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Biden Administration: President Biden meets with members of the infrastructure task force to discuss implementation of the law at 11:45 am E.T.

Unemployment: Filings for jobless claims, a proxy for layoffs, are expected to remain near the lowest levels on record. The Labor Department is set to release data for the week ended Jan. 15 at 8:30 a.m.

Tech regulation: The Senate Judiciary Committee is set to vote today on bipartisan legislation that would block internet platforms from favoring their own services and products over rivals.

Trump: The Supreme Court rejected former President Donald Trump’s request to withhold documents from the House panel investigating the Capitol riot on Jan. 6, 2021. See story below.

President Biden took office a year ago, promising to tackle the coronavirus pandemic, revive the economy and strive for unity in a nation roiled by division and crisis, Catherine Lucey and Ken Thomas report.

Mr. Biden’s record on his promises has been mixed, with early progress passing Covid-19 relief spending and ramping up vaccinations. But by late summer he was challenged by a new coronavirus variant, rising inflation and widespread criticism over the chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan.

Mr. Biden said he likely would have to break up his stalled healthcare, education and climate agenda to pass his policies in Congress and predicted Russia would make a move against Ukraine, warning that Moscow would face punishing sanctions for doing so (▶️Video).

• In a nearly two-hour news conference Wednesday, Mr. Biden defended his policies and his administration’s response to Covid-19 but also acknowledged that many Americans remain frustrated by the duration of the pandemic.
• 🎧 WSJ podcast: Catherine Lucey recaps Mr. Biden’s biggest wins and most bitter disappointments during his first year in the White House.

President Biden issued a directive expanding the National Security Agency’s role in protecting the government’s most sensitive computer networks, Dustin Volz reports  The order mandates baseline cybersecurity practices, such as two-factor authentication and encryption, for national security systems, including the Defense Department and intelligence agencies and the federal contractors that support them.

Democrats failed in their effort to change the Senate’s filibuster procedures to muscle through blocked elections legislation, dealing a setback to President Biden and party leaders on what they have termed their top domestic policy priorites, Siobhan Hughes and Eliza Collins report.

• With Sens. Joe Manchin (D., W. Va.) and Kyrsten Sinema (D. Ariz.) siding with all Republicans in the evenly split Senate, 52 lawmakers opposed the rule change, with just 48 in favor, shy of the majority required.
• Earlier, Republicans had blocked the elections bill from advancing, with 49 votes in support and 51 against, short of the 60 needed.
• Q&A: What to know about the filibuster as Democrats push to change rules

The FBI didn’t say what type of probe was under way, or if the congressman is the subject. Mr. Cuellar’s office released a statement saying he would fully cooperate with any investigation. His office didn’t confirm whether he was under any investigation.

Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Gary Gensler is expected to begin implementing policy changes after spending his first nine months on the job sketching out an ambitious agenda, Paul Kiernan reports. 

But with Democrats at risk of losing their thin majorities in the House and Senate after November’s midterm elections, the coming months could be critical for Mr. Gensler, whom President Biden tapped last year. If Republicans win either chamber of Congress, they could move to slow Mr. Gensler’s progress.

• In a speech Wednesday, Mr. Gensler said his priorities for this year are to increase efficiency in the capital markets that the SEC oversees and to update agency rules for modern technology. A key goal is to reduce how much companies raising capital and their investors spend on fees.

The prospect that Covid-19 is transitioning from pandemic to endemic has some Wall Street banks betting that Omicron will leave almost everyone highly immune through vaccination, prior infection, or both. But such optimism needs a reality check, Greg Ip writes: Endemic Covid-19 will still take a toll on health, work and mobility; the only question is how big.

Foreign investment by businesses around the world rebounded last year to exceed its pre-pandemic total, but little of that U.S.-led surge went toward manufacturing capacity despite the widespread shortages of goods that have fueled inflation, Paul Hannon reports.

President Biden said he expects Russia to make some kind of move against Ukraine and would face consequences calibrated to the degree of aggression, while the administration’s top diplomat sought to reassure Ukraine’s president of unified support from the West, Andrew Restuccia, William Mauldin and Ann M. Simmons report.

At his Wednesday news conference, Mr. Biden reiterated that Russia would face punishing sanctions should it invade Ukraine, and he said that he is working to keep the North Atlantic Treaty Organization military alliance unified in its response. He said Russian President Vladimir Putin faces a stark choice and will regret choosing conflict.

• Secretary of State Antony Blinken told Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv that if Moscow “chooses to renew aggression against Ukraine, it will be met and it will face very severe consequences.”

The U.S. sent the head of the Central Intelligence Agency to Berlin and Kyiv a week ahead of Mr. Blinken’s official trip to the region, as part of its efforts to rally European nations for a tougher response against Moscow and in support of Ukraine, William Mauldin and Bojan Pancevski report.

North Korea suggested it might consider restarting long-range and nuclear-weapons tests, promising to take “practical action” as it says the U.S. threat to the country can no longer be ignored, Timothy W. Martin reports.

Mr. Biden picked a trio of top Democratic donors to lead diplomatic posts in the U.K., Brazil and Denmark. He plans to nominate Jane Hartley, ambassador to France under President Obama, to serve in the U.K. Elizabeth Bagley, who was ambassador to Portugal under President Clinton, was picked to serve in Brazil. Alan Leventhal, chairman and chief executive of Beacon Capital Partners, was chosen to be ambassador to Denmark.

The Supreme Court on Wednesday denied former President Donald Trump’s emergency request that sought to block a House panel from obtaining White House records related to the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, Brent Kendall, Jess Bravin and Byron Tau report.

The unsigned order declined to halt a federal appeals court decision in favor of the House committee and cleared the way for the National Archives to start delivering documents to the panel immediately.

• At issue were internal White House records from Mr. Trump’s final days in office—material that is typically closely guarded against disclosure under a legal doctrine known as executive privilege—on the basis that presidents need candid advice from their closest advisers.

The high court, weighing a legal battle involving Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, questioned federal limits on using political contributions received after an election to reimburse candidates for personal loans they made to their campaigns, Brent Kendall reports.

• At issue was a $260,000 loan Mr. Cruz, a Republican, made to his campaign in 2018 when he ran against Beto O’Rourke. Mr. Cruz is challenging a federal $250,000 cap on the reimbursement of a candidate’s personal loans with money his or her campaign receives after the election.

Supreme Court Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Neil Gorsuch issued an extraordinary statement Wednesday tamping down reports that they are at odds over masking in the courthouse amid the Covid-19 pandemic, Jess Bravin reports.

Surviving a previous infection provided better protection than vaccination against Covid-19 during the Delta wave, U.S. health authorities said Wednesday, citing research showing that both the shots and recovery from the virus provided significant defense, Brianna Abbott reports.

• The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said that data from California and New York showed people who were unvaccinated and hadn’t previously contracted Covid-19 faced a far greater risk than both people who had gotten the shots and those who had been infected.
• The data on testing, cases and immunization was collected between May and November, during the Delta wave of the pandemic, before the more-infectious Omicron variant began to spread widely in the U.S. The hospitalization data came only from California.

• In the effort to present a united Western front against a Russian move on Ukraine, Germany is proving to be an outlier. (Politico)
• Spain is preparing to treat the coronavirus not as an emergency but as a problem that’s here to stay. (Associated Press)
• China, Russia and Iran plan to hold joint naval exercises Friday, a step in Iran’s plan to deepen ties with Moscow and Beijing. (Reuters)

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