| Good morning, Early Birds. Happy St. Patrick's Day. We wish the Taoiseach an easy recovery from covid. Tips: earlytips@washpost.com. Thanks for waking up with us. 🚨: "The Congressional Progressive Caucus (CPC), which represents 96 liberal House members, plans to release their slate of executive order recommendations [today], providing President Biden with directions on how to automatically lower health-care costs, increase wages for some workers, protect the environment, expand immigrant rights, overhaul policing, help care workers and institute tax changes," our colleague Marianna Sotomayor scooped. "They also plan to urge him to cancel all federal student loan debt." | - "The Congressional Black and Hispanic caucuses are expected to follow suit and publicly release their own recommendations in coming weeks, which will probably include expanding voting rights and changing the immigration system, respectively."
- "This push comes as a cascade of crises, including a war in Ukraine and soaring prices at home, have taken attention away from reviving a major plank of Biden's social spending agenda that remains stalled in the Senate … Now, with their grasp on the majority seeming tenuous, some Democrats worry not delivering could cost them voter enthusiasm long after 2022."
| | |  | On the Hill | | Ukraine's neighbors wage lobbying campaign for aid in Washington |  Several ambassadors to Ukraine's neighbors met with Samantha Power, administrator of the United States Agency for International Development, last week to discuss aid for the Ukrainian refugees fleeing into their countries. (Photo by Bill O'Leary/The Washington Post) | | | The countries next door: Central and Eastern European countries facing new pressures due to Russia's invasion of Ukraine are pressing the Biden administration to provide more aid to the Ukrainians as well as to take steps to help their own countries. The lobbying campaign isn't nearly as high-profile as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky's emotional address to Congress on Wednesday, but it has the potential to help bolster NATO's eastern flank and to ease the burden of providing for the millions of refugees fleeing Ukraine. The Early spoke with ambassadors and officials from half a dozen countries, who told us they're seeking everything from new weapons systems to economic aid to help taking care of Ukrainian refugees. The Baltic nations of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania — which don't border Ukraine but fear Russia could menace them next — have appealed to President Biden for a permanent U.S. troop presence in their countries as well as new air defense systems to help deter Russia. Rihards Kols, the chairman of the Latvian parliament's foreign affairs committee, told The Early his country appreciated the 800 troops and 20 attack helicopters the U.S. has been deployed to the Baltic countries in recent weeks. | | "But I think that is not enough," he said. "The air defense systems on the ground — this is something we really lack," he added. "And, of course, we understand that those systems are very, very costly." | | Congress is taking the Baltic nations' concerns seriously. Lawmakers included $180 million in funding to bolster their defenses in a spending bill that Biden signed in December. And Kols and his Estonian and Lithuanian counterparts will testify on Capitol Hill today at a hearing on their security predicament. "I agree with the Baltic states that they want a permanent U.S. unit stationed there," Rep. Don Bacon (R-Neb.), who co-chairs the House Baltic Caucus with Rep. Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.), told The Early. "I think that makes a clearer, more unambiguous statement than rotating units in periodically." Such a move would break with NATO's 1997 statement that it did not plan to station "substantial combat forces" in the new member countries it admitted from the former Soviet bloc. Kristjan Prikk, Estonia's ambassador to Washington, urged NATO to scrap the pledge at its meeting next week, which Biden is traveling to Brussels to attend. "This document really is not valid anymore, and we should say that," he said. The Baltic countries started pressing for a permanent U.S. troop presence even before Russia invaded Ukraine. But Gallego, who had dinner with the Baltic countries' ambassadors on Wednesday, said he thought it was more likely the U.S. would provide the Baltic states with Patriot missile batteries or other air defense systems than risk Russia's wrath by deploying U.S. troops there permanently. "A strong rotational presence probably does the same thing," he said. "It gives the deterrence that we need while at the same time not giving the Russians casus belli for attacking." | | Other countries are seeking economic help rather than military aid. | | Tiny Moldova, one of Europe's poorest countries, has asked the Biden administration for help providing for the nearly 350,000 Ukrainian refugees that it has received in recent weeks, according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. While many of the refugees have moved on to European Union countries — Moldova is not a member — more than 100,000 remain in the country, according to Eugen Caras, Moldova's ambassador to Washington. That's a lot in a country with fewer than 3 million people. "We are spending lots of money from the state budget these days to keep the refugees in good conditions," Caras said. "Of course, this is something that we are directly paying for, so financial contributions would be something that we are seeking" as soon as possible. "It's like, we needed this yesterday," he added. Oksana Markarova, Ukraine's ambassador to the U.S., and several ambassadors from neighboring countries met last week with U.S. Agency for International Development Administrator Samantha Power and Nancy Jackson, a senior official in the State Department's bureau for population, refugees and migration, to discuss the refugee crisis. One other issue that came up: securing coal to help keep Ukraine's power plants running. "The grid in Ukraine is quite unstable," said Radovan Javorčík, Slovakia's ambassador to Washington, who attended the meeting. The "most effective way to stabilize it is to provide more coal for the older, coal-burning power plants so they can provide electricity." "This is not free," he added. Power said she hoped that Poland — which uses coal similar to what's used in Ukrainian power plants — could help, according to the Polish embassy in Washington. Poland is seeking financial support from the European Commission; the Polish embassy said in a statement that "financial support for Poland in this endeavor as well as additional supplies of coal from outside of the EU are both vital." | | The Biden administration might also have some asks for Slovakia. Like Poland, Slovakia has had conversations with the administration about providing Soviet-era MiG jet fighters to Ukraine, although Slovakia has only a dozen, and not all of them are operational. But doing so would require the U.S. to speed up the delivery of F-16 fighters that Slovakia has ordered to replace its MiGs or NATO countries pledging to protect Slovakian airspace, Javorčík said. A senior U.S. defense official told reporters on Wednesday that "I think it's safe to assume" that Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin will talk to the Slovakians about military aid they could provide to Ukraine when he visits Slovakia today, per our colleague Dan Lamothe. | House Oversight panel to investigate New Mexico tech company for partisan 'audits' |  Committee chair Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-NY) delivers opening remarks during a House Oversight Committee hearing on Capitol Hill June 7, 2021 in Washington. (Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images) | | | New this morning: The House Oversight Committee is launching an investigation into EchoMail, a company run by an election conspiracy theorist, that conducted an "audit" of the 2020 election in Otero County, N.M., according to a letter provided to The Early. In a letter addressed to V.A. Shiva Ayyadurai, Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-N.Y.), the committee's chairwoman, and Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), the chairman of the subcommittee on civil rights and civil liberties, write: | - "The Oversight Committee is investigating the rise of partisan 'audits' of the 2020 election results that threaten to undermine the integrity of our election critical infrastructure and perpetuate misinformation about election results. We are deeply concerned about your company's role in this effort, given your participation in the discredited 'audit' in Maricopa County, Arizona, and your personal embrace of election conspiracy theories. The Committee is also alarmed by your company's involvement in a door to-door canvass of Otero County voters, which is apparently being conducted by volunteers from a conspiracist group whose leaders aim to 'pinpoint' a 'list of suspects' for 'criminal prosecution,' and called for 'arrests,' 'prosecutions,' and 'firing squads.'"
| | Maloney and Raskin note their concern that EchoMail's "canvass" of Otero County residents may have "lead to voter intimidation," adding that the efforts may have had a "particular impact on minority communities in Otero County," as nearly "40 percent of the county's population is non-white Hispanic." The committee also sent a letter to Kristen Clarke, the assistant attorney general for civil rights at the Department of Justice, calling for an urgent review of "potential ongoing civil rights violations arising from a canvass of voters in Otero County, New Mexico." | - "The reports coming out of New Mexico of EchoMail's canvassers harassing and intimidating people on their own property in the name of a sham 'audit' are truly disturbing," Maloney said in a statement. "I urge the Department of Justice to review potential ongoing civil rights violations arising from this so-called audit, and I look forward to uncovering the full scope of EchoMail's actions."
| | |  | On K Street | | Former DCCC chairman Vic Fazio dies at 79 | | In memoriam: Former Rep. Vic Fazio (D-Calif.), a former Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee chairman who later became a lobbyist at Akin Gump Strauss Hauser & Feld, has died at 79, the Sacramento Bee's Dale Kasler and David Lightman report. Fazio spent two decades in the House, rising to become the No. 3 House Democrat. He landed on K Street after leaving the House in 1999, working first at Clark & Weinstock (now known as Mercury Public Affairs following a merger) and then Akin Gump. He retired from the firm in 2020. | | |  | The Media | | | |  | Viral | | | Who plans on binging this weekend? 🙋 |  | | | | | | AM/PM | | Looking for more analysis in the afternoon? | | | | Weekday newsletter, PM |  | | | | | | |
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