Hello, friends and neighbors. It's Friday, February 26, around 8.30 in the morning in Washington, D.C.

Welcome to this week's Reporter's Roundtable on the Bill Press pod. Well, we begin today with breaking news on several fronts. First, the FDA is expected to give

final approval today to the new Johnson and Johnson vaccine, America's third anti-COVID vaccine, and the

first one, and only one shot. Second, the Senate parliamentarian ruled that the $15 minimum wage does not qualify for consideration under reconciliation, meaning it'll have to be considered in a separate Senate bill. Third, American missiles struck targets in Syria last night, the first military operation under the Biden administration.

All of this as the world waits with a combination of curiosity, disgust, and outright fear

for whatever Donald Trump is going to say at CPAC this weekend on Sunday afternoon.

So much to talk about, so little time.

So let's jump right in with Leah Ascarina, editor of the National Journal Hotline.

Hello, Leah.

Hi, Bill.

Maya King of Politics Reporter at Politico.

Hi, Maya.

Hi, Bill.

And Chris Liu, former Deputy Secretary of Labor under President

Obama and senior fellow at the University of Virginia's Miller Center. Hello, Chris. Hey, Bill.

All right, guys. Let's start off. We found out, I guess, that the most powerful person in the

United States Senate is not Chuck Schumer and it's not Mitch McConnell.

It's a woman by name of Elizabeth McDonough, the parliamentarian who ruled yesterday that reconciliation rules would not allow the minimum wage hike to be part of the stimulus bill.

So, Leah, what's this unexpected and what's this mean?

So it's not necessarily unexpected.

We talked for a while before Democrats ultimately sealed their Senate majority by winning that Georgia race,

that whatever the outcome was, the Senate was going

...