a criticism that, you know, the obama administration maybe didn't do enough to settle and explain and talk about their stimulus efforts and want to make sure that people around the country really know what's in the bill, know what's coming and the kind of impact it's having. >> there's a conversation that we'll watch how it plays outside of washington. do the additional benefits help people. they showed up at their briefing wearing masks and trying to make the case, the republican argument that the biden administration is not pushing aggressively enough there. you see follow the science, not the unions, the biden administration is pushing schools to open and a president can only do so much. local school districts make these decisions, mayors make them but the politics there and listen to the different perspectives from a top democrat and top republican on what this covid relief package is. >> the american rescue plan is transformative. it will comprehensively and compassionately meet the moment. as a result of the devastating covid-19 pandemic. >> it's a real tragedy when you look at that package, we know that the result of that package is going to be middle class tax increases. we know for sure that it includes provisions that are not targeted. they're not temporary. they're not related to covid. >> it is striking, several packages were passed during the trump presidency and they were bipartisan. here's the first big one out of the gates in the biden pressey and back to polarization. >> this is difficult for republicans. the package is broadly popular. you see in poll after poll, the support of the american public including a lot of republicans, republican voters and makes it a difficult situation for republican leaders on capitol hill who are clearly trying to sort of change the subject and want to talk about schools and heard them in talking about the culture wars and dr. seuss so they're struggling to attack this bill. obviously liz cheney is talking about how will they pay for it? it is a $2 trillion bill. these were not asked back when the past two packages were passed through the congress and so, you know, republican, they're grappling and trying to change the subject but this is vastly popular and because of that it's problematic for them in terms how they talk about it on the campaign trail. >> just to that point, katherine lucey, this is jim justice, republican governor of west virginia. he says my state is still hurting. yes. >> at the end of the day i still believe that we need to go big or not go at all, you know, because we still got too many people that are out there across especially west virginia that are hurting. >> and that's the test that matters. no offense to governor justice, not so much a republican governor but to the people who vote for governor justice and vote for republican governors out there do they think the new president, you know what, is helping me. >> that's right. that's what the white house is counting on and pointing to comments from republican mayors and governors. but they're also citing public polling that shows that a lot of the provisions in this are broadly popular, as rachel said bipartisan support for this. and so i think that's what you're going to hear a lot about in the coming weeks is this idea there is bipartisan support for this bill and that people are looking for it. >> again, waiting to see and the president is supposed to visit a small business, catherine lucey, grateful for the reporting and to you, rachel. the cost debate over covid testing in schools up next. new projects means new project managers. you need to hire. i need indeed. indeed you do. the moment you sponsor a job on indeed you get a short list of quality candidates from our resume database. claim your seventy five dollar credit, when you post your first job at indeed.com/home. so you're a small business, or a big one. you were thriving, but then... oh. ah. okay. plan, pivot. how do you bounce back? you 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began using the term pandemic as the world saw coronavirus spreading out of control and beginning to up end our daily life. now here in the united states three vaccines being distributed across the country right now. trying to protect americans, however, the cdc director warning just today the next two months are critical. yes, vaccines are rolling out but variants are also taking hold. let's go through the numbers and challenge of the moment, again, you go back one year ago today, coronavirus was just arriving here in the united states. but we were seeing it around the world. cnn adopting the term pandemic and you know the three climbs since, lasting spring, the summer then this winter climb hore ring, the third one, the third climb, the more horrific. 50,000 inspections reported yesterday, way down from the winter peak, however, still at a plateau around 50,000. the public health experts are worried and want to push it down even more with the variants spreading. if you look at this too again, incredibly sad when you go back in the context of one year ago up the first hill in the spring, another hill winter climb there. 719 deaths reported yesterday. let's hope this is finally starting to come back down, but this number often a lagging indicator behind cases and hospitalizations. this is the race. the case count is down over the winter peak, but 3,000 cases of the u.k. variant now reported in seven states, including d.c. that is the race. can you get people vaccinated as this spread and causes new cases? the variant, 81 cases in the district of columbia, so not as widespread but beginning to take root. that is the race the cdc director talks about. the third variant out of brazil. 15 cases out of nine states. less prevalent but still a concern. that is the race. can you get people vaccinated before these variants start to spread and cause new cases. here is the math there. 18 million americans have been vaccinated. watch how quickly these numbers climb. th that is the big part of the race. 65 and older, 60% have received at least one dose, and 30% of americans over the age of 65 are now fully vaccinated. so considerable progress here, and again, you look at the numbers right here, this is the vaccination rate. averaging 2.2 million. public health experts would love to push this up. they say 3 million would be better number. the biden administration is making some progress. just yesterday new guidelines for what you can do if you've been vaccinated. if your friends have been vaccinated, yes, the cdc says you can get together in small groups and things like that. but still the advisory is please do not travel. the cdc explaining here why. >> we know that there are a lot of variants here in this country. some have been brought in from travel, others have emanated from inside the country. we know that aftermath travel, after vacations, after holidays, we tend to see a surge in cases. so we really want to make sure, again with just 10% of people vaccinated, that we are limiting travel. >> with us to share her reporting and some important insights is our cnn medical correspondent, elizabeth cohen. when you hear the cdc director so firm there, there are new guidelines back to normal at least to a degree if you have a vaccine, but a big please don't when it comes to travel. why? >> that's right, it does seem so curious and the airline industry is definitely pushing against this. the reason why are the variants, which dr. walensky just talked about, and here's another way, and this is even more simple. if you ask the question, can someone be vaccinated and still have covid-19 but not know it, so still be infected but not know it and spread the virus to people who are unvaccinated and the cdc has an answer for that. on their website, they say vaccinated people could potentially still get covid-19 and spread it to others. vaccinated people could potentially still get covid-19 and spread it to others. that's why they don't want you to a plane. if you're vaccinated, and god forbid, you're infected and don't realize it, 90% of the people on that plane most likely are not vaccinated. we would hate for that vaccinatev unvaccinated person to get the vaccinated people sick. >> can you get vaccinated and beat the variants that spread? the pfizer vaccine can protect against the p-1 variant out of brazil. walk us through that. >> yes, this is good news. so pfizer and biontech tested their vaccine against the so-called brazil variant, the variant first found in brazil. they found, first of all, we all know this, that the vaccine is 95% effective against the original, so to speak, coronavirus strain, rather. 95% effective against the original strain. they say it works roughly as well against the brazil variant, and neutralization, and this is important, is robust but lower for the south african variant. in plain speak, the vaccine is not working as well against the south african variant when you test it in the lab, so that has a lot of people asking will pfizer, will moderna, will johnson & johnson start working on boosters for the variant found in south africa? that provides a bit of a challenge to these vaccines. john? >> elizabeth cohen, grateful as always for the reporting and the context. thank you very much. coming up, bimigrants on th border. a record number of migrant children in border custody. yeah. turns out you were right about the general. they're actually a quality insurance company that's been saving people money for nearly 60 years. for a great low rate, and nearly 60 years of quality coverage, go with the general. it's moving day. and while her friends are doing the heavy lifting, for a great low rate, and nearly 60 years jess is busy moving her xfinity internet and tv services. it only takes about a minute. wait, a minute? but what have you been doing for the last two hours? ...delegating? oh, good one. move your xfinity services without breaking a sweat. xfinity makes moving easy. go online to transfer your services in about a minute. get started today. welcome back. we should see the president of the united states any moment. president biden leaving the white house to a small business here in washington, d.c., a, to talk about loans for small businesses and the relief package that he should get to the house tomorrow will bring additional help. the problem right now? a surge of unaccompanied children crossing the mexican border. that leeaves oppressing immigration tests for the new administration. there are more than 3,000 children in border patrol facilities with just 500 beds to accommodate them as they await playtime in shelters. t this eclipses what we saw in 2016 when the facilities were overwhelmed. she she says the pandemic adds stress here. >> the reason we're having so many problems with children crossing the border was this administration didn't think it was humane or moral to send kids back on this treacherous journey. we're also in a circumstance where we're dealing with covid so a lot of these facilities have smaller capacity. >> with us to share their reporting and insights, jeff zeleny, our chief international affairs correspondent, and priscilla alvarez. pri priscilla, let me start with you. the lack of room is overwhelming. what are they doing to solve this problem? >> there is a scramble behind the scenes, john. we are seeing more children crossing the u.s.-mexico border alone and not enough space to place them. they come into these border facilities where they're supposed to be processed and quickly put out to shelters who can work with them to place them with families in the united states, but there just isn't enough shelter space. so to get a good sense of what's going on here, you only have to look at those numbers in border patrol custody. we are learning moments ago it is now more than 3,400 children in border control custody of the that's already more than it was yesterday, john. >> and jeff zeleny, the politics of this issue have always been dicey in washington about legislation hard to get through, but during the trump administration it was the democrats screaming about what they thought was immoral treatment of children at the border. now they say the new president has a problem. >> policy has consequences. when you say you're not going to enforce our immigration laws, when you say you're not going to build a border wall, it adds consequences. we're seeing the tragic ko consequences of that right now at the border. >> people who are being lured in a crisis in the middle of a pandemic because they believe this biden administration conspicuously turned on a neon vacancy sign. >> how does the white house deal with that? they would dispute the tone there, they would dispute the details there. i'm sorry, this is the president of the united states. it's labeled right there for you. that is a hardware store in northeast washington. let's listen. >> hi, everybody, how are you? >> hi. >> good to see you. >> we are d.c.'s oldest hardware store and have operated since 1866. we've moved around a few times. we've been in this building for seven years now. like my father was telling you, this is actually our second presidential visit but our first one in this building. so welcome. we're excited to have you here today, and we want you to meet mary, the little wild thing. she has a separate business and i'll have her explain it better than i could ever do. >> sure. we moved here a few years ago, and we are an urban vertical farm located right next door. we grow salad greens, micro greens and edible flowers. beautiful salads, we deliver them all over the greater washington, d.c. area both to homes and we deliver locally here in the neighborhood. >> now, you've been engaged in the neighborhood, too. you sponsor a little league team, don't you? >> we do. we sponsor a little league team, we run job fairs for special needs programs to get their students -- to help them find employment. we've actually hired three people from that job program. it's called project surge. it's a project between the non-profit and the d.c. government, and they do a great job training their students who are special needs and be able to work in an environment like this is a great career. >> have you hired anyone else? >> yeah. >> that's great. >> we were going to do another one, but obviously the pandemic has halted our ability to do that, but we'll continue to do those job fairs. >> what hit you the hardest when the pandemic hit? >> right, so the biggest challenge is what we're going to do with our staff. there are so many uncertainties related to what the virus actually did. the first thing we did was we took all of our at-risk employees and we sent them home. we paid them through that entire process. that first wave of ppp loans was very helpful to allow us to do that. obviously that was not cost-effective, but we felt like we had to do that for our employees. we're still struggling because we did -- our retail business has actually increased over the course of the pandemic. i think people know there is a little bit of a hardware boom. a great portion of our business is actually government sales and commercial sales, and fort the first four or five months, that was completely gone. it was about 60% of our annual revenue. >> one of the reasons why i changed the rule for 20 days is only employers with 20 or fewer employees could qualify for ppp, and that's because so many went out of business. we found out an awful lot of that went to bigger businesses that weren't supposed to qualify because there used to be a thing called inspector general to see where the money went. the last administration fired the inspector general, so a lot of money went to people who shouldn't have gotten help and it didn't go folks who -- but, you know, with this new program, and we're going to continue this, you've been the only business that's been open the last couple weeks. now you'll keep the focus because a lot of minority-owned businesses and women-owned businesses have increased significantly, by 10% to 15%, including those who did not know how to get in line before. it's hard to know how to get in line. we're hoping this will continue to increase, because we'll also begin to be in control. >> i said we're the oldest hardware store in d.c., i also say we're the greenest hardware store in america. we have two urban farms. we have mary in the garage there, and we have another one that exists on our rooftop. you're not going to be able to see it from here, but they'll give a wave. >> i see them. don't jump, we need you. >> and then if i could just -- >> come on, we're going to move out. >> the crisis at the border, sir. >> thanks so much. >> all right, you're watching there, the camera shot getting a little shaky, some of the feisty reporters trying to ask the president some questions. this is a hardware store in the northeast part of the city, and you heard a unique business. it's an old business since the 1860s with two urban farms on the property as well. the president saying, this is what i'm trying to do, the newly refined small business assistance program, the ppp program, to help businesses just like that. hard to understand some of it because of the masks and the distance of the media, but this is the president trying to put a personal touch on, i promised you government would reach, i promised you government would reach those who need it the most, not the big companies. trying to say promise delivered there as he talked about the challenge for minority-owned businesses, women-owned businesses and businesses like this hardware store with a small number of employees, who frankly got outhustled in the early days of the assistance program by businesses that had the big bang got that money before small businesses like that. >> no question about it, and we've heard president-elect biden, candidate biden, saying help is on the way, help will be on the way. help is almost on the way. he's one day away from handing them a check himself. he hopes to sign this relief bill into law by the end of the week. that is what the administration is trying to draw a focus on, that he's helping these small businesses. the hardware store is about three miles or so from the white house. it's a small business like any town in america, and they have been struggling. they've been paying their employees, doing the right thing, so he was trying to highlight the fact. what he didn't say is, yes, democrats voted for this, republicans did not. and, john, one big difference from 12 years ago of all the many differences, at that point when the stimulus bill was passed in the obama administration, democrats were pretty nervous about basically doing it on their own. now i sense some worry from republicans worrying, should we be voting for this, should we be helping along with this? so that is the political argument. before that the substance argume