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Biden's Day: President Biden receives an economic briefing with Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen; participates in a roundtable on the stimulus package, and will receive a briefing from the White House Covid-19 response team.

Congress: The Senate debates Mr. Biden's $1.9 trillion Covid-19 relief package and will begin a series of roll-call votes.

Economy: Employers added 379,000 jobs in February, adding fuel to renewed growth. The unemployment rate edged down to 6.2%. 

Middle East: European powers backed away from a formal censure of Iran in a bid to revive nuclear talks between Washington and Tehran. A look at Iran's facilities suggests it has the potential to create nuclear weapons (▶️Video). Pope Francis arrived in Iraq for a visit fraught with risks. 

Washington Wire: The presidential-election results left the impression that mail-in voting increased turnout and propelled Mr. Biden to victory. Voting by mail didn’t do either, Stanford researchers say in a new paper.

Senate Democrats advanced a $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief package after making a series of adjustments related to student loans, infrastructure and other matters, with approval in the chamber expected within days, report Andrew Duehren and Kristina Peterson. Republicans can’t block Democrats from passing the legislation, but they are planning to drag out the timeline.

As legislation begins to pile up in the Senate, tensions have been renewed among Democrats over potentially ending the filibuster. Centrists are resisting a move to change the 60-vote rule for most bills, reports Kristina Peterson. Doing so would require support from all 50 Democrats, plus the tiebreaking vote of Vice President Kamala Harris.

• The nomination of Rep. Deb Haaland (D., N.M.) for interior secretary was approved by a Senate panel with a key Republican vote, Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, clearing a path to confirmation. 

Here's a look at what changes senators are making to the Covid-19 relief bill and what will likely stay the same. 

President Biden, directing his first known military operation Feb. 26, decided at the last minute against a second target in Syria when told shortly before the bombs were to land that a woman and children would be killed, report Gordon Lubold, Michael R. Gordon and Nancy A. Youssef.

• The episode was an unexpected coda to a methodical decision-making approach in which the Biden administration sought to balance competing interests in the Middle East.

Mr. Biden met Thursday with a bipartisan group of House members to discuss plans for an infrastructure package, a goal that has eluded Democratic lawmakers and his predecessor, Donald Trump, even as members of both parties and outside groups claim there is bipartisan support for such a measure, Ted Mann reports.

The U.S. temporarily suspended tariffs on Scotch, cheese, cashmere sweaters and other consumer imports from the U.K. on Thursday as the nations work to resolve a longstanding trade dispute over commercial-aircraft subsidies, Yuka Hayashi reports.

• Levies on U.S. bourbon and other whiskeys remain, because they were taxed separately in response to U.S. steel and aluminum tariffs.

Newly reported U.S. cases and deaths fell Thursday from a day earlier, but cases appear to be plateauing nationwide. The U.S. reported more than 1,700 deaths, down from Wednesday’s 2,468. 

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s top advisers successfully pushed health officials to strip a public report of data showing that more nursing-home residents had died of Covid-19 than the administration had acknowledged, according to people with knowledge of the report’s production.

A WHO team investigating the origins of Covid-19 is planning to scrap an interim report on its recent mission to China.

Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell reaffirmed his intention to keep the central bank’s easy-money policies in place until the labor market improves much further. “Today we’re still a long way from our goals of maximum employment and inflation averaging 2% over time,” he said Thursday during an interview with Nick Timiraos.

• The 30-year mortgage rate topped 3% for the first time since July.

• The federal debt is projected to almost double to 202% of GDP by 2051, the Congressional Budget Office said. 

The Supreme Court raised the hurdles for noncitizens with criminal records seeking to avoid deportation, ruling Thursday that the burden falls on them to prove that their violations aren’t among those Congress said require mandatory removal from the U.S., Jess Bravin reports.

The high court also dismissed a number of cases testing the Trump administration’s plan to withhold law-enforcement grants from cities that refused to cooperate with Department of Homeland Security efforts to deport noncitizens arrested by local police, Jess Bravin reports.

• The Biden administration and state and city governments in New York and California jointly asked the justices to dismiss the pending appeals.
• About $1.4 million annually in federal funds was at stake for San Francisco, the city attorney’s office said.

The administration’s plan to raise the cap on refugee entry into the U.S. is off to a rocky start, reports Michelle Hackman. Mr. Biden said he plans to increase the limit for this fiscal year but has yet to do so. The State Department has canceled the flights of more than 250 refugees scheduled to arrive in the U.S. over the past two weeks.

A federal judge in Louisiana said an oil-safety regulator must turn over internal communications as part of a lawsuit over the Trump administration’s rollback of a major rule passed in response to the Deepwater Horizon spill, Ted Mann reports.

The Securities and Exchange Commission said Thursday that it has assembled a task force to pursue enforcement cases against public companies or fund managers that mislead investors about strategies to address climate-change risks, Dave Michaels reports.

• Vice President Kamala Harris is becoming the focus of the pressure  progressives are exerting on the Biden administration. (Los Angeles Times)
• President Biden is staring at an immigration crisis along the Mexican border that could be as bad, or perhaps worse, than those faced by Presidents Obama and Trump. (Axios)
• Pennsylvania is launching an inquiry into whether fracking is connected to a spate of local illnesses. (New Yorker)

This newsletter is a production of the WSJ Washington bureau. Our newsletter editors are Kate Milani, Troy McCullough, James Graff, and Toula Vlahou. Send feedback to capitaljournal@wsj.com. You can follow politics coverage on our Politics page and at @wsjpolitics on Twitter.