Happy Monday! Declan is off this week, and both Steve and Andrew are working from out of town—keep us in your thoughts as we keep this TMD plane together for a few days with chewing gum and Elmer’s glue. 

Quick Hits: Today’s Top Stories

• Confirmation hearings begin this week for Ketanji Brown Jackson, President Joe Biden’s nominee to replace retiring justice Stephen Breyer on the Supreme Court. “When Judge Jackson’s hearings begin next week,” said Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, “the American people will see for themselves precisely what senators are seeing right now: Judge Jackson is brilliant, she is beloved, and she belongs on the Supreme Court.”

• Ukraine rejected a Russian demand over the weekend to surrender the strategically important city of Mariupol, where a humanitarian crisis is developing under constant Russian shelling and seige. Russian military officials said they would permit civilian evacuations out of the city Monday: “All who lay down their arms are guaranteed safe passage out of Mariupol.” Russia has previously broken ceasefires during the current conflict by bombing evacuation corridors, according to Ukrainian officials.

• Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Sunday that he remains willing to negotiate an end to the war with Russia’s Vladimir Putin, but that Ukraine would need “security guarantees, sovereignty, restoration of territorial integrity, [and] real guarantees for our country.” Zelensky also sparked controversy over the weekend by making an appeal to Israel that referenced the Holocaust: “Ukrainians made their choice. Eighty years ago, we saved Jews. The people of Israel, now you also have a choice.”