Today is the morning

to the morning announcements. I'm Sammy Sage.

Let's start this morning with the $2,000 question. Is the government going to send stimulus

checks? The answer is still unclear. Congress still has not passed a COVID relief bill thanks to the fact that we still have the

filibuster and there aren't 60 senators who would vote on the Democratic bill.

The latest update is that 10 Senate Republicans are requesting a meeting with Biden to start

bipartisan negotiations on the COVID relief bill.

In other words, we have the absolute bare minimum of Republicans required

who are even willing to talk about COVID relief at all while the pandemic kills

over 4,000 Americans a day. You're probably wondering where the COVID relief

negotiations are starting from. Democratic leaders put forth a 1.9 trillion dollar aid

package while these 10 Republicans are proposing a bill that spends 160 billion

dollars on vaccines, testing, treatment, and PPE.

Come on, Republicans, you're going to have to offer more than the value of GameStop.

We've seen this time-killing strategy from Republicans before,

and Majority Leader Chuck Schumer has made it clear that Democrats would be

prepared to pass a COVID relief bill through budget reconciliation which would

only require 50 votes to pass. If not now then when Chuck.

The Russian protests were back for weekend number two.

Tens of thousands of Russians took to the streets this weekend to protest the jailing

of opposition leader Alexi Navalny. More than 5,100 people

were detained by the police and some were beaten as Russian authorities attempted

...