| Good morning, Early Birds! If you can think of a better fish pun, please let minnow: earlytips@washpost.com. Thanks for waking up with us. 🐠 | | |  | On the Hill | | A rough start for House Democrats' retreat |  Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) defends her handling of a catch-all spending bill at a Wednesday news conference. | | | Chaos in the House: House Democrats hoped to spend this week unifying around an agenda and message they could sell to voters ahead of the midterm elections. Instead, they spent Wednesday fighting with each other. House leaders had to strip $15 billion in coronavirus-related aid the Biden administration wanted from a $1.5 trillion catch-all spending bill because some in their ranks, along with Republicans, objected to how the cost of the pandemic funds was being offset. | - From Tony Romm and Marianna Sotomayor: "Republicans had demanded that the money be financed in full, resulting in a bipartisan deal that sourced the coronavirus funds from an existing pot set aside for state governments in the last stimulus law," our colleagues write. "That ultimately upset a wide array of Democrats, however, since it threatened to revoke aid that their local governors and legislators had counted on. Some lawmakers even charged they were blindsided by the concessions made by their own party's top brass."
| | With the covid funds jettisoned, House leaders spent the rest of the day and night scrambling to pass the spending package, which is needed to keep the government open and includes $14 billion in aid for Ukraine. The House will take up the coronavirus aid as a standalone bill next week without the offending offsets, but its fate is uncertain in the Senate. The acrimony arrived as Democrats head to Philadelphia for a policy retreat to discuss the year ahead and unite around a strategy for November's elections. | | The kerfuffle was emblematic of some of the long-standing divisions the party has struggled with as it attempts to reset its policy agenda and how difficult it has been to pass ambitious legislation given the party's razor thin majority. While House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) pushed back against the idea Wednesday was an avoidable fiasco — "Let's grow up without this, okay? We're in a legislative process," she told reporters — there were already signs that the Philly retreat was not going to serve as a balm for the tensions in the party. Several House Democrats aren't even bothering to attend the retreat, including a handful of "frontline" Democrats running for re-election in competitive districts, like Reps. Elissa Slotkin (D-Mich.) and Susan Wild (D-Pa.). Some frontline members for months have been ignoring advice coming out of the White House or the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, which will hold several sessions during the retreat. Instead of heading to the retreat to hear from party leaders, the most vulnerable members said their time would be better spent back home — even Rep. Chrissy Houlahan (D-Pa.), whose district is in the suburbs of the city where the event is being hosted. "I'm going to be back in my community working in my district, even though I'm from Philly," Houlahan told The Early. "It's a priority to be home. … But I'll be interested to see what comes out of it," she added. | | The strain over the party's domestic agenda was also evidenced by the itinerary for the conference, which was conspicuously missing sessions on issues that animate the liberal flank of the party — such as expanding healthcare coverage, reducing the cost of prescription drugs and police reform — but have been sidelined due to concerns of some moderates, particularly in the Senate. Democrats are also expected to discuss how to counter attacks from Republicans over issues such as rising gas prices, education and the economy. | | The day began with hope the retreat would prove fruitful. "I think it's just a chance for us to come together and figure out what the plan is from here to November and to really make sure we're on the same page around kind of the core messaging for us as Democrats in selling the agenda that we already passed and in figuring out how we respond to what we know are going to be Republican attacks," said Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), who slated to speak on Thursday afternoon about immigration. But the day ended with more questions about how the party will present a united front to voters this fall — an issue that has dogged Democrats for months. "The Democratic Party isn't the Democratic Party unless everybody's fighting over what the message should be," the veteran Democratic strategist David Axelrod told The Early in an interview last month. | | |  | At the White House | | Vice President Harris to meet with Polish President after U.S. declines Polish plan to provide jets to Ukraine |  Vice President Harris boards Air Force Two on Wed., March 9. (Saul Loeb/Pool via AP) | | | A sticky situation: As Vice President Harris prepares for today's meeting with Polish President Andrzej Duda, "the encounter has taken on an unexpected diplomatic sensitivity following Poland's proposal to provide fighter jets to be used in Ukraine — a plan that American officials worry would draw the United States and its allies closer to direct conflict with Russia," our colleague Cleve R. Wootson Jr. reports. | - The United States declined the offer, but "the idea has sent ripples through the alliance. A senior European official said in an interview that Western officials were taken aback by Poland's announcement, and another European official said he was 'sideswiped.'"
- "Those are the turbulent waters Harris must navigate. The United States has sanctioned Russia in an effort to punish its leadership since the invasion of Ukraine last month, but it has stopped short of direct military intervention that could draw the NATO alliance into a more direct conflict with Russia.
- "Poland's proposal — and the prospect of U.S.-controlled jets taking off from an air base in a NATO country to engage in the Ukraine conflict — threatens that careful balance. Russian President Vladimir Putin has long claimed that his country's aggression is a response to Western aggression, and American officials fear that the Polish plan would play into that storyline."
- "Another issue expected to be high on the agenda for the Harris-Duda meeting is U.S. aid for Ukrainian refugees."
| | President Biden, meanwhile, will discuss Russia and Ukraine this morning with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. Turkey is set to host talks today between Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba — the highest-level discussions between the two sides since Russia invaded two weeks ago. Biden will meet with Colombian President Iván Duque Márquez at the White House in the afternoon. Duque and other Colombian officials have questioned the Biden administration's outreach to oil-rich Venezuela as the war in Ukraine has caused gas prices to soar. "If you've just banned oil from what they call the Russian dictator, it's difficult to explain why are you going to be buying oil from the Venezuelan dictator," Diego Mesa, Colombia's energy minister, told the Financial Times's Myles McCormick, Justin Jacobs, Derek Brower and Gideon Long. | | |  | From the courts | | Ketanji Brown Jackson's Harvard ties raise recusal questions in Supreme Court's affirmative action case |  Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) meets with Supreme Court nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson on Tues., March 8. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post) | | | To recuse or not to recuse: "Supreme Court nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson is expected to face sharp questions from Republican senators about whether she would sit out an upcoming case examining the role race can play in college admissions because of her close ties to Harvard University," our colleagues Ann Marimow and Seung Min Kim report. | - "Several GOP lawmakers on the Senate Judiciary Committee who have begun to scrutinize Jackson's record ahead of this month's confirmation hearings said they intend to seek a direct explanation about the judge's position on her alma mater's governing board. Some contend the case examining Harvard's admissions policies would present an early test of Jackson's judicial ethics if she is confirmed."
- "Jackson, whose term on Harvard's Board of Overseers expires this spring, has not said publicly what she would do. A White House spokesman, Andrew Bates, said this week that she 'would follow the highest ethical standards when it comes to recusals.'"
- If Jackson did recuse, she would send a message that "she intends to hold herself to high ethical standards and promote confidence in the administration of justice," Texas A&M law professor Susan Fortney told our colleagues. "This may inspire other justices to examine their own conflicts and impartiality," Fortney said.
| | |  | The Data | | | The environmental consequences of redlining, visualized: "Decades of federal housing discrimination did not only depress home values, lower job opportunities and spur poverty in communities deemed undesirable because of race," our colleague Darryl Fears writes. "It's why 45 million Americans are breathing dirtier air today, according to a landmark study released Wednesday." | - "The analysis, published in the journal Environmental Science and Technology Letters, found that, compared with White people, Black and Latino Americans live with more smog and fine particulate matter from cars, trucks, buses, coal plants and other nearby industrial sources in areas that were redlined. Those pollutants inflame human airways, reduce lung function, trigger asthma attacks and can damage the heart and cause strokes."
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