Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Wednesday invoked historically potent attacks on the U.S. at Pearl Harbor and on Sept. 11, 2001, pleading with Congress for additional military aid as his nation fights to repel a Russian invasion.

“Ladies and gentlemen, friends, Americans, in your great history, you have pages that allow you to understand Ukrainians now,” Zelenskyy, who spoke for most of his remarks through a translator, told U.S. lawmakers. “Remember Pearl Harbor, the terrible morning of December 7, 1941, when your sky was black from the planes attacking you. Remember Sept. 11, a terrible day in 2001 when evil tried to turn your cities independent territories into battlefield.”

“Our country experiences the same every day, right now, at this moment, every night for three weeks now.”

President Joe Biden said Wednesday the U.S. is sending more anti-aircraft, anti-armor weapons and drones to Ukraine to assist in its defense against Russia, announcing the help after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy urged the U.S. and other Western nations to do more in an emotional speech to Congress.

The president’s comments came as he formally announced his administration was sending an additional $800 million in military assistance to Ukraine, making a total of $2 billion in such aid sent to Kyiv since Biden took office more than a year ago. About $1 billion in aid has been sent in just the last week. Biden said the new assistance includes 800 Stinger anti-aircraft systems, 100 grenade launchers, 20 million rounds of small arms ammunition and grenade launchers and mortar rounds and an unspecified number of drones.

President Joe Biden announced an additional $800 million in military aid to Ukraine Wednesday, bringing the total amount of funding allocated this week to Ukraine to $1 billion.

Biden’s announcement came on the heels of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s speech to Congress, in which Zelenskyy pleaded with the U.S. and its NATO allies to enforce a no-fly zone over Ukraine or send jets to aid in its fight against Russia. Biden made no mention of either Zelenskyy request, and emphasized the aid would empower Ukrainians to fight the Russians themselves.

The president did pledge to arm the Ukrainian military with drones, a step he said “demonstrates our commitment to sending the most cutting-edge systems to Ukraine for its defense.” Biden did not say whether they would be armed.

The bodies of the children all lie here, dumped into this narrow trench hastily dug into the frozen earth of Mariupol to the constant drumbeat of shelling.

There’s 18-month-old Kirill, whose shrapnel wound to the head proved too much for his little toddler’s body. There’s 16-year-old Iliya, whose legs were blown up in an explosion during a soccer game at a school field. There’s the girl no older than 6 who wore the pajamas with cartoon unicorns, among the first of Mariupol’s children to die from a Russian shell.

They are stacked together with dozens of others in this mass grave on the outskirts of the city. A man covered in a bright blue tarp, weighed down by stones at the crumbling curb. A woman wrapped in a red and gold bedsheet, her legs neatly bound at the ankles with a scrap of white fabric. Workers toss the bodies in as fast as they can, because the less time they spend in the open, the better their own chances of survival.

A powerful 7.3 magnitude earthquake struck off the coast of Fukushima in northern Japan on Wednesday evening, triggering a tsunami advisory and plunging more than 2 million homes in the Tokyo area into darkness.

The region is part of northern Japan that was devastated by a deadly 9.0 quake and tsunami 11 years ago that also triggered nuclear plant meltdowns, spewing massive radiation that still makes some parts uninhabitable.

The Pacific Tsunami Warning Center said there was no longer a tsunami threat though the Japan Meteorological Agency kept its low risk advisory in place. NHK national television said tsunami waves of 20 centimeters (8 inches) already reached shore in Ishinomaki, about 390 kilometers (242 miles) northeast of Tokyo.

President Joe Biden is using his bully pulpit to call out the tendency for gasoline prices to go up like a rocket when oil spikes, but only drop like a feather when crude crashes.
Biden fired off a tweet Wednesday morning highlighting the painfully slow decline in gasoline prices in a bid to draw scrutiny to a decades-long trend that critics say hurts consumers by failing to pass savings along to drivers.
“Oil prices are decreasing, gas prices should too,” Biden said on Twitter. “Last time oil was $96 a barrel, gas was $3.62 a gallon. Now it’s $4.31. Oil and gas companies shouldn’t pad their profits at the expense of hardworking Americans.”

You might remember the uproar last year over Texas’s new voting law: Democratic lawmakers in the GOP-controlled legislature fled the state for weeks in an attempt to block the bill, which they said would disenfranchise voters, and Republicans threatened them with arrest upon their return. The law eventually did pass, and with Texas’s primary earlier this month, we got our first look at whether the worst fears of Democrats and voting rights advocates were warranted.

Thousands of votes were, in fact, thrown out, directly as a result of a new requirement in the law. And in the state’s biggest county, the new procedures it mandated contributed to a hugely messy vote-counting process.

“It’s been every bit as catastrophic as we feared it would be,” said James Slattery, a senior staff attorney at the Texas Civil Rights Project. “I think the onus is on the legislature to acknowledge the harm that it did to Texas voters by passing Senate Bill 1 and make amends by repealing it next year.”

But that probably won’t happen given that key Republicans who pushed for the law have continued to defend it.

Here’s what we saw in the primary and what it could mean for other states that have enacted or are considering similar laws.

As sanctions imposed by the U.S., the European Union and allies continue to roil Russia’s economy, Russia responded by issuing sanctions of its own against top American officials.

Russia’s foreign ministry said it was issuing a “stop list” to prevent members of the Biden administration from entering Russia.

“This step, taken as a response measure, is the inevitable result of the extreme Russophobic policy of the current US Administration, which, in a desperate attempt to maintain American hegemony, has abandoned any sense of decorum and placed its bets on the head-on containment of Russia,” the foreign ministry said in a statement.

The list includes President Joe Biden, Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley, national security adviser Jake Sullivan, CIA Director William Burns, press secretary Jen Psaki, deputy national security adviser Daleep Singh, USAID Administrator Samantha Power, Deputy Secretary of the Treasury Wally Adeyemo and U.S. Export-Import Bank President and Chair Reta Jo Lewis.