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Biden Administration: President Biden signs the Juneteenth National Independence Day Act into law at 3:30 p.m. ET at the White House. He and Vice President Kamala Harris will also deliver remarks. 

Juneteenth: June 19, marking the end of slavery, is about to become the first new congressionally-designated federal holiday in nearly four decades. 

Jobless Claims: Initial jobless claims for the week ended June 12 are projected to decline to a new pandemic low of 360,000, from 376,000 for the week earlier. The report is released at 8:30 a.m. ET.

Texas: Gov. Greg Abbott said the state will begin efforts to build its own wall along its border with Mexico, after Mr. Biden pulled back on former President Donald Trump’s border wall plans. The League of United Latin American Citizens indicated that it intends to fight Mr. Abbott’s move.

Two themes emerged Wednesday in the meeting between President Biden and Russian President Vladimir Putin in Geneva. 

The summit yielded little tangible policy progress, but both leaders avoided the heated rhetoric that has at times strained the bilateral relationship, report Andrew Restuccia and Ann M. Simmons. In a joint statement, they said the two countries are planning what they called a strategic stability dialogue to lay the groundwork for arms control measures.

• Mr. Putin also denied involvement in cyberattacks and Mr. Biden warned of significant consequences for future cyber-aggression or harm to jailed Russian dissident Alexei Navalny. 
• A senior Biden administration official said Ukraine was among the areas where Messrs. Biden and Putin had clear differences.

The U.S. and European Union plan to cooperate more on technology regulation, industrial development and bilateral trade, European Commission Executive Vice President Margrethe Vestager told WSJ, in a bid to help Western allies better compete with China and Russia.

A federal judge ordered a mistrial in the trial of a scientist accused of hiding his work in Beijing in order to obtain U.S. government research grants, pointing to challenges in a government effort to police scientific collaboration with China, reports Aruna Viswanatha.

The U.S. Marshals Service has neither the capabilities nor the resources to adequately protect federal judges at a time when threats against them have skyrocketed, according to a government watchdog report.

Covid-19 is unlikely to vanish. Public-health authorities are preparing for Americans to live with the disease lurking in the background for the long run, with steps like close surveillance and rapid response to outbreaks in a partially vaccinated population, reports Jon Kamp.

An antibody treatment developed by Regeneron Pharmaceuticals has been shown to significantly cut the risk of death among certain hospitalized Covid-19 patients.

The Federal Reserve expects to raise interest rates by late 2023, sooner than previously projected, reports Paul Kiernan. Prompting the policy shift is a much stronger economic rebound and hotter inflation than the Fed anticipated just a few months ago. Chairman Jerome Powell said officials also discussed tapering the central bank’s bond-buying program at their two-day policy meeting. The timing of such a move remains uncertain.

A surge of retirements during the pandemic is scrambling the Fed's plans for taking the economy off life support, reports David Harrison. “It is a different economy,” Mr. Powell said. “We don’t actually know exactly what labor-force participation will be as we go forward.”

Some anxiety is creeping in at the Fed, writes Greg Ip. If supply shocks push up public expectations of inflation, which tend to be self-fulfilling, the Fed has a problem. It could no longer stick to its plan of waiting for full employment to return before tightening monetary policy.

Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen defended the Biden administration’s $6 trillion budget proposal for fiscal year 2022 in Senate testimony, saying the U.S. economy needs ambitious fiscal policy to help unwind destructive forces such as racial inequality and climate change, report Kate Davidson and Richard Rubin. 

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy criticized bipartisan legislation to curb the market power of big technology companies, widening a GOP divide over the proposals—which has been the aim of tech industry lobbyists, report Ryan Tracy and Julie Bykowicz. Mr. McCarthy said he opposes giving too much enforcement power to antitrust agencies.

• Mr. McCarthy spoke out after Mr. Biden named a leading critic of big technology firms, Lina Khan, to chair the FTC.
• Democrats are generally more supportive of changing antitrust laws, but also differ on some issues. Liberals in the House endorsed legislation mandating structural separation of large online platforms.

Sen. Joe Manchin (D., W.Va.) has laid out what he would like to see in sweeping elections legislation, aiming to stake out a position he hopes could draw bipartisan support while including provisions each party has long opposed, reports Siobhan Hughes. Mr. Manchin has become the deciding swing vote on his party’s most ambitious agenda items.

• “I’m talking to a lot of different folks,” Mr. Manchin said. “They’ll have to make their own mind up. I just owed it to my colleagues on what I was for and maybe why I opposed it as it was written.”

A new congressional task force on U.S. hostages aims to assist the families of Americans held hostage or wrongfully detained, reports Courtney McBride. The task force, led by Reps. French Hill (R., Ark.) and Ted Deutch (D., Fla.), also aims to provide resources for fellow lawmakers and to communicate with the administration on the issue.

The department filed an antitrust lawsuit challenging insurance broker Aon’s proposed $35 billion acquisition of rival Willis Towers Watson, saying the merger would eliminate competition in several different U.S. product markets, report Brent Kendall and Ben Dummett.

Attorney General Merrick Garland overturned two cases decided by the Trump administration Justice Department that made immigrants fleeing domestic or gang violence in their home countries generally ineligible for asylum in the U.S., Michelle Hackman reports.

The Justice Department dropped its lawsuit against John Bolton and notified the former Trump administration national security adviser that it would end its criminal investigation into whether he unlawfully disclosed classified information in his memoir last year, reports Sadie Gurman.

• The National Republican Congressional Committee will accept donations in cryptocurrency. (Axios)
• Iran's presidential election Friday could significantly narrow the time left for renewing the nuclear deal with Tehran. (Bloomberg)
• Voracious investor appetite for bonds has lowered the costs for projects launched by state and local governments. (Financial Times)

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.