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Biden Administration: President Biden is scheduled to depart the White House at 7:30 a.m. ET to attend the National Prayer Breakfast on Capitol Hill at 8 a.m. He is set to depart at 11:40 a.m. en route to the Detroit area, where he will participate in a political event at 3:45 p.m. Biden will depart en route to New Castle, Del., at 7:35 p.m.

Middle East: U.S. forces struck targets belonging to Yemen’s Houthi rebels, continuing its effort to degrade the Iran-backed group’s military capabilities without triggering a broader war in the region.

Russia-Ukraine War: European Union leaders agreed to a $54 billion budget aid package for Ukraine, locking in their financing for Kyiv for the next four years and overcoming weeks of opposition from Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban.

The 357-70 vote late Wednesday overcame election-year inertia and a series of objections from lawmakers in both parties, reports Richard Rubin. Passage of the $78 billion bill—which would revive several tax provisions that had been curtailed by Republicans’ 2017 tax law—will please many business groups, antiabortion conservatives and progressive antipoverty advocates. But Senate Republicans have been lukewarm about the deal.

• A New Global Tax Is About to Raise Billions. The U.S. Is Missing Out. (Read)

After repeatedly raising and then dashing hopes that a deal could be just a day or two away, Senate Republicans and Democrats leading the talks said they hoped to release legislative text of the package soon, report Siobhan Hughes, Michelle Hackman and Lindsay Wise. They said the deal included a provision for shutting down the processing of new, unscheduled asylum claims when the border becomes overwhelmed, a measure that Republican critics have cast as a tacit acceptance of roughly 1.8 million migrants a year.

The fundraising across Trump’s campaign and outside political groups left $65 million in cash ahead of GOP contests in early primary states, report Jack Gillum and Anthony DeBarros. But some of those same super PACs last year spent nearly $48 million on Trump’s legal expenses, which were paid out at a relatively consistent clip as the former president faces several criminal and civil cases. The latest figures, made public Wednesday by the Federal Election Commission, offer the clearest financial picture of the presidential candidates as they entered 2024.

In other politics news...

• Gov. Jim Justice Is Beloved in West Virginia. Just Not by His Creditors. (Read)

• Biden to Visit East Palestine, Ohio, One Year After Train Derailment (Read)

• Topeka, Kan., Has a Message for Migrants: We Want You (Read)

The central bank held its benchmark federal-funds rate steady in a range between 5.25% and 5.5%, the highest level in more than two decades, at its first policy meeting of the year Wednesday, reports Nick Timiraos. The central bank awaits more convincing evidence that a sharp downturn in inflation at the end of last year will endure. The decision of when to cut rates is doubly difficult for Powell this year because he is doing it in the glare of election-year politics: Allies of former President Donald Trump, the Republican front-runner, have already argued that the central bank is seeking to help President Biden by signaling that cuts are coming. WSJ's Greg Ip writes that the Fed needs to be careful about setting the bar too high when it comes to declaring victory against inflation.

• Heard on the Street: What’s the Right Interest Rate for the Fed Anyway? (Read)

In other economic news...

• Heard on the Street: Biden Gas-Export Decision: Smoke, but No Fire (Read)

• Capital Account: Europe Regulates Its Way to Last Place (Read)

• One of America’s Hottest Commodities is Probably in Your Trash (Read)

Open oceans allowed a global economy to emerge from the wreckage of two world wars. The freedom for all container ships to safely ferry goods on the high seas helped lift China from poverty, turn the U.S. into a country of middle-class consumers and cement the dollar as the world’s reserve currency, report Drew Hinshaw and Daniel Michaels. But in the Red Sea, Houthi rebel attacks on cargo ships have caused freight rates to quadruple and set a precedent that American vessels aren’t welcome across one of the world’s most vital transport lanes. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has turned the Black Sea into a gauntlet of warships and mines and Beijing has asserted sovereign control over parts of the South China Sea that have long been international waters.

In other world news...

• U.S. Presses for Long Cease-Fire to Pave Way for End of Gaza War (Read)

• Humanitarian Crisis in Gaza to Deepen as Aid Is Frozen (Read)

Lawmakers repeated stories of sexual exploitation, suicide and other suffering blamed on social media, and said social-media platforms must bear more legal liability when children are harmed online, report John D. McKinnon and Ryan Tracy. The presence of grieving families lent the roughly four-hour session an emotional charge, but it wasn’t clear it would lead to a different result than previous congressional tongue-lashings of the tech industry. Several senators acknowledged the futility of their legislative response to date, despite a bipartisan consensus that the current laws don’t adequately address harms to children on the platforms.

In other regulatory news...

• Amazon Could Soon Be on the Hook for the Safety of Third-Party Products It Sells and Ships (Read)

Senior officials said the operation hijacked hundreds of infected routers and used them to covertly target American and allied critical infrastructure networks, reports Dustin Volz. They described the operation in unusually blunt terms as part of an evolving and increasingly worrisome campaign by Beijing to get a foothold in U.S. networks responsible for everything from safe drinking water to aviation traffic so it could detonate, at a moment’s notice, cyberattacks during a future conflict, including over Taiwan.

In other legal news...

• Donald Trump’s Wealth Under Siege from Civil Lawsuits (Read)

• Minority Business Grants: A New Front in the Legal Battle Over Racial Preferences (Read)

• Judge Dismisses Disney’s Suit Against Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (Read)

• Like Donald Trump, Mark Robinson—the GOP front-runner for North Carolina's gubernatorial nomination—is a fiery populist expected to easily secure his party’s nomination despite controversies—and his opponents can’t seem to touch him. (The Assembly)
• California state lawmakers introduced a slate of reparations bills, including a proposal to restore property taken by “race-based” cases of eminent domain and a potentially unconstitutional measure to provide state funding for “specific groups.” (Politico)
• Three families of American victims of Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack on Israel sued the governments of Iran and Syria and the Binance crypto exchange and its former CEO, accusing them of providing financing and other material support to Hamas’s terrorist activities. (Semafor)

Yesterday, we asked if the accusations against Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas amount to impeachable offenses.

While I wholeheartedly agree with the dissatisfaction surrounding our current border policy and response, Mayorkas's inaction and blatant mischaracterizations of the border situation sadly do not conform to the definition of impeachable offenses. Like a district attorney who refuses to prosecute, he may not be doing his job but is not violating any laws. The entire federal government is responsible for not securing our southern border, and the contributors are many.
–Matthew Barr, Texas

Mayorkas in his legal performance due his position in the government has committed no “high crimes and misdemeanors” required for Impeachment by law. The Republican Party may not like everything going on regarding Immigration and the border but this does not warrant an impeachment sideshow.
–Steve Sutton, Arizona

Impeachment of a high government official for dereliction of duty, in this case for not enforcing the law to eject illegally entering immigrants in the millions is certainly persuasive grounds for such action. The cost to this country as a result should enter heavily in the decision.
–Robert Rousse, Florida

Responses have been condensed and edited.

This newsletter is written by the WSJ Washington bureau. Send feedback to politics@wsj.com. You can follow politics coverage on our Politics page and at @wsjpolitics on X.