House Democratic leadership has failed to get enough support for the massive $3.5 trillion spending bill, stalling President Biden's top agenda item right now. There is support for the plan, just not at that price tag. On the Senate side, Senators Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema are the holdouts there with Manchin wanting something in the range of $1.5 trillion, but the focus right now is on Sinema who has not committed to any particular price or policy items. Ginger Gibson, deputy Washington digital editor at NBC News, joins us for this and the beginning of the next controversial term for the Supreme Court.

Next, as the deadline for many vaccinate mandates are coming soon, many still resisting their shots are looking for exemptions. Religious exemptions are one way that people are seeking to get out of the mandates, but they may not be as easy to get as some may think. Employers have a lot of discretion when granting these. Employers have to provide reasonable accommodations, but they can also probe whether a person's beliefs are sincere and deny it if they think they are not. Many objections are based in the belief that the vaccines contain fetal cell lines, which they don't. Andrea Hsu, labor and workplace correspondent at NPR, joins us for more.

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