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White House: President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris meet with leadership of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus in the Oval Office this morning. Mr. Biden later participates in a virtual tour of the Proterra electric battery facility in South Carolina and delivers remarks.

In Memoriam: Former Vice President Walter Mondale, a civil-rights champion who lost a 1984 White House bid in one of the largest Electoral College landslides in U.S. history, died Monday evening. He was 93.

Pillow Fight: MyPillow sued voting-machine maker Dominion, a countermove after Dominion sued MyPillow and CEO Mike Lindell for defamation over his election-fraud accusations.

President Biden and a bipartisan group of lawmakers on Monday discussed alternative ways to pay for infrastructure spending, including a smaller increase in the corporate tax rate, reports Andrew Duehren. At the meeting Monday, lawmakers and Mr. Biden discussed a more modest tax increase than the 28% rate the Biden plan proposes.

• A bipartisan group of lawmakers who have helped kick-start previous negotiations agreed to meet again this week.

The administration may require tobacco companies to reduce the nicotine in all cigarettes sold in the U.S. to levels at which they are no longer addictive, reports Jennifer Maloney. It is weighing whether to move forward on a menthol ban or a nicotine reduction in all cigarettes—or both.

• The Treasury Department appointed a senior official to a new post coordinating wide-ranging efforts to fight climate change.

• SEC Chief Gary Gensler has tapped Heather Slavkin Corzo, a labor-union investment official, as his policy director, raising expectations that the agency will embrace progressive policy goals.

• The administration plans to make an additional 22,000 seasonal guest-worker visas available this year ahead of the summer season.

Russia has moved warplanes to Crimea and bases near Ukraine to an extent greater than has previously been disclosed, adding to its capability for political intimidation or military intervention, according to commercial satellite photos of areas being used for the military buildup, report Michael R. Gordon and Georgi Kantchev.

• Jailed Russian opposition politician Alexei Navalny, weeks into a hunger strike, was hospitalized as the Kremlin brushed off U.S. warnings of repercussions if he were to die in prison.

• Some European countries want to follow the Biden administration’s lead and take a tougher line toward Moscow.

Companies are feeling pressure from younger customers and their own employees to take a position on voting rights and other issues as the political system’s failures force CEOs off the sidelines.

Some of this isn’t entirely new, of course. Several decades back, companies were expected to take positions on environmental concerns and apartheid in South Africa. On a broader scale, though, the political landscape is different. Neither party today provides a comfortable home for corporate America. The Republican Party, once the safe place for business leaders to land, has turned more populist on trade and immigration, and skeptical of big business. The Democratic Party has turned leftward. Read the full Capital Journal column.

Newly reported U.S. cases and deaths rose from a day earlier, while the seven-day moving average of new U.S. cases fell below the 14-day average, suggesting a downward trend. The U.S. faces critical weeks as cases rise in some places, though more than 25% of the population has been vaccinated.

• India locked down its capital city and said it would expand its vaccination program to all adults, as a Covid-19 surge threatened to overwhelm its healthcare system.

Minneapolis is bracing for a verdict and potential unrest after jury deliberations began in the murder trial of Derek Chauvin. On the final day of the trial Monday, both sides leaned heavily on video footage of the former Minneapolis police officer’s fatal confrontation with George Floyd last year, report Joe Barrett and Jacob Gershman.

• After the jury began deliberating, defense attorney Eric Nelson brought up the issue of whether the jury can make an independent decision, given media coverage and recent comments from Rep. Maxine Waters.
• Ms. Waters (D., Calif.) over the weekend called for people to take to the streets if Mr. Chauvin isn’t convicted.
• Judge Peter Cahill said he wished politicians would stop talking about the case and said that Mr. Nelson may have grounds for an appeal.

The high court appeared unreceptive to arguments that federal law allows noncitizens to seek lawful permanent residency when they entered the U.S. illegally but were later authorized to remain because of disasters in their homelands, report Jess Bravin and Brent Kendall.

Civil-liberties organizations are asking the Supreme Court to give the public access to past decisions by a foreign-intelligence court that authorized the expansion of mass surveillance since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, saying the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court’s rulings shouldn’t be withheld without justification, reports Jess Bravin.

Demand for lithium is expected to outpace global supply as consumers switch to battery-powered vehicles. With China currently leading in processing of the vital raw material, the U.S. government is looking to boost domestic production. 

• North Korea has equipped its army with cyber weapons, and the threat from them is growing. (New Yorker)
• In Georgia, site of the most pitched 2020 election fights, Trump supporters are still raging at their own Republican Party leaders. (Politico)
• John Sullivan, the U.S. ambassador to Russia, is resisting pressure from the Kremlin to leave the country amid rising tensions with Washington. (Axios)

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.