(MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif.) — Some homeowners in Southern California are blurring their homes on Google Maps as a means of deterring potential burglaries, Ryan Railsback, an officer in the Riverside Police Department, told ABC News.
The tactic could reduce the likelihood of a robbery by denying would-be wrongdoers useful information about the value of one’s possessions and any security measures in place to protect them, Railsback said.
“The crooks are looking for new and innovative ways to victimize people,” Railsback said. “It’s good for the public to be aware of that and counter what the criminals are already doing.”
The blurring of homes on Google Maps was first reported by ABC News affiliate KFSN in Fresno, California. Google did not immediately respond to ABC News’ request for comment.
Here’s why some people are blurring their homes on Google Maps, and how to do it yourself.
Why are some people blurring their homes on Google Maps?
The safety tactic of blurring one’s home on Google Maps has been around for years, Christopher Herrmann, a professor of law and police science at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York, told ABC News. The simple digital fix could stop robbers from targeting a given home, he said.
“Would-be thieves certainly want to scout their locations before they hit them,” Herrmann said.
When seeking online images of a home, criminals look for valuable assets worth stealing and any security barriers that may be in place to stop them, Herrman said. That includes identifying a home’s layout and entrance, as well as the presence of a front-door camera or exterior surveillance system.
Blurring a home on Google Maps could help prevent theft by concealing such information. However, the maneuver also risks backfiring should thieves become suspicious that a property has been blurred because it features valuables or vulnerabilities worth keeping out of sight.
“It may be more of a red flag,” Herrmann said.
Home burglaries are actually exceedingly rare. In 2019, fewer than 1% of households experienced a burglary, according to the Department of Justice.
“Is your house going to be targeted by would-be thieves?” Herrmann asked. “Probably not.”
How do you blur your home on Google Maps?
To blur your home on Google Maps, navigate to Street View mode at your address using the website. The option to request a blurring of your home will not appear on the mobile app.
A drop-down menu will appear in the top-left corner of the screen. Navigate to the option labeled “Report a Problem.” A questionnaire will present you with prompts to identify where and why you would like the Street View image to be blurred.
Submit the questionnaire. Google Maps may follow up with you for additional information.
(CHICAGO) — Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is set to speak at the Democratic National Convention on Wednesday night where she will throw her support behind Vice President Kamala Harris — after appearing to play a significant role in President Joe Biden’s exit from the top of the Democratic ticket.
She’ll back Tim Walz, making his acceptance speech on Day 3 of the Democrats’ gathering, knowing him from his time as a congressman before he became Minnesota’s governor.
Pelosi, who last month endorsed Harris to be the party’s nominee for president, did not publicly call on Biden to withdraw from the race. Instead, Pelosi, in a July 10 interview, declined to directly answer when asked if Biden had her support in his reelection bid after his ruinous debate performance.
At the time, Biden had already committed to running for reelection, writing in a statement congressional Democrats days earlier that he was “firmly committed” to staying in the race.
Her comments blunted any progress Biden was trying to make persuading congressional Democrats that he was up for the job. And Pelosi’s ambiguous public comments instead created space for rank-and-file Democrats to pressure the president to drop out.
She and other leading members of the Democratic Party raised concerns that his staying in the race could have a negative impact on Democratic candidates down-ballot.
Ultimately, those pressures helped lead Biden to leave the 2024 race just a few weeks later.
Despite turning over the reins of the Democratic caucus to Rep. Hakeem Jeffries in 2023, Pelosi still has significant influence over members given her unmatched fundraising prowess that’s shaped Democratic politics and candidates for decades.
As the first woman to serve as speaker of the House, she has said her support for Harris is “official, personal and political.”
“Officially, I have seen Kamala Harris’s strength and courage as a champion for working families, notably fighting for a woman’s right to choose,” Pelosi said in her endorsement of Harris. “Personally, I have known Kamala Harris for decades as rooted in strong values, faith and a commitment to public service. Politically, make no mistake: Kamala Harris as a woman in politics is brilliantly astute – and I have full confidence that she will lead us to victory in November.”
(CHICAGO) — When Kentucky state Rep. Rachel Roberts was first running for her seat, she was advised to not use a word common in political campaigns: “values.”
Roberts, now the only Democrat representing northern Kentucky in the state legislature, was running in a 2020 special election in competitive region of the state just outside of Cincinnati at a time when Republicans had a stranglehold on rhetoric on “freedom,” “patriotism” and the American flag.
“I’d get hammered,” Roberts said she was told. “The Republicans would say Democrats aren’t the party of values.”
Walking around the Democratic National Committee this week, things couldn’t be more different.
The word “freedom” is on seemingly on the lips of every attendee and speaker — and the name of Beyonce’s hit song and now-campaign anthem. Audience chants of “USA!” puncture speakers’ remarks as they wave signs saying the same. Camo hats bearing the names of Vice President Kamala Harris and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz pockmark the crowd. And musician Jason Isbell performed the country hit song “Something More Than Free.”
The convention marks a culmination of decades of Democratic efforts to take back patriotism after years of Republicans owning messaging around “freedom” and the American flag.
For years, the party lamented the domination Republicans held on symbols of patriotism, a monopoly that started in during the Reagan presidency and that Democrats couldn’t break.
“You had a Republican Party that in the 80s and 90s, seized the freedom mantle using guns. The Second Amendment was America’s first freedom,” said Jim Kessler, the co-founder of Third Way, a center-left think tank. “Right to life was a version of freedom, too.” Where Democrats supported freedom was a license to behave poorly, like burning a flag.”
Now, after having been ceded to Republicans for decades “freedom” is the word bouncing off the walls of Chicago’s United Center. And Democrats are reveling in the reversal of their messaging fortunes.
“Reclaiming the flag and reclaiming freedom and democracy, I think that was a feeling broadly. But I think within the last several cycles, it became clearer how to do that in a way that had broad appeal and resonated with people,” said one Democratic strategist with ties to Harris’ team.
After decades being shut out from leaning into patriotism, Democrats said they were handed an opening by their sworn enemy — former President Donald Trump.
The Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection, spurred by Trump’s conspiracy theories about the 2020 election results and led by his supporters, jolted the transfer of power from the former president to his successor. And the Supreme Court decision scrapping constitutional abortion protections allowed Democrats to go on offense on a culture war in which they’d long been in a defensive crouch.
All the sudden, Democrats said, democracy was teetering. Women’s bodily autonomy was at risk. And the battle for “freedom” was on.
“The Dobbs decision all of a sudden gave Democrats the opportunity for a reset button on that issue, on patriotism. And I think Donald Trump gave us the opportunity on Jan. 6 to start retaking those themes,” former Alabama Sen. Doug Jones, D, said, referencing the Supreme Court’s ruling.
“The combination of Trump and January 6 and the Dobbs decision gave Democrats an opportunity to reset and say, ‘this is really what freedom means. That is not freedom, folks, that is oppression, that is autocracy. Freedom means liberty, and this is what we stand for.'”
Democrats didn’t storm the gates right away.
With President Joe Biden still as the party’s standard bearer, he and his campaign focused on a fight for democracy, while also pushing for codification of abortion protections — two issues that weren’t consistently and explicitly linked in campaign messaging.
But after the president ended his campaign and Harris rose as his replacement atop Democrats’ tickets, the messaging changed.
“Freedom” became her rallying cry — the climax of a push by Harris and the party at large.
“Democrats had been concerned about Republicans taking over these quintessentially American words for a while, ‘freedom,’ ‘liberty,'” said Jamal Simmons, Harris’ former communications director in the vice president’s office. “The Democrats were trying to figure it out. The vice president was very focused on how Democrats can recast this word.”
Now, “freedom” is being used as a catchall.
Beyond freedom to access reproductive health care and a democratic process, the message is being used by Harris to push for everything from freedom for students to go to school without being shot to freedom to “get ahead” economically and more.
“Are we fighting for freedom? That’s what I thought,” AFL-CIO President Liz Shuler said at a meeting of the Democratic National Committee’s women’s caucus. “Freedom is not drowning in medical debt. Freedom is earning the same salary as a man does for doing the same job…Freedom is about making our own decisions about our own bodies.”
To be certain, Democrats aren’t dominating the war over “freedom.”
Republicans still lean hard on patriotism, adorning their rallies and suit jacket lapels with American flags and turning Lee Greenwood’s “Proud to be an American” into a conservative hymn. And the party still is able to say it wants more funding for the military than its Democratic foes in Congress, who insist on matching boosts in Pentagon spending with rises in funds for other domestic priorities.
But for Democrats, just being in the fight for one of the most potent symbols in electoral politics is a breath of fresh air.
“I think the narrative has taken some of those words and said that they belong to Republicans, just like, apparently, red trucker hats only belong to Republicans,” Roberts, a delegate to the Democratic National Committee and now a Democratic leader in the Kentucky state House, told ABC News. “And we are demanding, no, these are universal words.”
(WILLIAMSTOWN, N.J.) — Three Florida residents have been arrested after they were hired for an alleged acid attack on a woman in New Jersey last month, officials said Tuesday.
Police responded to a home in Monroe Township on July 26, where a 42-year-old woman was attacked upon arriving home from work, according to the Gloucester County, New Jersey, Prosecutor’s Office.
“As the victim opened her car door, she was approached by an unknown female who threw a cup and its liquid contents directly at the victim,” the prosecutor’s office said in a press release.
The alleged female assailant then fled the scene.
The victim was airlifted to a burn center, where she is still being treated for chemical burns over 35% of her body, the officials said.
“The liquid used in the attack is believed to be a highly caustic acid,” the prosecutor’s office said.
Following an extensive investigation, police said they were able to trace the getaway vehicle to two suspects, who they identified as 38-year-old Betty Jo Lane and 39-year-old Jmarr McNeil, both of Jacksonville, Florida.
Prosecutors said Lane and McNeil were hired to carry out the attack by 49-year-old William DiBernardino, of Boynton Beach, Florida.
The victim “had a prior relationship” with DiBernardino, the prosecutor’s office said.
All three suspects were taken into custody in Florida, the office said. Lane and McNeil were extradited to New Jersey on Tuesday, according to the Boynton Beach police.
They have each been charged with conspiracy to commit first-degree murder, first-degree attempted murder, aggravated assault, unlawful possession of a weapon and stalking.
It was not immediately clear if the suspects had retained attorneys.
(LONDON) — In one of the largest exchanges of drone attacks since the Russia-Ukraine war began, dozens were shot down in Russia and Ukraine in overnight assaults, officials in both countries said.
The Russian Ministry of Defense said Wednesday they shot down more than 50 Ukrainian long-range drones over various regions, including nearly a dozen around Moscow.
The drones over Moscow were shot down Tuesday night into Wednesday morning, local time, according to Moscow Mayor Sergey Sobyanin.
Unverified videos published online showed explosions in the sky over Russia. Sobyanin said some of the drones were destroyed in the region surrounding Moscow, brought down by the city’s layered air defense.
Ukrainian authorities have not yet commented on the attack in Russia.
Meanwhile, Ukrainian forces shot down 50 Shahed drones and subdued 16 others in a prolonged attack — the longest drone assault since the start of the full-scale — officials in Ukraine said.
Ten drones were shot down around Kyiv, according to Maj. Gen. Anatoliy Barhylevych, the commander of Ukraine’s armed forces. The drone assault lasted for 16 hours, from 10 p.m. Tuesday till 2 p.m. Wednesday local time, he said.
Russian authorities have not yet commented on the attack in Ukraine.
The U.S. Embassy in Kyiv warned in an alert Wednesday to American citizens in Ukraine that “during the next several days and through the weekend there is an increased risk of both nighttime and daytime Russian drone and missile attacks.”
The alert said the threat was tied to Ukraine’s upcoming Independence Day and did not suggest it was connected to any Ukrainian military activities inside Russian territory.
(NEW YORK) — Human bones were found in a Brooklyn park along the shore of the East River for the second time in a week, according to the New York Police Department.
Police responded to a 911 report of a body found at Jane’s Carousel early Wednesday, and determined the civilian discovered skeletal remains on the rocks along the shore, the NYPD said.
The discovery came two days after police responded to another report of a found body part near the same location. A New York City Parks enforcement officer discovered skeletal remains on the beach, the NYPD said.
A femur and a couple of smaller bones were found Wednesday, according to New York ABC station WABC.
The medical examiner is investigating the remains found on both days, according to the NYPD.
(LONDON and ROME) — Five bodies have been found from the superyacht that sunk off the Sicilian coast, according to the Italian coast guard. One final passenger remains missing.
Four of the bodies have been brought to the surface, but none has been identified.
Two bodies were brought ashore on Wednesday morning, according to the Italian coast guard, while two other bodies were recovered later on Wednesday. The fifth body has been found, but not yet brought to the surface, Salvatore Cocina, director general of the region of Sicily, said.
Rescue teams are facing a “very hard” operation to find those still missing after the superyacht sunk on Monday, a spokesperson for the onsite fire brigade teams told ABC News.
Luca Cari said the rescue operation for the people still missing from the U.K.-flagged Bayesian was ongoing Wednesday. The vessel was lost early on Monday in stormy weather around half a mile from the fishing village of Porticello, close to the city of Palermo.
Fifteen people were rescued alive in the immediate aftermath while one body was previously recovered.
“For us, it remains a rescue operation,” Cari told ABC News Wednesday morning, prior to the recovery of the five bodies, when asked if emergency services were transitioning to a recovery operation.
Asked if there was any hope that the missing may be surviving thanks to air pockets inside the sunk vessel, Cari responded: “One can never exclude anything but it seems rather improbable.”
Cari said that 12 of the 18 divers leading rescue efforts on Wednesday are specialized divers who have extensive experience working inside caves.
Divers have been operating inside the yacht for two days, he added. “But the job is very hard because there are large obstacles and [we] have to work in very narrow spaces.”
“It’s a long process and we can only operate in short spells,” Cari added. Divers have to be rotated constantly, with each only able to stay underwater for around 12 minutes, he said.
Two Americans — Christopher and Neda Morvillo — are among the six people still missing, ABC News confirmed on Tuesday.
Christopher Morvillo is a partner at law firm Clifford Chance and represented the yacht’s owner — British tech tycoon Mike Lynch — in his recent fraud case brought by Hewlett Packard. He is a former assistant United States attorney for the Southern District of New York.
Morgan Stanley International Chairman Jonathan Bloomer and his wife Anne Elizabeth Judith Bloomer are also among the six missing passengers.
Lynch and his 18-year-old daughter Hannah are believed to also be among the missing.
ABC News’ Joe Simonetti contributed to this report.
(NEW YORK) — Children with long COVID-19 may show different symptoms depending on their age, a new study suggests.
The study, published Wednesday in the journal JAMA, is the first looking at how long COVID affects children and teens from the National Institute of Health (NIH)-funded RECOVER initiative, which seeks to better understand, diagnose, prevent and treat the condition.
Among younger children, between ages 6 and 11, headache was the primary symptom followed by trouble with memory, focus and sleep, as well as stomach pain.
Teens and pre-teens between ages 12 and 17 tended to report more fatigue-related symptoms, such as daytime sleepiness or low energy, body aches and pains, and neurological symptoms, including headaches and difficulty with memory and focus. This age group was also more likely to experience changes in taste or smell.
“We really wanted to understand how does long COVID look different across the ages?” Dr. Rachel Gross, lead study author and a general pediatrician and clinical researcher at NYU Langone Health, told ABC News.
Study participants were recruited from more than 60 U.S. health care and community settings between March 2022 and December 2023, with children between ages 6 and 17 with and without previous COVID-19 infection.
“We know that children are changing over time, we know that they’re growing over time, that they’re developing, that their immune system may be changing, that their hormones may be changing. So, we weren’t surprised that we were seeing differences across these different age groups,” Gross said. “But next steps, we really need to understand why this is happening so we can understand the underlying mechanisms that may be related to these differences.”
Gross said most of what researchers know about long COVID comes from studies of adults, and this is one of the first studies to characterize what prolonged symptoms children may be experiencing. She said much more long COVID research needs to focus on children.
“There have been many misperceptions about COVID and children, even since the beginning of the pandemic,” she said. “There was a common misperception that children didn’t get COVID infections, and we know that’s not true. And now there’s a common misperception that children don’t develop long COVID, and we know from studies like this and others that that is not true, and that long COVID in children is not a rare condition.”
‘I can’t figure out what’s wrong’
Gabrielle “Gabby” Jospa, from Plainview, New York, is one of many children who knows all too well that children can, and do, develop long COVID.
The now 15-year-old contracted COVID-19 in December 2021. At first, she thought it was just a cold or a less severe virus. However, she developed severe symptoms including a high fever, fast heart rate, nausea, body aches, stomachache and falling oxygen levels that required a visit to the emergency room, Gabby told ABC News.
Once the initial symptoms were gone, there were many lingering after-effects. Gabby’s pulse and oxygen levels improved but not to where they were pre-COVID, according to her mother, Amy Jospa, and they knew something was wrong.
Gabby started experiencing fatigue and brain fog, and developed swollen joints, unexplained rashes and even postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome (POTS), a condition that causes the heart to beat faster than normal when transitioning from sitting or lying down to standing, Amy Jospa told ABC News.
Gabby also has a history of migraines, experiencing them about once a year, but they worsened after COVID-19 to once per week and then once per day. They visited several doctors, none of whom could figure out what was wrong.
“The doctors will just tell you like — and it’s not the doctor’s fault — ‘Oh, it’s just a cold’ or ‘Oh, I’ll just give you headache medicine’ but it doesn’t go away, and you’re starting to feel after a while, after seeing a million doctors, like ‘I can’t figure out what’s wrong with me. It’s hopeless,'” Gabby told ABC News.
In September 2023, with some help from Gabby’s cardiologist getting her the right series of tests, Gabby was diagnosed with long COVID. Gabby said she was “excited” more than upset to finally have a proper diagnosis.
Gabby and her mother tried to enroll in several long COVID studies at hospitals but she was rejected before she was accepted into the RECOVER study at NYU Langone, and had her first in-person visit in November 2023.
They say the RECOVER study has been helpful in terms of helping Gabby improve and better manage her long COVID symptoms.
“The RECOVER study also doesn’t include just medical testing,” Amy Jospa said. “They do cognitive testing on her, and it’s helped Gabby feel more normal and less stigmatized about the process, because she’s not the only one with brain fog. Like, ‘I have this; it stinks, but I’m not alone, and there are people who are working really hard to figure this out and get me to where I need to be.’ It’s like positive change, and I think that’s been the nicest part, seeing the shift mentally for her.”
Gabby and her mother say she’s still not 100% back to where she was before COVID. Before contracting COVID, Gabby, who swims competitively, used to be able to swim for 45 minutes straight. Now, she physically exhausts more easily so she needs breaks.
Amy Jospa said they made modifications to Gabby’s gym schedule at school and that Gabby has more time between classes because she can’t rush in the hallways between classes.
“I still manage, even though there are struggles,” Gabby said. “I managed to find a way to make it work so I can keep going mentally as well as physically.”
ABC News’ Dr. Kierstin Luber contributed to this report.
(NEW YORK) — Texas has been baking in record heat since the weekend, and Wednesday will be no exception. Another day of record highs is possible.
Houston was one of the cities in Texas that hit the hottest day of the year on Tuesday, reaching 102 degrees Fahrenheit, according to the National Weather Service.
Several Texas cities either tied or broke heat records on Tuesday. Del Rio hit 108 degrees; 104 degrees in Borger; 102 degrees in Amarillo and Corpus Christi; and 98 degrees in Galveston.
More record highs are forecast Wednesday in Abilene at 109 degrees and San Antonio at 106 degrees.
Heat indexes around San Antonio could peak near 114 degrees, with a stray storm possible in the afternoon during the hottest part of the day, ABC News San Antonio affiliate KSAT reported.
Gusty winds and lightning are possible, but most of the region will remain dry, KSAT reported.
Parts of Texas will continue seeing some of the hottest weather of the year Thursday through the end of the week, forecasts show.
Record high temperatures are also forecast for Roswell, New Mexico, at 105 degrees, on Wednesday.
Texas is not alone in extreme heat. Heat Alerts have been issued for Florida, Texas, Oklahoma and New Mexico, where some areas could see a heat index as high as 116 degrees.
(CHICAGO) — As the economy tops lists of voter concerns ahead of the 2024 election, some speakers at the Democratic National Convention have sought to emphasize how much the economy has improved under President Joe Biden.
When Biden took office in early 2021, the U.S. was in the midst of the “worst economic downturn since the Great Depression,” Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., said on Tuesday. Back then, the economy was “reeling,” said former President Barack Obama later in the night.
The claims contrast with Republican depictions of the downturn in 2020 and the ensuing recovery. Former President Donald Trump has faulted COVID-19 for derailing the nation’s economy, while saying the U.S. had recovered in some areas by the time Biden took office.
“Nobody’s ever seen an economy [like ours] pre-COVID, and then we handed over a stock market that was substantially higher than just prior to COVID,” Trump said at the Republican National Convention last month.
An accurate picture of recent economic performance defies the narratives put forward by both parties, economists told ABC News.
The economy had already emerged from the pandemic-induced recession and begun to recover by the time Biden took office, experts said. However, the U.S. remained well below pre-pandemic levels in some key measures of economic health, including employment. Biden faced the difficult task of revitalizing the economy and getting Americans back to work, they added.
“There are kudos to be given to all the different sides,” Frederick Floss, an economics professor at Buffalo State University, told ABC News. “It’s very complex.”
Before the COVID-19 outbreak, the economy performed robustly by some important measures. In February 2020, the unemployment rate stood at 3.5%, matching its lowest level in more than 50 years. Inflation-adjusted gross domestic product increased at a solid annualized clip of 2.1% over the final three months of 2019.
The onset of the pandemic — as well as ensuing shutdowns across much of the U.S. — plunged the economy into a recession. On March 12, 2020, the S&P 500 plummeted nearly 10%, registering its worst single-day performance in more than three decades. The following month, the unemployment rate skyrocketed to almost 15%.
In March 2020, Trump signed into law a $2.2 trillion economic stimulus package, including direct payments of $1,200 and expanded unemployment insurance, among other measures. Months later, in December, Trump enacted a second $900 billion round of government support.
Over the period, much of the economy reopened and business activity returned to something resembling normal.
In turn, economic growth soared over the second half of 2020. The unemployment rate fell to 6.7% by the end of the year, nearly double pre-pandemic levels but well below the peak reached right after the outbreak. The Dow Jones Industrial Average and the S&P 500 ended the year at record highs.
The COVID-induced recession lasted two months in the spring of 2020, the shortest U.S. recession ever recorded, according to the National Bureau of Economic Research, a non-profit organization that serves as the recognized authority on economic downturns.
Economists disagreed over the extent to which Trump deserves credit for the initial recovery, saying it resulted from a mix of federal support that he had enacted as well as the withdrawal of restrictions imposed by state and local governments.
“It was a very short-lived recession,” Matias Vernengo, a professor of economics at Bucknell University, told ABC News. “That obviously happened under the Trump administration.
Jesse Rothstein, a professor of public policy and economics at the University of California, Berkeley, added: “It’s faster than we’ve ever seen in any previous crisis but no other recession has had that form where we locked everybody up. It’s much easier to get it back when demand is still there.”
Despite its improvement over the latter part of 2020, the economy remained far from healthy when Biden took office, especially on the all-important issue of employment, economists said.
The U.S. lost 21.9 million jobs in March and April of 2020, U.S. government data showed. At the outset of the following year, the economy still stood about 10 million jobs short. In addition, pandemic-induced bottlenecks continued to snarl supply chains, restricting economic output worldwide.
“A fair statement is that the economy at the end of 2020 had recovered substantially but there were still millions of job losses that the economy hadn’t recovered from,” Dennis Hoffman, an economist at Arizona State University, told ABC News.
Rothstein, of the University of California, Berkeley, said the economy remained in peril at the outset of the Biden administration in early 2021.”I think calling it an economic crisis is totally fair,” Rothstein said.
Still, Rothstein added: “We did some right things in 2020 and we did some right things after 2020.”
In March 2021, Biden signed a $1.9 billion economic stimulus package of his own, including another round of $1,400 direct payments as well as an expansion of the child tax credit. The following year, Biden enacted the $891 billion Inflation Reduction Act and the $280 billion CHIPS and Sciences Act.
Over the course of the Biden administration, the labor market expanded at a rapid pace while economic growth quickened. By 2022, the economy had recovered all of the jobs lost during the pandemic. In January 2023, the unemployment rate fell even lower than where it stood pre-pandemic.
Economists who spoke with ABC News credited Biden-backed government stimulus for the reemergence of U.S. economic strength, but they differed over whether the spending had contributed to a severe bout of inflation experienced during that period.
“We were able to recover as an economy and job creation has been pretty remarkable,” said Hoffman, of Arizona State University. “That became a very successful program — it also brought inflation.”
Jason Furman, a professor at Harvard University and former economic adviser to President Barack Obama, estimated that Biden’s American Rescue Plan added between 1 percentage point and 4 percentage points to the inflation rate in 2021, Roll Call reported. Michael Strain, of the conservative-leaning American Enterprise Institute, estimated that the legislation added 3 percentage points to inflation.
Vernengo, of Bucknell University, disagreed, attributing the bout of inflation to an imbalance of supply and demand that arose in the aftermath of the pandemic. “Inflation has more or less vanished,” Vernengo said, saying the moderation of prices indicates that the problem owed primarily to a temporary economic shock.
Price increases have cooled significantly from a peak of more than 9%, but inflation remains nearly a percentage point higher than the Fed’s target rate of 2%.
Vernengo, of Bucknell University, said both major parties have offered up misleading accounts of the 2020 economic downturn and the recovery that took hold afterward. “The story is somewhere in the middle,” Vernengo said.
