WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden asked Congress on Thursday for $33 billion to bolster Ukraine’s fight against Russia, signaling a burgeoning and long-haul American commitment as Moscow’s invasion and the international tensions it has inflamed show no signs of receding.

The package has about $20 billion in defense spending for Ukraine and U.S. allies in the region and $8.5 billion to keep Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s government providing services and paying salaries. There’s $3 billion in global food and humanitarian programs, including money to help Ukrainian refugees who’ve fled to the U.S. and to prod American farmers to grow wheat and other crops to replace the vast amounts of food Ukraine normally produces.

The package, which administration officials estimated would last five months, is more than twice the size of the initial $13.6 billion aid measure that Congress enacted early last month and now is almost drained. With the bloody war dragging into its third month, the measure was designed to signal to Russian President Vladimir Putin that U.S. weaponry and other streams of assistance are not going away.

WASHINGTON (AP) — An inflation gauge closely tracked by the Federal Reserve surged 6.6% in March compared with a year ago, the highest 12-month jump in four decades and further evidence that spiking prices are pressuring household budgets and the health of the economy.

Yet there were signs in Friday’s report from the Commerce Department that inflation might be slowing from its galloping pace and perhaps nearing a peak, at least for now.

Excluding the especially volatile food and energy categories, so-called core prices rose 5.2% in March from a year earlier. That was slightly below the 5.3% year-over-year increase in February, and it was the first time that 12-month figure has declined since February 2021, before the inflation spike began. And on a month-to-month basis, core prices rose 0.3% from February to March, the same as from January to February.

President Joe Biden has a student loan debt forgiveness problem.

Lawmakers within his party continue to put the issue front and center, urging the President to cancel $50,000 for each of the 43 million federal student loan borrowers – something he has shot down repeatedly, including on Thursday.

Biden has already canceled more student loan debt than any other president by making it easier for students defrauded by for-profit colleges or those working in the public sector to receive forgiveness through existing relief programs. The President also recently extended the pandemic-related payment pause for a fourth time under his administration – moving the expiration date from May 1 to August 31.

Memo to the Biden administration: The written plan to handle a summertime migration surge at the border isn’t satisfying purple-state Democrats who were pointedly asking for one.

Instead, even after reviewing a Department of Homeland Security memo laying out how the agency will deal with an influx of migrants at the border, several Democratic lawmakers are still calling for a delay in lifting the pandemic-era border restrictions known as Title 42. And some of them want a vote in Congress to push back against President Joe Biden’s polarizing reversal of his predecessor’s policy.

Sen. Maggie Hassan (D-N.H.), who is up for reelection and recently traveled to the southern border, put it this way: “They still have work to do.” Hassan is among the Democrats supporting a legislative postponement of Biden’s May 23 policy change and she said she will “keep pushing for it.”

As Democrats search for legislative wins heading into November, they are getting help from an unusual corner: Republicans.

With Democrats’ reconciliation path in limbo — though members of the party want it to be revived — they are leaning into talks with Republicans on multiple fronts: immigration, election reforms and climate.

The growing focus on trying to cut bipartisan deals comes after Democrats poured time and political energy last year into President Biden’s climate and social spending package, known as Build Back Better, and voting rights, both of which ultimately unraveled amid intraparty divisions.

President Joe Biden and his advisers are still in conversations about how to approach November’s Group of 20 summit, whose hosts received confirmation Friday that Russian President Vladimir Putin plans to attend.

Biden has said Russia should be ejected from the G20. Senior members of his administration have walked out of G20 events where Russian delegates are present. And there were discussions with Indonesia, which is hosting the summit, about stepping up its condemnation of Russia.

But no decision on boycotting the leaders’ summit, still six months away, has been made. Officials said there wouldn’t likely be a decision in the near-term as they weigh the downsides of skipping the event and ceding the table to Russia and China.