Jurors have heard — and rejected — an array of excuses and arguments from the first rioters to be tried for storming the U.S. Capitol. The next jury to get a Capitol riot case could hear another novel defense this week at the trial of a retired New York City police officer.

Thomas Webster, a 20-year veteran of the NYPD, has claimed he was acting in self-defense when he tackled a police officer who was trying to protect the Capitol from a mob on Jan. 6, 2021. Webster’s lawyer also has argued that he was exercising his First Amendment free speech rights when he shouted profanities at police that day.

Webster, 56, will be the fourth Capitol riot defendant to get a jury trial. Each has presented a distinct line of defense.

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and Secretary of State Antony Blinken announced a new nominee to serve as U.S. ambassador to Ukraine and plans to bolster America’s diplomatic presence in the country when they met with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in Kyiv on Sunday night.

The two members of President Joe Biden’s Cabinet also relayed that the United States will provide Ukraine with further security assistance and offer expanded military training for Ukrainian forces fending off Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion.

The announcement of the U.S. actions, outlined in a State Department news release, came after the conclusion of the secretive talks conducted in Ukraine’s capital. Zelenskyy revealed on Saturday that Austin and Blinken planned to visit Kyiv, but little was known about the details of their trip until Monday morning.

The Biden administration will renew its push with lawmakers to secure Covid-19 funding when Congress returns from recess, a White House official told CNN’s Betsy Klein, following inaction from the Senate on a $10 billion funding package before the two-week Easter break.

The White House has been sounding the alarm for weeks that additional funding is needed to continue the federal Covid-19 response, even as it seeks a return to “normal” with many pandemic-era restrictions lifting.

Title 42. Next month, the Biden administration is set to roll back the public health authority known as Title 42, which was first invoked by then-President Donald Trump. The measure allows border authorities to turn migrants back to Mexico or their home countries because of the public health crisis.

Russia told the United States to stop sending more arms to Ukraine, warning that large Western deliveries of weapons were inflaming the conflict and would lead to more losses, Moscow’s ambassador to Washington said.

Russia’s Feb. 24 invasion of Ukraine has killed thousands of people, displaced millions more and raised fears of a wider confrontation between Russia and the United States – by far the world’s two biggest nuclear powers.

The United States has ruled out sending its own or NATO forces to Ukraine but Washington and its European allies have supplied weapons to Kyiv such as drones, Howitzer heavy artillery, anti-aircraft Stinger and anti-tank Javelin missiles.

Western countries are rushing heavy weaponry to Ukraine as the war enters what promises to be a deadly, and potentially protracted, new phase.

Those deliveries are coming amid increasingly desperate pleas from Ukrainian battlefield commanders as they endure withering Russian artillery and rocket fire that could last weeks or months.

Over the past two weeks, the Biden administration began shipping out $1.2 billion worth of howitzers, around 200,000 artillery rounds, armored vehicles, counter-battery radars and experimental new armed drones capable of flying into targets.

The deliveries are a significant advance from the small arms and Javelin anti-tank armor shipments that dominated the first eight weeks of fighting, and which helped stave off Russian thrusts toward the capital of Kyiv in the early days of the invasion.