Good morning. I'm Anna Palmer and welcome to The Daily Punch, brought to you by Punchable News.

It's Monday, February 19th, 2024, happy President's Day. Let's get into the mix. Here are your Washington headlines of the day.

Number one, on the ground at the Munich Security Conference. Number two, Jason Smith gets real on salt.

And number three, some swing state Democrats are welcoming Biden to the trail.

All right. Good morning, everyone. I want to start this morning off with some of our reporting from Munich.

Andrew Desiderio is there because where lawmakers go, Punchbowl news goes.

We only have AM additions this morning, for those of you who also read us, just a kind note on that.

So one thing that's been really interesting and that we have been watching closely is the

frustration that foreign leaders and any even confusion are having in Munich with the United

States. Of course, at last year's NATO summit, President Joe Biden proudly declared that U.S. support for Ukraine would never waver.

But you consider what's happened since then.

You can understand why Europe and others are confused about what's actually happening here.

Let's rewind the tape.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell failed several times to steamroll his party's Donald Trump-aligned wing on a new Ukraine aid bill before finally succeeding last week.

Conservative House Republicans overthrew the Speaker leaving the chamber an ungovernable mess.

Trump's stranglehold on the GOP combined with the election year politics makes support for Ukraine a tough sell among Republicans,

and, of course, there remains no easy path for Ukraine funding in the House.

That reality came into greater focus during the annual Munich Security Conference when two pieces of disconcerting news broke within hours of each other.

Russian opposition leader Alex Navalny died in captivity

and in eastern Ukraine city fell to Russian forces.

In some way, lawmakers are trying to make promises that they can't keep,

and foreign leaders told U.S. lawmakers here that their long-held fallback

...