The Stimulus Shot: With no Republican votes in favor, the House yesterday passed President Biden’s $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan, one of the largest economic stimulus bills in the history of the country.

  Democrats have described the bill as “transformative.” Republicans have denounced it as too expensive and not properly targeted toward the people who most need help, but polls say 70 percent of Americans are in favor.

  The bill does not include a provision to raise the federal minimum wage from $7.25 per hour to $15 as the President had wished. And President Biden, unlike his predecessor, has decided not to brand the next round of stimulus checks with his name. 

  Some provisions in the bill Biden is expected to sign tomorrow.

• People making under $75,000 and married couples making under $150,000 would receive direct payments of $1,400 per person. The bill would also provide $1,400 per dependent.

• The $300 a week unemployment benefit will continue.

• The current $2,000 per child tax credit is bumped to $3,600 for children up to age 5 and as much as $3,000 for ages 6 to 17.

• $350 billion for states, local governments, territories, and tribal governments.

• $130 billion for schools.

Viral News: Despite sustaining nearly nine percent of the Covid-19 deaths in the US, the Texas has lifted its mask mandate and businesses are free to open. Businesses and local governments are still free to impose restrictions, but Gov. Greg Abbott said, “This must end. It is now time to open Texas 100 percent.”

  City officials in Austin said they would defy the opening and continue with a mask mandate.

  As pandemic restrictions gradually lift around the country, restaurants in New York City and New Jersey will be allowed to increase indoor dining to 50 percent of capacity starting March 19. That brings both in line with current dining limits in Connecticut and Pennsylvania.

  To date, 62.5 million Americans have been vaccinated against Covid-19. As of this morning, 529,267 people in this country have died in the pandemic.

Ungoverned: A sixth woman came forward, this time to the Albany Times Union, to say that she was treated inappropriately by New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo. The unidentified woman told the paper that during a meeting alone in the governor’s residence, he reached under her blouse and touched her.

  Cuomo has denied all accusations, refused to resign, and said he’s counting on the results of a full investigation. It looks worse every day.

Song of Myself: Donald Trump, who campaigned promising that the coronavirus was going away, now is taking credit for the vaccines actually doing the job.

  A statement issued by the former occupant of the White House said, “I hope everyone remembers when they’re getting the COVID-19 (often referred to as the China Virus) Vaccine, that if I wasn’t President, you wouldn’t be getting that beautiful ‘shot’ for 5 years, at best, and probably wouldn’t be getting it at all.” 

The Spin Rack: The Senate confirmed one-time Supreme Court nominee Merrick Garland by a vote of 70-50 to be Attorney General. He said a priority would be prosecuting people who took part in the Capitol insurrection. — Andrea Sahouri, a reporter for the Des Moines register who was arrested while covering protests in the wake of the police killing of George Floyd, has been acquitted of charges that she interfered with police and failed to disperse. It’s one thing that the cops idiotically arrested her, but the mystery is why the local prosecutor pressed the case.  — China and Russia announced a plan to build a joint research station on the moon.

The Obit Page: Allan McDonald, the engineer who tried to stop the 1986 launch of the ill-fated Challenger space shuttle because it was too cold for the gaskets on the booster rockets, has died at age 83. 

  The O-ring gaskets on the boosters infamously failed, causing the rockets to burn through their skin and the shuttle to break apart on liftoff, killing all seven astronauts on board. Among them was the first civilian astronaut and much publicized “teacher in space,” Christa McAuliffe. 

  In January 1986, McDonald was a 26-year veteran at Morton Thiokol, the contractor that made the shuttle’s booster rockets. McDonald argued that 18 degree weather overnight would stiffen the O-rings, preventing a proper seal for the hot gases of the boosters. Under pressure from NASA to launch, his company managers and other engineers signed off, but he refused.

  He later exposed efforts to cover up his fight to stop the launch. McDonald said in a recent documentary, “Normally we were always challenged to prove it was safe to launch. Now all of a sudden we got the impression they were asking us to prove it would fail, and we couldn’t do that.”

Last Call: President Trump infamously called the Georgia Secretary of State trying to get him to overturn election results in that state. Now, The Wall Street Journal has obtained the recording of an earlier call Trump made to Francis Watson, who is the chief investigator for Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger.

Trump told Watson that if she focused on Fulton County, which includes Atlanta, “You are going to find things that are going to be unbelievable — the dishonesty.”  

  “Fulton is the motherload, as the expression goes,” Trump says on the recording.

  An evidently desperate Trump tells Watson, “When the right answer comes out, you’ll be praised,” and that she had the “most important job in the country right now.” Encouraging Watson to find fraud, Trump said, “the people of Georgia are so angry at what happened to me, they know I won.”

  Donald Trump is now retired in Florida.

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