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After November's general election, Georgia became the center of the U.S. political universe and the scene of a bitter battle within the GOP over the results of the 2020 presidential election with President Trump falsely claiming that the state was stolen from him.

He said his campaign sought to cut through the noise of the "culture wars" and instead focused on the "concerns of ordinary people."

he supports passing the $2,000 stimulus payments for qualifying Americans.

"I think too often, even in the places where there is agreement, at least among ordinary people that we need movement, we get no movement.

And so one of the things that I'll be very focused on is the outsized influence of well-connected corporate interests in our politics."

Mr. Trump’s criticism of the relief effort, which he called a “disgrace,” was that it was not generous enough: He called on Congress to provide $2,000 a person in direct payments to households, rather than the $600 included in the bill.

The pullback in spending is spilling over into the labor market. About 869,000 people filed new claims for state jobless benefits last week. That was down from a week earlier but is significantly above the level in early November, before a surge in coronavirus cases prompted a new round of layoffs in much of the country.

A further 398,000 people filed for Pandemic Unemployment Assistance, one of two federal programs to expand jobless benefits that were set to expire this month without congressional action. Some forecasters expect the December employment report to show a net loss of jobs.

By waiting until the last minute to act, legislators forced state labor departments — which administer both state and federal unemployment benefits — to prepare for the programs’ end. Many states won’t be able to reverse course in time to avoid a lapse in payments.

Those savings could help fuel a rapid recovery once coronavirus vaccines are widely available, allowing Americans to resume traveling, attending concerts and gathering in bars and restaurants. But that prospect only underscores the need for aid to ensure that businesses make it until then.

The president relented only after Republican lawmakers persuaded him to sign the legislation on Sunday. He said that he had been assured Congress would take up his demands for bigger checks, along with removing a legal shield for tech companies and investigating “very substantial voter fraud.” His claims that the election was stolen have been repeatedly contradicted by state election officials and judges across the nation.

Democrats, who have long called for increased direct payments, have sought to use the issue as a political cudgel in the Georgia runoff. Jon Ossoff and the Rev. Raphael Warnock, who are running against Ms. Loeffler and Mr. Perdue, have both called for higher stimulus checks, criticizing the $600 as insufficient and rebuking their opponents for not agitating to put more money in Georgians’ pockets.

“Working Americans have borne the brunt of this pandemic,” Mr. Hawley wrote on Twitter. “They’ve been hammered, through no fault of their own. They deserve $2000 in #covid relief - a fraction of what the banks & big business got. Let’s vote now.”

Despite the lack of action on a bigger check, the Treasury secretary, Steven Mnuchin, said in a tweet on Tuesday that the $600 checks could begin arriving in bank accounts as early as Tuesday evening and would continue into next week, while paper checks will start being mailed on Wednesday.

As Governor Cuomo excoriated New Yorkers about mask-wearing, he took no responsibility for not shutting down indoor dining for weeks, well into the new spike.

The inconsistent aid had a cascading effect. Governors like Mr. Cuomo, who don’t have the budgetary ability of the federal government to extend substantial business relief, ended up in a lose-lose situation as the virus surged in late summer and fall. New York had to keep high-risk businesses open, it was argued, so that they could earn whatever meager revenue they could. But what is “the economy” worth if it comes at the cost of our physical well-being, our very lives?

Dr. Jha said that early in his time on the task force there was a lot of interest in building a robust testing system. “But it was killed by the political leadership in the White House,” he said

“The primary thing we really should have had is ubiquitous testing, and the government has just not chosen to do that,”

I agree with her on one point: It is the American way to champion individualism over collective obligation.

We could lift every family out of poverty by sending out regular checks; other countries use taxes to fund benefits that significantly reduce their poverty rates. Poverty, then, is a policy choice.

“We’ve basically had a complete abdication of the federal response,” Gregg Gonsalves, an assistant professor in epidemiology of microbial diseases at Yale, told me when asked about the interplay between public health and economic struggles

If we want people to take individual actions to help curb the spread of the virus, we also need to invest in their ability to do so. The government could send every household masks — a plan the Trump administration nixed early on. It could pay Americans to stay home if they feel sick, test positive or work for a business that should close for public health reasons, to avoid choosing between their health and their bills.“If you want people to do the right thing you have to make it easy, and we’ve made it hard,”

The last 10 months have given us a very clear message: We are inextricably connected to each other. We can’t stay healthy unless our neighbors can do so, too.

They joined a handful of others, including Senator Marco Rubio of Florida, Senator Josh Hawley of Missouri and Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, who have backed increasing the checks to $2,000.

While Democrats all support larger checks, they are unlikely to endorse a hasty overhaul of the legal shield currently in place for social media companies, especially measures put forward by Republican senators aimed at confronting what they believe is anti-conservative bias.

The House voted on Monday evening to increase the size of the checks to $2,000, daring Senate Republicans to either approve the heftier sum or defy Mr. Trump.

In signing the relief bill on Sunday night, Mr. Trump claimed in a statement that the Senate would “start the process for a vote” on legislation that would increase direct payments and pledged that “much more money is coming.”

Republican lawmakers in the House were visibly frustrated with Mr. Trump’s demand. Some of the president’s closest allies, including Representatives Steve Scalise of Louisiana, the No. 2 Republican, and Jim Jordan of Ohio, voted against the measure, and Representative Kevin Brady of Texas, the top Republican on the Ways and Means Committee, complained on the House floor that the proposal had been “hastily dropped on us at the last minute” and wouldn’t assist those who needed it most.

For those wondering how an alphabet soup of emergency financial measures that can be turned off by a lame duck cabinet member’s whim came to be so important: No, it’s not supposed to work this way. On paper, Congress should have seen that the ongoing crisis — including the roughly one million teachers and many other public workers in education who have been laid off because state and local budgets are in shambles — was getting worse, and that it required them to pass renewed direct fiscal aid.

Only two loans have been made: one to the State of Illinois and another to the Metropolitan Transportation Authority of New York for a total of $1.7 billion, which is 0.3 percent of the $500 billion Congress authorized for facilitating such loans in the CARES Act. And for the M.T.A., those loans remain inadequate, as New York City still plans to lay off subway workers and drastically cut service.

President-elect Biden’s pick for Treasury secretary will be much more likely to work with, not against, the Fed in more generously supporting state and local governments. Many of the prominent names being floated have already worked closely with Chairman Powell and expressed sympathy for a more aggressive use of recovery tools.

We have a long way to go until Inauguration Day, yet the Fed can begin to prepare itself now to act as more than a backstop. Based on the prospects for action from Congress, our states and local communities will need it.

The one-year credit appears likely to garner enough support to be included in the stimulus package, but it will also have to clear a series of tough parliamentary hurdles because of the procedural maneuvers Democrats are using to muscle the stimulus package through, potentially without Republican support.

With House Democratic leadership aiming to have the stimulus legislation approved on the chamber floor by the end of the month, Congress moved last week to fast-track Mr. Biden’s stimulus plan even as details of the legislation are still being worked out.

But the child tax credit could provide an opportunity for some bipartisan support, since Senator Mitt Romney, Republican of Utah, introduced a similar measure that would send payments of up to $1,250 per month to families with children.

Janet L. Yellen, the Treasury secretary, warned on Sunday that the United States labor market was stalling and in a “deep hole” that could take years to emerge from if lawmakers did not quickly pass the stimulus package.

Ms. Yellen said that passing the stimulus package could allow the economy to reach full employment by next year. Failing to do so, she said, could leave the jobless rate elevated for years to come.

Researchers at Columbia University found that Mr. Biden’s overall stimulus proposal could cut child poverty in half in 2021 because of the expansion of the child credit, as well as other changes to tax credits and expansions of unemployment and food assistance benefits.

In the big picture, earmarks add up to little more than a rounding error, generally constituting not more than 1 percent of the federal budget. They are used to determine spending priorities, not spending levels, meaning they determine how the pie gets divided rather than how big it is.

As conceived, earmarks allow the people who presumably best understand a state or district — its elected officials — to direct federal dollars to where they are most needed.

In 2011, Republicans assumed control of the chamber and went even further, declaring a moratorium on earmarks.

In 2007, the Democratic-controlled House began reforming the practice, increasing transparency and accountability.

This ban has made Congress less accountable and more dysfunctional. It is time to abandon the experiment.

Since America’s earliest days, they have proved a useful tool for building coalitions. (The first known instance of congressional earmarking dates to the Lighthouse Act of 1789.)

Considering the thicket of crises the nation is facing, big-ticket legislation, including another meaty round of coronavirus relief, is precisely what is needed.

It's a grim reality reflected in the latest numbers.

The US had its highest day of new cases -- 217,664 -- and deaths -- 2,879 -- on Thursday,

There were a record-setting, 100,667 hospitalizations

The US has been adding 1 million new cases every six days for three weeks.

Covid-19 was the leading cause of death this week, with 11,820, an average of 1,660 a day,

"Scaling up mask use to 95% can save 66,000 lives by April 1," the team said.

"We are now up to roughly 2,100 positive cases in our hospitals. That's an increase of almost 70% since November 11," O'Quinn said. "We're seeing about 70 to 100 new cases every day."

In Pennsylvania, just under 5,000 people are hospitalized with Covid-19, and two parts of the state are inching closer to staffing shortages, Secretary of Health Dr. Rachel Levine said Thursday.

"It is so important to remember that all of us have to be mindful, that we all have a role to play in what is happening in the hospitals right now," Levine said. "You might not need hospital care right now; you might not have a loved one in the hospital right now. But what is happening in our hospitals has a direct impact on you."

California hospitals are treating about 2,066 Covid-19 patients in intensive care units

"We'll see more of the surge as we get two to three weeks past (and) it butts right up on the Christmas holiday, as people start to travel and shop and congregate," Fauci said.

Fauci said he supports as a "good idea" Biden's plan to suggest all Americans wear a mask for the first 100 days of his presidency.

"Shutdowns, or lockdowns, are really not on the table, at least not from the Biden-Harris team. We really view this as restrictions that you dial up or dial down based on the local epidemiology," Gounder said.

And hospitals nationwide have yet to see the impacts that Thanksgiving gatherings and travel could bring, with another surge projected in coming weeks. On NBC's "Today" on Friday, Dr. Anthony Fauci said the "full brunt" of Thanksgiving coronavirus cases won't be clear for another week or two.

The figure comes as Gov. Gavin Newsom announced a strict regional stay-at-home order.

Delaware Gov. John Carney announced Thursday a stay-at-home advisory, telling residents to avoid indoor gatherings with anyone outside their households from December 14 through January 11.

A vaccine is on the way but, make no mistake, we are facing the most difficult few months of this crisis," the governor said in a statement. "I know we're all tired of COVID-19 -- but it's not tired of us."

Meanwhile, local and state leaders have begun giving updates on when they expect their first batches of vaccines. No vaccine has received emergency use authorization from the Food and Drug Administration.

New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio said Thursday he expects the first round in about 12 days from Pfizer. About a week later, the city will get vaccines from Moderna.

"Over time, there will be enough vaccines for everyone," de Blasio said.

Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker said he expects about 300,000 doses of a Covid-19 vaccine by the end of the month. Health care workers and long-term care facility residents and staff are "absolutely going to be up near the top of the list" for the first doses, Baker said.

West Wing aides, shaken by polls showing the president badly trailing Joseph R. Biden Jr., worried that they were living through the final days of the Trump administration

Late in the day, the stock market collapsed when Mr. Trump abruptly called off talks for a congressional coronavirus relief bill after the Fed chair, Jerome H. Powell, said such a stimulus was badly needed.

Some White House staff members wondered whether Mr. Trump’s behavior was spurred by a cocktail of drugs he has been taking to treat the coronavirus, including dexamethasone, a steroid that can cause mood swings and can give a false level of energy and a sense of euphoria.

Prominent supporters of the administration said Mr. Trump should have stayed at the hospital until he was no longer infectious or should remain confined to his residence.

There were no answers, either, on when Mr. Trump last tested negative for the virus — a crucial piece of information that the White House and Dr. Conley have refused to answer and would establish the known state of Mr. Trump’s health before the presidential debate last Tuesday or before he attended a fund-raiser in New Jersey on Thursday. The White House first made public that Mr. Trump had tested positive early last Friday.

He will likely need to focus more immediately on issues that could attract bipartisan support, such as providing COVID-19 relief and improving U.S. infrastructure.

Days after becoming president-elect, Biden announced a team of advisers that will spearhead his pandemic response once he takes office. The task force will be led by Dr. David Kessler, a former Food and Drug Administration commissioner; former Surgeon General Vivek Murthy; and Dr. Marcella Nunez-Smith, an associate professor of medicine and epidemiology at Yale School of Medicine.

"I'll ask the new Congress to put a bill on my desk by the end of January with all the resources to see how both our public health and economic response can be seen through the end,"

Biden has said he'll start working to install "an effective distribution plan" for a potential COVID-19 vaccine on the first day of his presidency. His plan would spend $25 billion on vaccine production and disbursement, and calls for an eventual vaccine to be free for all Americans.

Biden said he will institute a national police oversight commission within his first 100 days of taking office.

Biden has said that on his first day as president he will produce comprehensive immigration legislation that creates a pathway to citizenship for 11 million migrants living in the U.S. illegally. It would also provide a pathway to citizenship for people commonly known as DREAMers, who are part of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program.

The president-elect has vowed to stop the practice of separating immigrant families trying to enter the U.S. from Mexico.

Biden has pledged that on his first day as president he will raise corporate income taxes to 28% — compared with the current 21% rate set by the GOP-led tax cuts of 2017. Also, this promise falls under Biden's larger proposed tax plan, which stresses that Americans making less than $400,000 would not pay more in taxes.

reduce the use of mandatory minimum sentencing for nonviolent offenses and institute policies geared at lowering recidivism.

which includes getting the country to net-zero carbon emissions by 2050.

A large part of Biden's health care proposal offers a new public option plan that builds on the existing Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare. But the ACA's fate remains in question during the rest of Trump's term and into next year. On Nov. 10, the Supreme Court is set to hear arguments against the ACA from the Trump administration and multiple states. If the justices side with Trump next year when they make their decision, Biden's plans for health care could completely change

Notably, the president-elect has expressed support for the College for All Act, proposed in 2017 by Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Rep. Pramila Jayapal, D-Wash., which would eliminate tuition at public colleges and universities for families making up to $125,000.

“S.B. 8 was designed to nullify this court’s precedents and to shield that nullification from judicial review,” wrote Brian H. Fletcher, the acting solicitor general, in the federal government’s brief. “So far, it has worked: The threat of a flood of S.B. 8 suits has effectively eliminated abortion in Texas at a point before many women even realize they are pregnant, denying a constitutional right the court has recognized for half a century.”

The patient may not be sued, but doctors, staff members at clinics, counselors, and people who help pay for the procedure or drive patients to it are all potential defendants. Plaintiffs do not need to live in Texas, have any connection to the abortion or show any injury from it, and they are entitled to at least $10,000 and their legal fees if they win. Defendants who win their cases are not entitled to legal fees.

“Where, as here, a state enacts a blatantly unconstitutional statute, assigns enforcement authority to everyone in the world and weaponizes the state judiciary to obstruct those courts’ ability to protect constitutional rights,” the brief said, “the federal courts must be available to provide relief.”

The law effectively deputizes ordinary citizens — including those from outside Texas — allowing them to sue clinics and others who violate the law. It awards them at least $10,000 per illegal abortion if they are successful.

Ken Paxton, Texas’ attorney general, filed a single brief in both cases, arguing that neither the federal government nor the providers were entitled to sue. The right way to challenge the law, Mr. Paxton said, was for abortion providers to violate it, be sued in state court, and present constitutional or other arguments as defenses.

“If Texas is right, no decision of this court is safe,” he wrote in his brief. “States need not comply with, or even challenge, precedents with which they disagree. They may simply outlaw the exercise of whatever constitutional rights they disfavor; disclaim enforcement by state officials; and delegate the state’s enforcement authority to members of the general public by empowering and incentivizing them to bring a multitude of harassing actions threatening ruinous liability — or, at a minimum, prohibitive litigation costs.”

Was it also because she had been bullied at school? “Yeah, to some extent.” I ask if she literally stopped talking. “I spoke to my parents, my sister and a bit to my teacher,” she says. Why did she stop? “I don’t know. I just couldn’t.”

The only aspiration he had for Greta back then was for her to get better. As for himself, he knew little about the climate crisis, wasn’t convinced by what he did know and just wanted to get a nice big car – an SUV or pick-up truck. Over time, Greta changed his mind.

“The way she got us interested was a bit by force. She hijacked us. She started turning off lights. She cut the electricity bill in half.” He laughs. “She’d say, ‘Why have you got the lights on in this room, you’re not even in here?’ and I’d say, ‘Because we live in a country where it’s dark all the time and it makes me feel nice’ and she’d say, ‘Why? It doesn’t make any sense.’ Of course, she was right.”

Did he get pissed off with her? “Oh hell, yeah. She can be very, very, very annoying. But because we were in this crisis we had to react, so we became aware and began to do stuff for the environment, but not because we wanted to save the environment; we did it to save our child.”

By the time she was ready to return to school (initially a specialist autism school, then grammar school), she had been diagnosed with Asperger’s, obsessive compulsive disorder and selective mutism. Thunberg says the diagnosis came as a relief. “When I felt the most sad, I didn’t know that I had autism. I just thought, I don’t want to be like this. The diagnosis was almost only positive for me. It helped me get the support I needed and made me understand why I was like this.”

Does she feel guilty about stymying her mother’s career? She seems surprised by the question. “It was her choice. I didn’t make her do anything. I just provided her with the information to base her decision on.” At times like this you can see how unyielding she is – while it’s the source of her strength, you can imagine just how tough it may have been for her parents. “Of course, you could argue one person’s career is not more important than the climate, but to her it was a very big thing,” she says.

She describes her autism as her superpower. I ask why. “A lot of people with autism have a special interest that they can sit and do for an eternity without getting bored. It’s a very useful thing sometimes. Autism can be something that holds you back, but if you get to the right circumstance, if you are around the right people, if you get the adaptations that you need and you feel you have a purpose, then it can be something you can use for good. And I think that I’m doing that now.”

she says, she’s got loads of hobbies. “I also do a lot of jigsaw puzzles. The biggest was 3,000 pieces, but that didn’t fit on the table so it was very complicated to finish. And I also spend time with my two dogs [a golden retriever and black labrador] and talk lots to friends. We are very silly. Maybe people have an idea that climate activists are serious, but that’s not the case.” She hiccups another giggle.

Do you really speak to your climate activist friends every day? “Yes, many times a day.” Do you have parties? “Since we are spread all over the world it’s hard to do that, but we have Zoom calls and movie nights online and lots of chats where we just spam each other.”

She says she can’t think of a single politician who has impressed her. “Nobody has surprised me.” What about, say, New Zealand prime minister Jacinda Ardern, who said that the climate crisis was a matter of “life or death” at the June launch of her new roadmap to control global heating? She looks sceptical. “It’s funny that people believe Jacinda Ardern and people like that are climate leaders. That just tells you how little people know about the climate crisis.” Why? “Obviously the emissions haven’t fallen. It goes without saying that these people are not doing anything.” In April, it was revealed that New Zealand’s greenhouse-gas emissions had increased by 2% in 2019.

When she didn’t have friends, did she want them? “I think I did, but I didn’t have the courage to get friends,” she says. “Now, when I have got many friends, I really see the value of friendship. Apart from the climate, almost nothing else matters. In your life, fame and your career don’t matter at all when you compare them with friendship.”

She believes the reason that so many autistic people have become climate activists is because they cannot avert their gaze – they have a compulsion to tell the truth as they see it. “I know lots of people who have been depressed, and then they have joined the climate movement or Fridays for Future and have found a purpose in life and found friendship and a community that they are welcome in.”

So the best thing that has come out of your activism has been friendship? “Yes,” she says. And now there is no mistaking her smile. “Definitely. I am very happy now.”

Grassroots movements don’t have a great track record, he wrote. “

Some marchers went into party politics: One participant from Maine—a woman who’d never done anything political but vote before attending the Women’s March—went home and became the chair of the Maine Democratic Party. Only a fraction of the marchers kept taking their cues from the Women’s March organization itself. And that makes sense: The Women’s March encompassed an almost unbelievably broad array of concerns.

Some did run for office, and some won. The march itself encompassed a diverse coalition of interest groups and the convention that followed, in October 2017, hosted workshops on the messier aspects of political organizing.

The members of that group threw themselves into the fight against partisan gerrymandering and worked to pass a state ballot initiative for an independent redistricting commission. Now, the Michigan maps have been redrawn. Though it’s impossible to measure how much the Women’s March contributed to that outcome, it unquestionably played a part.

Change happens when people run for office, amass coalitions of interest groups, engage in the messy practice of politics.”

They were everywhere: at fashion shows, cutting in front of rank-and-file participants at events, on magazine covers that they complained were not distributed widely enough. They accepted awards, posed for glamorous photo shoots, and fought a two-year battle to trademark the phrase “women’s march,” which they eventually dropped.

Organizers of marches are rarely given such disproportionate credit for their events’ success. Seasoned activists know that power of a grassroots movement lies not in its branding or executive leadership structure, but in the people who show up and sustain it. And yet, the Women’s March foursome quickly claimed to speak for something far more decentralized and organic than their own narrative would suggest.

But the organizers of Women’s March didn’t get that memo. The nonprofit that grew around it treated its four leaders — Tamika Mallory, Carmen Perez, Bob Bland, and Linda Sarsour — as celebrities, the visionary trailblazers at the head of a cohesive political movement.

But the Women’s March organization didn’t do much to refocus all that attention on the thousands of local organizers and millions of marchers who gave the march its meaning.

So when Mallory and Perez drew criticism for their support of noted sexist and anti-Semite Louis Farrakhan, it was no big stretch for critics to use the leaders of the Women’s March to smear the entire movement.

The groundswell of women looking for community and purpose after Trump’s election needed some guidance—literally, marching orders. They did not need a clique of unelected spokespeople.

They had come to the Women’s March not as a unified people following a leader with a specific set of demands, but as individuals with a variety of related grievances, wanting to express a broad feeling of dismay at the direction the country was headed.

Many of them were inspired to undertake a deeper political education and find their place in other movements, including the fight to save the Affordable Care Act and the racial justice uprisings in the summer of 2020. In an alternate timeline, with no Women’s March to warm them up, would many of the white people at those Black Lives Matter marches have shown up at all?

The most memorable subsequent actions of the Women’s March—the groups that traveled to D.C. to beg their senators not to confirm Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court, the marches in the streets to protest the end of Roe v. Wade in Texas—what did they accomplish?

Protests and marches reassure people that they’re neither alone in their anger or fear, nor crazy for being angry and fearful. They introduce demonstrators to new friends and networks of political activity. There’s nothing like the rush of standing in a chanting crowd, sweating or shivering with thousands of people who share one’s outrage, to revive flagging willpower.

I’m sure there are plenty of Women’s Marchers who heaved a sigh of relief and went “back to brunch” after Joe Biden took office, thinking the work was done. But I don’t think that’s the prevailing view among the people who first woke up to politics when Trump became president. They watched, as we all did, as right-wing rioters took the Capitol last Jan. 6. They’re witnessing the dissolution of a broad voting rights bill at the hands of two Democratic senators. They’re watching abortion rights disintegrate in Texas and across the South. And they’re living through the hottest years in recorded history, bracing for the next hurricane or forest fire, as the people with the power to save life on Earth as we know it look the other way.

In this moment, under those conditions, with five years of hindsight, the Women’s March looks nothing short of revolutionary.

The president’s allies are newly optimistic the brightening economic mood will further discredit the notion that a recession is necessary to tame inflation.

Despite the disagreement, senior White House aides still talk to Summers frequently and routinely seek his input. Summers has been to the White House several times this year alone, even as he continues to publicly hammer Biden’s industrial policy, student loan forgiveness and other economic programs.

Along with other centrist economists, Summers says inflation remains dangerously high, warning it could reaccelerate. The latest inflation report shows prices rising by 3.2 percent in July relative to one year ago, but a less volatile measure of price increases is still at 4.7 percent. The labor market remains strong not because Biden has defied the laws of economic reality, according to Summers, but because the battle against inflation is still far from won. Summers maintains the rescue plan sparked inflation that is at risk of becoming “entrenched” — a long-term problem for consumers and businesses.

“I don’t think anybody should reach any definitive judgments until we see how things play out,” Summers said in an interview. Summers said his predictions were based on standard macroeconomic models, and not meant to be interpreted as precise estimates. “The idea that bringing down inflation has nothing to do with increasing unemployment runs different from all conventional macroeconomic assessments.”

“The Democratic Party is currently split between people who thought the American Rescue Plan was appropriately sized and absolutely necessary — and those who think it was too big and had collateral effects that were quite damaging,” said Bill Galston, a policy analyst at the D.C.-based Brookings Institution who served in the Clinton administration. “This is a moral question, but it’s also a political question. If Joe Biden loses the election principally because of economic discontent over inflation and high prices, then a lot of Democrats will conclude it was not worth it.”

Summers has also made predictions that still do not appear to have been borne out, at least not yet. In a June 2022 speech at the London School of Economics, when inflation was at its 9.1 percent peak, Summers said the nation would “need” substantially higher levels of unemployment for inflation to come down.

“We need five years of unemployment above 5 percent to contain inflation — in other words, we need two years of 7.5 percent unemployment or five years of 6 percent unemployment or one year of 10 percent unemployment,

That same month, Summers and a co-author wrote that reducing job vacancies by 20 percent “requires, on average” a three percentage point increase in the unemployment rate. The number of job openings has fallen about 16 percent with no discernible jump in unemployment

In September 2022, Summers reiterated the point to Fortune: “I’m not sure you’re restraining inflation until you get the unemployment rate close to 5 percent, and to significantly restrain inflation you’re likely to need unemployment for some period at 6 percent.” The unemployment rate was 3.5 percent then and is the same level now.

In more recent interviews, Summers has defended his estimates by pointing out that inflation remains above the Fed’s 2 percent target. In particular, Summers emphasizes that it was always the case that transitory factors — such as soaring gas prices — pushed inflation up higher, to closer to 8 percent, but that the more stable “underlying” inflation was closer to 4.5 percent.

Even with lower overall inflation, Summers argues, underlying inflation remains largely unchanged — though the decline in transitory prices makes the problem appear to be going away.

“I think it’s fair to say — given how hot the economy is — the inflation performance at this point is better than I think many standard models would have predicted,” Summers said. “But I don’t think that all establishes we’re on a confident glide path to 2 percent with current rates of unemployment.”

More liberal economists argued that Summers misdiagnosed the cause of higher inflation, and therefore missed the cure. These economists contend that price spikes were overwhelmingly caused by supply chain disruptions, including lingering shocks from the pandemic and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, not by too much government stimulus. As supply chains have normalized, so too has inflation.

Skanda Amarnath, executive director of the left-leaning think tank Employ America, emphasized that inflation is “now broadly decelerating,” not just in some idiosyncratic or transitory factors such as energy and used cars but across a large range of categories — household furnishings, technological equipment, wages, legal and professional services, and more.

“Remember when the experts said that to get inflation under control we needed to lower wages, and drive up unemployment? I never bought that,” Biden tweeted on July 20. “Instead, I focused on getting more Americans into the workforce, fixing our broken supply chains, and lowering costs.

Summers remains unconvinced about the rescue plan, pointing to substantial “unhappiness in the middle class about the state of the economy” over the last two years, mostly driven by inflation.