Hey all! Bit of a slow week this week, so I’ll keep things brief.
Covid Relief
On Thursday, Congress began the process of passing President Biden’s $1.9 trillion COVID-19 relief package.
Since democrats were unable to win over the ten senate republicans needed to pass the bill, they will be using a process called budget reconciliation. The process, in short, is a way for congress to pass a bill without the regular 60-vote majority.
Earlier this week, the president met with ten senate republicans who hoped to reach a compromise with a scaled-back relief bill. The changes in the GOP bill included cutting direct stimulus checks down to $1,000 rather than the planned $1,400.
Though the process is underway to pass the relief bill, the passage itself probably won’t happen until late February or early March. The impeachment trial of former President Donald Trump is set to begin on Monday, thus the senate will be unable to take up legislation until that’s over.
For a good explainer of the situation, as well the budget reconciliation process, look here!
Impeachment this week!
Well, not much has changed this week. There are essentially two new bits of news; The first is that the former president parted ways with his original lawyers for the trial. The second bit is that the impeachment managers originally wanted Trump to testify in-person, a request that was quickly shut down by his lawyers.
According to a poll from the Associated Press, Americans are evenly split on whether the senate ought to convict the former president and thus bar him from holding public office again. Per the AP, the poll was taken from 1,055 people using a probability-based model.
In other news
- On Thursday, the house of representatives voted to strip freshman GOP Rep. Marjorie Taylor Green, R-Ga., of her committee assignments. This comes in response to her peddling conspiracy theories for years.
- NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell wrote a letter this week to President Biden offering the use of all 30 NFL stadiums for vaccination sites. Seven football stadiums were already being used for mass vaccination, but this opens the door for all others to be used.
Like I said, this was a pretty slow week for politics. Join us next week, where we’ll have some real information in the impeachment trial!
