Good morning from the WSJ Washington bureau. We produce this newsletter each weekday to deliver exclusive insights and analysis from our reporting team in Washington. Sign up here.

Biden Administration: President Biden holds meetings to discuss his legislative agenda. He'll meet with a group of House progressives at 2 p.m. ET and with and a bicameral group of moderate Democrats at 4:30 p.m.

Jan. 6 Committee: Members of the House committee probing the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol are scheduled to vote on whether to recommend to the full House that former Trump aide Steve Bannon be held in criminal contempt after he refused to testify.

WSJ Tech Live: The Wall Street Journal is hosting its second day of the three-day virtual conference. Sen. Amy Klobuchar is among the leaders interviewed today. Access to the conference is complimentary for Journal subscribers. You can see more details here.

📰 Enjoying this newsletter? Get more from WSJ and support our work with a special subscription offer.

Legislation to curb Big Tech’s influence, including by restricting online content, is gaining traction in Congress, as lawmakers narrow their targets and seek to build on public attention, reports John D. McKinnon. One of the measures with the best chance of passage is an update to the 1998 Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act.

• Action is by no means assured. Facebook and other major technology companies, including Amazon and Apple, all field extensive lobbying operations in Washington.
   
• The companies have said generally that they support updated regulation of the internet. But they warn that current congressional proposals could damage the online economy and U.S. competitiveness.

• Google CEO Sundar Pichai has called for government action in policing cyberattacks and encouraging innovation. (▶️Watch Mr. Pichai’s full interview here.)

A trading frenzy in GameStop shares earlier this year didn’t expose major weaknesses in the stock-market infrastructure, the SEC said Monday. The highly anticipated SEC report attributed the episode primarily to a rapid increase in trading by individual investors, many of whom used social-media platforms to swap ideas, reports Paul Kiernan and Alexander Osipovich. 

Mr. Ryan’s candidacy will be a testing ground for virtually every key question Democrats face next year, including whether they can win back working-class Trump voters. Moreover, there may be no Democrat in the land pulling harder for his party to get its act together and pass both a bipartisan infrastructure bill and some version of President Biden’s $3.5 trillion “human infrastructure” plan. Read the full column here.

More on Congress...

• Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen told Congress that it is imperative to increase or suspend the debt limit. 

If you want to understand the man Colin Powell was, the thing to remember is that his hobby was repairing old Volvo cars. The passion was a vestige of his working-class background, and a metaphor for the everyman approach he brought to positions of power, writes Jerry Seib. In fact, in outlook as well as background, Mr. Powell was singular.

Mr. Powell, who helped steer U.S. national security policy in the post-Vietnam era as the country’s first Black Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman, White House national security adviser and secretary of State, died Monday at 84. His family cited Covid-19 complications in a statement on Facebook, adding he had been fully vaccinated. A longtime aide said Mr. Powell also had undergone treatment in recent years for a blood cancer, multiple myeloma, which is known to weaken the immune system. Jessica Donati reports on his life and career. 

Satellites are emerging as a tool in the fight against climate change, revealing hidden sources of greenhouse-gas emissions and helping governments monitor compliance with international pacts, reports Timothy Puko. Satellite images have been used to spotlight previously unreported leaks of methane—or to bump up estimates of known emissions—in Russia, Texas, and elsewhere, in some cases triggering international scuffles.

• To strike a climate deal, poor nations say they need trillions of investment dollars from rich ones.

• 🎧The Future of Everything: Finding a better way to store renewable energy for dark seasons is the next hurdle to reaching goals for decarbonization.

• The Biden administration is moving forward on regulations that would designate "forever chemicals" as hazardous substances, which could make their distributors liable for cleaning up contaminated sites.

The Justice Department on Monday filed an emergency request with the Supreme Court that seeks to block Texas’ ban on most abortions, returning the issue to the justices after they previously declined to intervene against the new state law, reports Brent Kendall.

• The application was directed to Justice Samuel Alito, who oversees emergency matters out of the Fifth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. He ordered Texas to respond to the DOJ filing by Thursday at noon.
   
• Hours after the filing, the high court said it would expedite consideration of a separate pending request by abortion providers to hear their challenge to the law before a lower-court judgment is final.

The Supreme Court threw out two separate excessive-force lawsuits filed against police, ruling Monday that the doctrine of qualified immunity protected the officers from having to answer the allegations in court, reports Jess Bravin. 

• Separately, Mr. Trump testified under oath Monday for a 2015 lawsuit filed by protesters who accused the then-presidential candidate’s security guards of assault.

The FBI will help Haitian officials investigate the mass kidnapping of a group of American and Canadian missionaries and try to negotiate their release, White House press secretary Jen Psaki said Monday. The Haitian gang that abducted the group is asking for $17 million, report Kris Maher and Clare Ansberry. 

The Biden administration plans to limit the use of economic and financial sanctions in a shift that Treasury Department officials said should strengthen the impact of a tactic that U.S. foreign policy has relied on in recent years, reports Ian Talley. 

North Korea fired a suspected submarine-launched ballistic missile off its east coast Tuesday, Seoul’s military said, Pyongyang’s first such test in two years, report Timothy W. Martin and Dasl Yoon. Pyongyang’s latest missile test doesn’t pose a direct threat to the U.S. or its allies, the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command said.

The FDA is moving to soon allow people to receive booster shots that are different from their first Covid-19 vaccine doses, people familiar with the matter said. The FDA is seeking to authorize mixing and matching as soon as this week, reports Felicia Schwartz.

• The death of former Secretary of State Colin Powell is a reminder of the need to tamp down on the coronavirus to protect those whose health conditions make them most vulnerable. (Washington Post)
• While values of many of his other businesses are sagging, Donald Trump's fortunes are being bolstered by rising values of his Palm Beach properties. (Forbes)
• Democrats are splintering over a proposal to limit the so-called Section 230 provision that limits legal liability exposure for tech companies. (National Journal)

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