'Big lie' takes new twists for GOP: The Note

The TAKE with Rick Klein

Just because the agrievances are familiar and false doesn't make them less relevant -- sometimes even in new and surprising ways.

Former President Donald Trump is set to speak in Georgia on Saturday, two months ahead of primaries in which Trump himself has put his false claims about 2020 before Republican voters. His favored candidates will be on hand to introduce him, and he will almost certainly attack incumbent Republicans who rightly say he lost.

What that means to GOP lawmakers has come into even sharper focus in recent days. A group of Georgia voters has filed a challenge to the right of Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., to run for reelection, citing the 14th Amendment's disqualification from Congress of anyone who "shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion" against the United States.

Similar challenges are also facing Trump-loyal candidates in North Carolina and Wisconsin. And those cases got a new twist courtesy of a separate development this week.

Rep. Mo Brooks, R-Ala., says he lost Trump's endorsement after refusing the former president's demand that he "rescind" the election and reinstall Trump as president. That's getting attention inside the Jan. 6 committee and begs the question of what other Trump-endorsed candidates have committed to.

The committee's work also got more interesting with the revelation of post-election text messages between then-White House chief of staff Mark Meadows and Ginni Thomas, the conservative activist and wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas.

All of this serves as a reminder that lies about the last election still matter -- to investigators, to Trump and to voters.

The RUNDOWN with Averi Harper

As President Joe Biden emerged from an emergency NATO summit Thursday, he told reporters the group of allies was "never more united" against Russia's aggression in Ukraine.

ABC News Chief White House Correspondent Cecilia Vega asked President Biden in Brussels: "If chemical weapons were used in Ukraine could that trigger a military response from NATO?"

"It would trigger a response in kind," Biden responded. "Whether or not -- you're asking whether NATO would cross -- we'd make that decision at the time."

It's unclear what that means, as the Biden administration has pledged not to send U.S. troops to Ukraine. Biden also announced a host of new sanctions and promised to welcome 100,000 Ukrainian refugees to the U.S., though the logistics of how that would work are also fuzzy.

Biden's high-stakes foreign trip continues Friday in Poland, where the president will meet with President Andrzej Duda. Biden also hinted at the possibility of meeting with refugees.

The TIP with Alisa Wiersema

Although the final hearing for Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson's nomination to the Supreme Court unfolded Thursday without the contentious confrontations that marked the preceding two days, an interaction between Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse and Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall raised eyebrows over another topic -- the 2020 presidential election.

Marshall -- who was appearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee to testify against Jackson's nomination -- repeatedly refused when pressed by Whitehouse to acknowledge Biden is "the duly elected and lawfully serving president of the United States of America." In his replies, Marshall said, Biden "is the president of this country," leading Whitehouse to ask whether the attorney general was "answering that omitting the language 'duly elected and lawfully serving' purposefully."

"I'm answering the question. He is the president of the United States," Marshall said.

The interaction garnered attention given Marshall's prior role leading the fundraising branch of the Republican Attorneys General Association, which promoted the rally preceding the Jan. 6 insurrection through robocalls.

"We are hoping patriots like you will join us to continue to fight to protect the integrity of our elections," said a recording of the robocall obtained by The Associated Press last year. At the time, Marshall asked for an internal review into who authorized the call from the organization.

Asked by Whitehouse whether he "personally solicited money to support the robocall that brought people to the Capitol," Marshall said he did not. Marshall also rejected the idea that the organization he was connected with was involved in the violent insurrection that followed the rally.

NUMBER OF THE DAY, powered by FiveThirtyEight

47. That's the percentage of Americans who support the confirmation of Ketanji Brown Jackson to the Supreme Court, according to a FiveThirtyEight analysis of 14 polls since Jackson was announced as the nominee on Feb. 25. As FiveThirtyEight's Jean Yi writes, nine different polls have found plurality support for Jackson's confirmation while five have found majority support for it. And according to Gallup, which has recorded support for Supreme Court nominees dating back to Robert Bork's nomination in 1987, Jackson had the second-highest level of support. The Senate likely won't vote on Jackson's nomination until the week of April 8, so there's still plenty of time for Americans' minds to change, but right now, support for Jackson is fairly high.

THE PLAYLIST

ABC News' "Start Here" Podcast. Start Here begins Friday morning with ABC's Martha Raddatz on rising fears of Russian chemical warfare. Then, ABC's Sony Salzman explains whether a fourth COVID-19 vaccine dose will be needed. And, ESPN's Pablo Torre breaks down the misconduct allegations against newly-traded Cleveland Browns quarterback Deshaun Watson. http://apple.co/2HPocUL

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The Note is a daily ABC News feature that highlights the day's top stories in politics. Please check back Monday for the latest.