opening act of a sweeping progressive agenda on the horizon for the country. will it backfire for democrats come 2022? karl rove is here for white board wisdom. first, as embattled new york governor andrew cuomo faces calls from more than 160 lawmakers to resign or be impeached, new allegations that his covid-19 testing czar made inappropriate calls to state officials to gauge their loyalty to cuomo with one official claiming that they feareded their counting vaccine supplies could suffer if loyalty was not offered. new york city mayor bill de blasio wants those claims looked into it. deserves an investigation immediately. because the idea that this is how we save lives and it must be handled not with politics, not for political gain, but to actually help people and to do it fairly, that is what is at stake here. and i am very worried about the corruption we re hearing about here. cuomo facing duel scandals over nursing home deaths and allegations of sexual harassment.
adding to the more than 532,000 deaths and more than 29 million cases so far. five hours from now, the president will give his first prime time address to the nation from the white house. we have special coverage spanning two continents throughout this entire hour, beginning with nbc news correspondents, kelly o donnell covering the white house, sarah harmon in munich, germany, and joelene kent in los angeles. i ll begin with you at the white house. the president signed the american rescue plan moments ago. one day earlier than what was scheduled. did the white house realize waiting two days did not reflect the urgency of the crisis that millions of americans need that had money? reporter: well, the white house decided to act as quickly as they received the bill from capitol hill. so that s a standard part of how it works. it takes a few days to turn even a just passed piece of legislation into a document for the president s signature. so they hurried it up. by doing so, it
this is new day and it will be an historic day in the u.s. congress. you re looking at live pictures of the u.s. capitol where later this morning, we do expect final passage of the $1.9 trillion relief package. this is a monumental piece of legislation that will have a huge impact. a new round of direct payments, the largest ever to americans, but it does much much more than that. child tax credits, more money for schools and health care on and on. the president will sign it ahead of his first prime-time address to the nation tomorrow night. and then he ll hit the road to sell the plan, which may not be that hard. we have a brand-new cnn poll which shows strong bipartisan support for the bill and especially what s inside it. the president s prime-time address will mark one year since the official start of the pandemic. today, nearly one in ten americans have been fully vaccinated, but there s still a along way to go for herd immunity. and public health officials say peopl