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(WASHINGTON) — Secretary of State Antony Blinken, speaking at the State Department on Wednesday, confirmed the U.S. had delivered a written response to Moscow security demands as Russia amassed troops on its borders with Ukraine.

“Today, Ambassador Sullivan delivered our written response in Moscow. All told, it sets out a serious diplomatic path forward, should Russia choose it,” Blinken said.

“The document we’ve delivered includes concerns of the United States and our allies and partners about Russia’s actions that undermine security, a principled and pragmatic evaluation of the concerns that Russia has raised, and our own proposals for areas where we may be able to find common ground,” he continued.

“This is not a negotiating document,” Blinken said, adding that President Joe Biden was “involved from the get-go” and had signed off on it.

“The ball is their court,” he added, referring to the Russians.

Russia had said it would not continue talks until Moscow had the responses in hand, and Blinken announced after meeting in Geneva last week with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov that the U.S. would oblige, which some argued might be seen as a U.S. concession.

But Blinken denied that, saying the U.S. did not change its positions in the paper, but “reiterated what we said publicly for many weeks and, in a sense, for many, many years.”

That includes rejecting Russia’s key demands, laid out in its own draft treaties last month, that NATO bar Ukraine from joining the Western military alliance and that NATO pull back troops from its Eastern European member states, who were formerly Soviet states.

“There is no change. There will be no change,” he told reporters. “I can’t be more clear — NATO’s door is open, remains open, and that is our commitment.”

Blinken and Lavrov will speak in the coming days once Russia has reviewed the U.S. response, the top U.S. diplomat said. While there are fears that Russia is using the diplomatic exchange as pretext to attack Ukraine, saying diplomacy failed to address their concerns, Blinken said the U.S. would not be the one to end talks, even as it prepares sanctions and readies NATO deployments.

“You may be right, that Russia is not serious about this at all. But we have an obligation to test that proposition, to pursue the diplomatic path,” he said. “The point is we’re prepared either way.”

Blinken’s comments follow Biden saying Tuesday there could be some U.S. troop movements in the “nearer term” — and that he would consider personally sanctioning Russian President Vladimir Putin if Russia invades Ukraine — a day after 8,500 American forces were put on “heightened alert” in the region.

But in Ukraine, leaders have offered a different assessment from that put forward by the White House that a full-scale Russian attack is imminent.

During a news conference on Wednesday, Ukraine Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said they believe Russia’s forces are currently “insufficient” for a full-scale invasion and that right now the Kremlin is seeking to destabilize Ukraine with the threat of attack and other means, not yet actually launching one.

In a televised address to the nation Tuesday night, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy urged people to stay calm about the threat of a Russian attack and said there was work in progress to bring about a meeting between him and the leaders of Russia, France and Germany.

“Protect your body from viruses, your brain from lies, your heart from panic,” Zelenskiy said.

The White House and State Department have defended the administration’s decisions and rhetoric, denying that drawing down the embassy, putting 8,500 U.S. troops on alert, and warning of an “imminent” threat have escalated the situation.

Asked on Tuesday about the criticism from Kyiv that the U.S. is giving into Russia’s playbook, State Department Spokesperson Ned Price denied the U.S. created a “panic.”

“We have been clear about our concerns. We have been clear about the depth of those concerns,” Price said. “Given what we’re seeing on Ukraine’s borders, what we’re seeing in what should be an independent sovereign country of Belarus, with the Russian military buildup there, what we’re seeing with preparations for potential hybrid operations — all of this is cause for concern, but certainly no one is calling for panic.”

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(WASHINGTON) — President Joe Biden on Wednesday declined to expand on reports Justice Stephen Breyer would be retiring from the Supreme Court at the end of the current term, saying he would wait to speak further until the justice personally announces his plans.

“Every justice has the right and opportunity to decide what he or she is going to do, announce it on their own. There’s been no announcement from Justice Breyer. Let him make whatever statement he’s going to make, and I’ll be happy to talk about it later,” Biden said.

Breyer, the most senior member of the U.S. Supreme Court’s liberal wing and staunch defender of a nonpartisan judiciary, stepping down from the bench fulfills the wish of Democrats who lobbied for his exit and for Biden’s first high court appointment.

The vacancy now paves the way for Biden to nominate a Black woman to the court — a historic first and something he promised during the 2020 campaign.

Biden’s first public appearance since the news was at an afternoon White House event with American business executives to discuss his stalled Build Back Better agenda.

Several progressive House lawmakers have already amped up the pressure on Biden with Reps. Ayanna Pressley, D-Mass., Cori Bush, D-Mo., and Jamaal Bowman, D-N.Y., all reminding Biden on Twitter of his promise to elevate a Black woman to the position.

When reporters followed up with the president on Wednesday, Biden added, “I’ll be happy to talk about this later. I’m gonna get into this issue.”

White House press secretary Jen Psaki shared the president’s sentiment in an earlier tweet.

“It has always been the decision of any Supreme Court Justice if and when they decide to retire, and how they want to announce it, and that remains the case today,” she said.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, in a statement, said the Senate is prepared to move to confirm Biden’s nominee to fill the Supreme Court vacancy with “all deliberate speed.”

“President Biden’s nominee will receive a prompt hearing in the Senate Judiciary Committee, and will be considered and confirmed by the full United States Senate with all deliberate speed,” he wrote in a statement.

Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., who chairs the Senate Judiciary Committee, which holds hearings for court nominees, said in a statement that the vacancy presents Biden “the opportunity to nominate someone who will bring diversity, experience, and an evenhanded approach to the administration of justice” and that he looks forward to moving the nominee “expeditiously through the Committee.”

Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina reacted to the news with a reminder that Democrats — having the slimmest of majorities in the Senate — still have the ability to pass Biden’s nominee without Republican support. Sen. Mitch McConnell, as majority leader in 2017, lowered the threshold to break the Senate filibuster from 60 votes to 51 votes for Supreme Court nominees in order to pass former President Donald Trump’s first pick.

“If all Democrats hang together – which I expect they will – they have the power to replace Justice Breyer in 2022 without one Republican vote in support. Elections have consequences, and that is most evident when it comes to fulfilling vacancies on the Supreme Court,” Graham said in a statement, in a nod to the 2020 Senate elections in Georgia which Democrats won.

Progressive activists had put unprecedented public pressure on Breyer, who was nominated in 1994 by President Bill Clinton, to retire. McConnell said in June that the GOP may try to block a Democratic nominee to the court if the party wins control of the Senate in November and a vacancy occurs in 2023 or 2024.

ABC News’ Devin Dwyer, Allison Pecorin and Eric Fayeulle contributed to this report.

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(WASHINGTON) — With the retirement of Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer at the end of the current term, one name keeps rising to the top of the list of potential replacements: Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson.

Jackson, whom President Joe Biden nominated to replace Merrick Garland on the high-profile D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals when he picked Garland for attorney general, is a Harvard Law graduate who served as a clerk to Breyer from 1999-2000 and interviewed with former President Barack Obama for former Justice Antonin Scalia’s vacancy in 2016.

After the Supreme Court, the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals is the most important federal court in the country, with jurisdiction over cases involving Congress and the executive branch agencies.

Biden, who has said he would appoint the first African American woman to the Supreme Court because the court should “look like the country,” would be able to make good on that promise with a Jackson nomination. No Black woman has ever been nominated to the high court.

Other top contenders include Judge Leondra Kruger, of the California Supreme Court; Judge Leslie Abrams Gardner, of the US District Court Georgia; and Judge J. Michelle Childs, of the US District Court South Carolina.

Jackson was the first Black woman confirmed to an appellate court in a decade and is one of six Black female circuit court judges currently serving. She is also one of just 39 active Black female federal judges out of 793 total.

The 51-year-old also has some bipartisan appeal. She was confirmed 53-44 to her current seat in June 2021, drawing votes from three Republicans — Sens. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., Susan Collins, R-Maine, and Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska.

At the time, several Republican senators brought up the advocacy group Demand Justice, which has supported Jackson’s nomination and has called for expanding the Supreme Court.

“Demand Justice claims that the Supreme Court is broken,” Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, said. “Do you think the Supreme Court is broken?”

“Senator, I’ve never said anything about the Supreme Court being broken,” Jackson said in response. “Again, I’m not going to comment on the structure, the size, the functioning even, of the Supreme Court.”

Under questioning, she also characterized religious liberty as a foundational tenet of the U.S. government and said the Supreme Court has made clear that the government cannot infringe on religious rights.

She was also asked if she believed race would play a role in her decision making, if mandatory minimums were racist and the role of race in the judicial system.

Jackson repeatedly emphasized her belief in judicial independence.

Jackson grew up attending public schools in Miami and graduated from Harvard College. She has served as an assistant public defender and as vice chair and commissioner on the U.S. Sentencing Commission.

The mother of two teenage daughters is related to former House Speaker Paul Ryan by marriage.

Ryan testified on her behalf when she was nominated to the district court in 2012, offering his “unequivocal” endorsement.

During her circuit court confirmation hearing, she offered a poignant response when Sen. Alex Padilla, D-Calif., asked what the nomination meant to her.

“It is the beauty and the majesty of this country, that someone who comes from a background like mine could find herself in this position,” she answered. “And so I’m just enormously grateful to have this opportunity to be a part of the law in this way, and I’m truly thankful for the president giving me the honor of this nomination.”

ABC News’ Lauren Lantry and Adia Robinson contributed to this report.

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(WASHINGTON) — At the dawn of the COVID-19 pandemic, vaccine makers raced to design a shot that perfectly matched the new virus’s genetic code. Their efforts were successful, resulting in highly effective vaccines in record time.

But the virus has continued to evolve into new, concerning variants, each with a slightly different genetic code. Although current vaccines still work well against new variants, they are no longer a perfect match.

Vaccine makers like Pfizer and Moderna are now exploring tweaked booster shots to match the now-dominant omicron variant, but the U.S. government is aggressively pursuing a different approach: a pan-coronavirus vaccine that would work equally well against any COVID-19 variant.

“Since September of 2020 there have been five SARS-CoV-2 variants of concern — alpha, beta, gamma, delta and now, the current, omicron,” Dr. Anthony Fauci said at a White House task force briefing Wednesday. “So, obviously, innovative approaches are needed.”

Fauci, who heads up the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, has issued $43 million in research grants across several academic institutions to support development of a pan-coronavirus vaccine, sometimes called a “universal” coronavirus vaccine.

The idea, scientists say, is to create a vaccine that works as as a generalist rather than a specialist. A pan-coronavirus vaccine will be designed using features of the virus’s genetic code that are shared universally across all different versions of the virus — and hopefully, any new versions that will emerge.

Several research groups are already working on a pan-coronavirus vaccine, including scientists at the California Institute of Technology, Duke University, University of Washington, Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston and the University of Wisconsin, Madison.

But scientists at the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research are arguably the furthest along. The Army vaccine appears to work well in monkeys, and is now being tested for safety in a phase 1 study in human volunteers.

In a rare look inside the Walter Reed laboratories last year, ABC News’ Bob Woodruff spoke to a team of Army scientists hopeful that their vaccine candidate would work not only against COVID-19 variants, but also against related coronaviruses, like those that caused the SARS-1 and MERS outbreaks in 2003 and 2012, respectively.

But designing a pan-coronavirus vaccine is no easy feat. Scientists say it could take months, even years, to find a vaccine that works equally well against multiple coronavirus strains.

“I don’t want anyone to think that pan-coronavirus vaccines are literally around the corner in a month or two,” Fauci said. Current vaccines dramatically reduce the risk of hospitalization and severe illness, even against new variants like omicron. And crucially, they are available today.

“Do not wait to receive your primary vaccine regimen,” Fauci said. “If you are vaccinated, please get your booster if you are eligible.”

ABC News’ Matthew Seyler contributed to this report.

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(WASHINGTON) — Officials at the Federal Reserve on Wednesday signaled that they could “soon” raise interest rates for the first time in three years, as inflation concerns cast a shadow over the pandemic-battered economy.

The central bankers said in a statement Wednesday that they were leaving rates unchanged for now, at near-zero levels, but with a recovering labor market and the threat of inflation, this will likely change in the near future.

“With inflation well above 2 percent and a strong labor market, the Committee expects it will soon be appropriate to raise the target range for the federal funds rate,” the Fed said in a statement Wednesday.

Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell said during his closely watched news conference Wednesday that the Fed’s “policy has been adapting to the evolving economic environment and will continue to do so,” alluding to the backdrop of elevated inflation and labor market gains.

“Economic activity expanded at a robust pace last year, reflecting progress on vaccinations and the reopening of the economy,” Powell said. “Indeed, the economy has shown great strength and resilience in the face of the ongoing pandemic.”

Powell said the sharp rise in COVID-19 cases associated with the omicron variant likely will weigh on economic growth in the short term, but he expressed hope, as health experts have suggested, that the omicron variant hasn’t been as virulent as previous strains, and that it’s expected for cases to drop off more rapidly.

Powell added that “inflation remains well above our longer run goal of 2%,” which it notably has for some time now. He attributed this largely to supply and demand imbalances related to the pandemic and the reopening of the economy.

“These problems have been larger and longer lasting than anticipated, exacerbated by waves of the virus,” Powell said Wednesday. “While the drivers of higher inflation have been predominantly connected to the dislocations caused by the pandemic, price increases have now spread to a broader range of goods and services. Wages have also risen briskly, and we are attentive to the risks that persistent real wage growth in excess of productivity could put upward pressure on inflation.”

The Fed chair said that they expect inflation to decline over the course of the year, but signaled that the central bankers are taking this issue seriously — they’re very aware of the pain it causes for consumers and will be “watching carefully” to see how the economy evolves.

“We understand that high inflation imposes significant hardship, especially on those least able to meet the higher costs of essentials like food, housing and transportation,” Powell added. “In addition, we believe that the best thing we can do to support continued labor market gains is to promote a long expansion and that will require price stability. We’re committed to our price stability goal.”

Powell continued: “We will use our tools both to support the economy and a strong labor market, and to prevent higher inflation from becoming entrenched.”

The Fed officials noted in their latest policy statement that indicators of economic activity and employment have continued to strengthen.

“The sectors most adversely affected by the pandemic have improved in recent months but are being affected by the recent sharp rise in COVID-19 cases,” the statement said. “Job gains have been solid in recent months, and the unemployment rate has declined substantially.”

Still, they noted that supply and demand imbalances related to the pandemic and reopening of the economy “have continued to contribute to elevated levels of inflation,” and that much of the economic recovery still remains at the mercy of the virus.

The unemployment rate as of last month fell to 3.9%, only slightly above the pre-pandemic rate of 3.5% in February 2020.

Soaring inflation, however, has thrown a new wrench into the economic recovery. Government data released earlier this month indicated that consumer prices have jumped 7% over the last 12 months, the largest one-year increase since 1982.

The Fed officials also reiterated Wednesday that they expect to continue to taper their pandemic-era asset purchasing program meant to buoy the economy during the health crisis and end it completely by early March.

In previous projections released last month, Fed officials indicated that they anticipated as many as three interest rate hikes starting in 2022.

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