that has become their temporary shelter in Berlin, Germany. (Photo by Carsten Koall/Getty Images) | | | King told The Early that German and Polish officials also told visiting lawmakers they would like to see the expedited delivery of military and humanitarian materials. He said making sure the aid approved by Congress gets to Ukraine quickly will be a focus for him and others on the trip. | - "Basically the message we got was: It's one thing for you guys to vote the money. Just get the stuff here," King said, adding that "what they asked for was basically more of everything: more humanitarian aid, and certainly more more defense — Stingers, helicopters, Javelins, ammunition — a long, long, long list."
| | The senator said there were also discussions of a "Marshall Plan" for Ukraine. | - "Their infrastructure is being systematically destroyed… What one of [the U.S.] members on the trip thought that what we ought to do is try to get at [Russian President] Vladimir Putin's money and use that to rebuild the infrastructure in Ukraine, if he's really worth billions," King said.
| | Another point of discussion among the senators and the German and Polish officials was the need to hold Putin and top Russian officials accountable for any war crimes. | - "You want those generals thinking in the back of their mind: If I do this, I may be sitting in a courtroom someday having to account for for my actions," said King, who added that the group spent Saturday night in Nuremberg, Germany — where the Allies held trials after World War II for representatives of defeated Nazi Germany.
| | |  | On the Hill | | Ex-wife of Missouri GOP Senate candidate accuses him of domestic violence |  Missouri GOP Senate candidate Eric Greitens speaks during the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Orlando, Florida, on Thursday, Feb. 24. (Tristan Wheelock/Bloomberg) | | | "The ex-wife of Missouri GOP Senate candidate Eric Greitens accused him in court documents Monday of knocking her down, taking away her cellphone and keys, physically abusing their children and repeatedly threatening suicide if she did not publicly support him during the 2018 scandal that led to his resignation as governor," our colleague Michael Scherer reports. | - "In early June 2018, I became afraid for my safety and that of our children at our home, which was fairly isolated, due to Eric's unstable and coercive behavior," Sheena Greitens wrote in the filing, which was obtained from Boone County Circuit Court. "This behavior included physical violence toward our children, such as cuffing our then three-year-old son across the face at the dinner table in front of me and yanking him around by the hair."
| | The filing has united "Republicans of all stripes around the fear that he will cost the party dearly this fall if he's the GOP nominee in Missouri, a must-win race in the party's fight for control of the Senate," Politico's Natalie Allison and Burgess Everett write. Some have asked him to leave the race. | | Sen. John Thune (S.D.): |  | | | | | Sen. Josh Hawley (Mo.): |  | | | | | |  | On K Street | | The Madison Group taps House Appropriations staffer | | New hire: The Madison Group lobbying firm has hired Gladys Barcena as a senior director of government relations. She previously worked for the House Appropriations Committee's transportation, housing and urban development subcommittee. | | |  | The Data | | | The demographics of the Supreme Court, visualized: "As Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson made her way through the marble-floored hallway, into the wood-paneled room in the Hart Senate Office Building and toward her seat at the witness table on the first day of her Supreme Court confirmation hearings, she was surrounded by a cadre of White men," our colleague Robin Givhan writes. | - "They were there as professional guides, as antagonistic foils and, in the case of her husband, for personal support. They were a quick visual reminder of just how much the halls of power and the top rungs of success remain a place that they dominate."
- "For more than 200 years, White men have ruled the Supreme Court. Of the 115 justices, 108 have been White men.
- "The result is that the interpretations of Americans' rights — for instance, the right to have a lawyer, the right to abortion, protection against gender-based discrimination — have been made almost exclusively by White men," our colleague Amber Phillips writes.
| | "This is the history that Jackson is helping to topple as the first Black woman nominated to serve as an associate justice," Givhan writes. "This is the history that's being slowly laid to rest." | | |  | The Media | | | |  | Viral | | | Just in case you forgot how historic this is: |  | | | | | Who's chopping onions? 😠|  | | | | | | AM/PM | | Looking for more analysis in the afternoon? | | | | Weekday newsletter, PM |  | | | | | | |
