We will see a big change in who can serve in the military. New rules on what our government buys or perhaps more specifically from whom we buy. Some adjustments to how people travel in the United States during this pandemic. When it comes to the pandemic, we are seeing fault lines on the hill. On the hill. Concerns about Bipartisan Group of senators over President Bidens proposed 1. 9 trillion plan. Complicating things further, tonight, the article impeachment will make its way to the senate diverting energy away from the new administrations priorities. More on that in a moment. Lets get to our reporters on the ground on this busy monday morning. Garrett haake is on capitol hill. Its been a while since ive been into the studio. Forgive me. Turning in the wrong direction. Carol, let me start with you. We have two major story lines this morning. President bidens agenda and the impeachment of his immediate predecessor. Last hour, we learned President Biden plans to undo President Trumps ban on transgender individuals serving in the military. Reporter thats right. President biden will become the third commander in chief to essentially reverse the policy on this issue, which has been something that lbgtq americans and activists have been advocating for, they reverse the ban President Trump put into place. Go back to 2016, thats when then president obama opened up the ability for transgender individuals to openly serve in the military. President trump came in, reversed that. Now we have President Biden expected as early as today to again reverse it back so that transgender individuals can serve openly in the military. He has this meeting any minute now at 11 30 with his defense secretary, who is newly confirmed, as well as the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff. Expect this is potentially where we might hear some of this and where this announce ment may come from. The defense secretary said this is something he would support. As long as somebody has the ability to serve and can meet the requirements, they should be able to serve openly. A number of President Bidens supporters throughout the campaign, this is something he said he would do, this is something they wanted him to do, here we are seeing him weigh in on this issue as we have seen him try to follow through in these early days with other campaign promises. He is expected to reverse this ban on transgender individuals serving in the military as early as today. Garrett, Speaker Pelosi sending over the article of impeachment to the senate this evening. What do we know about how the trial is going to work . Whats the sense we are getting. Reporter we will see activity in 24 hours before most of the action moves behind closed doors. It will be brought to the senate tonight. Tomorrow, senators will be sworn in for the trial. Most of what we will see in the intervening weeks will be legal briefs. The impeachment managers, former President Trumps defense team putting their teams together. It will get underway february 9th for a short trial. Not the same length during the ukrainerelated impeachment. All of the senators are jurors and witnesses. They experienced the attack on the capitol firsthand. What we see right now is a lot of hesitancy of going down the road of an impeachment trial of a former president. We heard some of that this weekend. Take a listen. First of all, i think the trial is stupid. Its counterproductive. We have a flaming fire in this country. Its like taking gasoline and pouring it on top of the fire. Do you believe donald trump committed an impeachment offense . To begin with, i think its a moot point. Right now, donald trump is no longer the president. He is a former president. The answer from senator rounds there particularly important. If you cant get past the whether we should be doing this at all debate, its tough for those democratic impeachment manages to convince the 17 republicans to vote to convict donald trump. Senator rob portman of ohio announcing he will retire in 2022. The fact that he will not are to run for reelection may i emphasize may free him up if he were so inclined to vote for conviction of donald trump to not worry about the political consequences. That coming out of ohio last hour. Surprised a lot of folks. At the same time, Congress Also having to juggle President Bidens new agenda. Its looking like the covid relief talks are hitting a wall. What are some points of agreement so far . Where are the fault lines emerging . Reporter an hour and a half long zoom call with a group of senators over the weekend and the administration that was broadly described as productive. What we hear from republicans in particular now is that they think that the biden plan is too much, too soon. They dont want to see as much money spent as broadly as quickly after the last covid relief package was passed. They are concerned about things that they think might be extraneous like including the hike to the federal minimum wage in a covid relief bill. They want to see checks be more specifically targeted. They go to people who need the money the most and arent as broadly distributed to folks who maybe are recovering fine and not need the money. This is an open question, an open discussion on what President Biden and his administration say they do want to see be a bipartisan bill. This is going to be quite the process. Just getting underway in ernest about sunday afternoon. Garrett haake, carol lee, thanks to both of you. Lets turn to the governor of kentucky. The new cochair of the National GovernorsAssociation Economic recovery and revitalization task force. It focuses on issues from energy and the environment to infrastructure and taxes. Governor, good to have you. This task force that you are cochairing is bipartisan. On capitol hill, as you heard there, the bipartisan relief talks seem to have already hit a wall. Whats your reaction to the sticking points that we are seeing already surrounding the new president s covid relief plan . My reaction is that there is far too much time spent in washington about whether you are a democrat or a republican or what each team is going to support. As opposed to looking at whats good for americans. When you look at getting to the 2,000 level for checks or the increase payments to americans, they are popular with democrats and republicans. When you look at need for further state aid to ensure that we can continue to stimulate our economy, its supported by democrat and republican governors. It seems the only place that this starts getting partisan is in washington, d. C. The people of the country need help. They are in the midst of a pandemic for which they need currently relief. Then we need strategic investment moing forward. A postcovid economy will look different. Starting to build it right now, starting to analyze where it is moving, starting to invest can help this country not just have a limited or shorter recession but get to much better times and sustainable times moving forward more quickly. Governor, if you could snap your fingers and get covid relief today, what do you need right now from the federal government . What are the must haves . The main thing we need is more supply of the vaccine. Right now, we are vaccinating more people in kentucky than we get doses each week. Obviously, once we get through the initial amount sent to us, thats not sustainable moving forward. We are getting 60, 69,000 doses a week. We can vaccinate 250,000 people a week if we just had them. Outside of that, we need support for our small businesses. For restaurants that we have had to take some pretty aggressive steps dealing with through no fault of their own. Its what this virus targets. Our families that are struggling, food insecurity. Helping people that maybe never struggled before, just getting through the next couple of months. Certainly, the first c. A. R. E. S. Act, it worked. It showed us how this money moves through our economy, how those who need it the most spend it, how that goes to other small businesses. The Federal Reserve saying, you cant stimulate our economy enough right now. If we do this we invest wisely and we provide relief to our people, it wont just help them get through. It will help build a Brighter Future coming out of this pandemic. To your point you made a few moments ago about this postcovid economy and what it looks like and investigating or investing in the future of that kind of economy, what does that look like . What kinds of investments are we talking about there . Lets start with broadband. In this pandemic, we have learned every single household must have, in the shortterm, not longterm, high speed internet. Even in a postcovid economy, we will see telehealth being a major driver of the future. It helps rural kentuckians and americans get the very best care while still being in their home. Work is going to continue to be more virtual than ever before. It will get places like kentucky the ability to compete with some states that were able to attract certain jobs that we werent. Education, while i am so excited to get my kids back to the classroom full time, we are always going to have more education remaining virtual as we move forward. This is the most important infrastructure of the future. Investing in it is critical. Kentucky expanded medicaid before this pandemic hit. Our rural hospitals were stronger than others and were open. Certainly, the pandemic tells us and teaches us we have to have high Quality Health care, both affordability and access in every part of every state. In my state, we dont have tax incentives for Health Care Related jobs. Thats a change we have to make moving into the future. Look at other areas. Our food supply chain. With the time during this pandemic where we were worried if there would be food on the shelves, looking at agricultural technology, more meat, more vegetables, to feed this population, not just in a pandemic but after it. We have a lot of opportunity ahead of us. We have been taught a lot even in our toughest of times. Now is the time to help our people get through this, to fight the virus. But also get to work to make sure that the United States is the leading economy coming out of the covid19 pandemic. Governor, along with the task force, you and other governors taped this commercial, this promo urging folks to get to get vaccinated. How much of a big challenge has that been for your state . To convince people that the vaccine is safe. When we started our vaccination efforts, we thought it was going to be a large task. We started off doing education, especially with populations that have not been treated correctly in the past with vaccinations and were skeptical. What we have seen is the demand surging for vaccines. Those who initially declined to take it, it was more of a soft denial. They wanted to see whether other people who took it had adverse affects. Now we have a huge amount of demand, which means our entire country right now, where we are in vaccinations, is about supply, supply, supply. Everybodys Distribution Efforts will get up to par if they are not already. Supply is the driver right now. We have to have more vaccine. Thats in kentucky, thats everywhere, thats how we get out of the pandemic. We need more manufacturing of it. We need more vaccines to be approved. We just need more. Good spot to end it. Governor of kentucky, we did not get a chance to talk about what can best be described as a mediocre state for the uk basketball team. We will pick that up next time. Thank you. Folks, we are keeping a close eye on the white house. Later this hour, President Biden will meet with his new defense secretary, lloyd austin. He will meet with the chairman of the joint chiefs as well. We will bring you any news from that meeting. New details on President Bidens latest executive order. Moments ago, california has just lifted its stay at home order for all regions across the state. We will go live to Southern California. The number of coronavirus hospitalizations there leveling off. Medical officials not ready to celebrate just yet. [ engines revving ] its amazing to see them in the wild like th shhh. [ engine revs ] for those who were born to ride, theres progressive. Think youre managing your moderate to Severe Ulcerative Colitis or Crohns Disease . I did. 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Ist about humira. They cant believe its 100 online and gives them a competitive offer that wont change for 7 days. An offer that they can put toward their new car. Some people cant believe our friendly advocate will come to them as soon as tomorrow. Drop off their new ride and whisk their old one away. Because we make trading your car unbelievably easy. All so you can say. Told you so. Experience the new way to trade in your car with carvana. A few hours from now President Biden will announce new travel restrictions to try to stop the spread of the coronavirus. The biggest change will put a new travel ban in place for people coming from south africa where a new strain has been identified. Dr. Fauci talked about the ban. I believe its very prudent that the president made the decision to essentially block travel from south africa. We are taking very seriously the potential for the influx of these types of mutants into the country. Here are the latest facts on the pandemic. We have surpassed 25 million cases in this country. That means that right now, the United States has more than onefourth of the total coronavirus cases worldwide. Merck will stop working on its vaccine candidates. The early Clinical Trial datain response. Californias governor lifted the stay at home orders. Restaurants will reopen, Outdoor Dining and salons will resume. Steve, walk us through whats going on there and what you are hearing from officials. Reporter as you said, that regional stay at home order lifting here in california. Brings california Southern California and other parts back to the tiered system. Some places are more open than others. What we hear from Health Officials is still a sense of worry. Its for a reason that people that dont live in california dont understand. The numbers are improving. When you look at the hospitalizations leveling off, the case count week to week dropping, the Positivity Rate dropping. Thats good news. What Health Officials are worried about is that the fact that californians might hear that and get lax about following the guidelines. We saw it happen before the winter surge that we are in that killed thousands of people here in the state of california. Health officials are worried that will happen again. The other thing is that while some of the numbers have dropped off, others havent, like the death toll. We are still averaging well over 500 deaths a day in the state of california. The second part is that hospitals are still overloaded. Icu capacity still hovering around 0 . The waiting rooms, e. R. Rooms, icu are being overwhelmed by the amount of Covid Patients that are there. The people that know that best are here. This is reach air medical. Their job is to medevac patients when you need to get a patient to a hospital. They have been transferring patients at hospitals that are overloaded, taking them to Northern California where they have more capacity. In recent memory, in recent months, they havent been able do that so well. The volume they have been doing has dropped significantly because the entire system is gridlocked. There arent any places to transfer that many more patients. We spoke to the Program Director about that and to a doctor who is taking some of the transfer patients and why shes doing it. Listen to this. I suspect because in other places in california and even institutions outside of stanford, the volume of Covid Patients is pretty high. While the numbers are less and it sees slower, thats not necessarily accurate. Hospitals are still busy. Theres nowhere to take patients. Reporter hospitals busy. This company extremely busy. They have been working around the clock. Volume has been four times the amount of patients that they have been transferring. That has plummeted because the system has been entirely gridlocked. Both up and down the coast here if california with this with the situation here easing and restrictions coming back, we will see how Health Officials react locally here in Southern California. Back to you, craig. Steve patterson there in california. Thank you. I want to turn to dr. Ramirez, an emergency physician, the former pandemic and emergency threats coordinator in hhs office of global affairs. Lets start with cal