The U.S. Senate plans to begin voting on President Joe Biden’s $1.9 trillion Covid relief bill that was passed in the House. Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said, “The Senate is going to move forward with the bill. No matter how long it takes, the Senate is going to stay in session to finish the bill this week.” Senate Republicans are using every procedural trick in the book to delay the vote in spite of the fact that “76 percent of voters and 60 percent of Republicans support the bill.” Given how long it took for Congress to debate the large and complex bill, some are now questioning whether it includes too much or too little. Progressives are asking for stimulus checks to continue being sent until the pandemic is officially over. Incidentally a new study based in Stockton, California, that has implications for such an idea found that the local government gave all residents $500 a year without strings attached to try to fight poverty. The “universal basic income” experiment found that it had a huge impact on people’s lives including making it twice as likely for the unemployed to get jobs. Meanwhile, jobless claims rose once more as per the latest Labor Department figures. A total of 745,000 people filed for new unemployment benefits last week, up 9,000 from the week before. And productivity fell by 4.2%, a smaller drop than a month ago.

March 4th at the Capitol was a day that some Trump-supporting QAnon groups believed would be the day that their leader would take power once more. Government intelligence pointed to potential attack being plotted by a militia group, resulting in Capitol police being placed on high alert on Thursday, just barely 2 months after the January 6th riot. Representative Tim Ryan, chair of the House Appropriations subcommittee that funds the Capitol Police said in a statement, “It is heartbreaking that the United States Capitol continues to be a target — not by foreign adversaries — but by our fellow Americans.” While the Senate continued its session debating the Covid relief bill, the House cancelled its session. Meanwhile the D.C. Capitol police have requested that National Guardsmen remain for another 2 months. Interestingly Donald Trump’s hotel in D.C. hiked up the prices for hotel rooms on March 4th. 

The House on Wednesday passed the For the People Act,