POLITICO NIGHTLY: The pandemic’s barriers to exit

BY RENUKA RAYASAM Bruce, a dog, looks on as his owner has his nose swabbed by a technician at a drive-through Covid-19 testing site at Churchill Downs in Louisville, Ky. | Jon Cherry/Getty Images AN OMICRON NUDGE — Last week, when my husband and I were sidelined with fatigue, headaches, runny noses and coughs, I panicked. Not about having Covid — we’re both vaccinated and boosted and otherwise healthy — but about the prospect of having to keep our two toddlers, who are 3 and 2, home for two weeks under their day care guidelines for Covid exposures. So I thought about doing something that elicits sympathy from parents of young kids right now: I contemplated not getting tested at all. Two years into a pandemic whose spread depends on individual decision making — whether people choose to get vaccinated, to wear a mask or to get tested — political leaders, businesses, schools and day cares are struggling to find the right way to nudge people into making choices that benefit society broadly but sometimes come at steep personal cost. And as the Biden administration prepares to send Covid tests to millions of homes and schools and requires insurance companies to cover their cost, the country faces another hurdle: getting people to take the tests and, should they test positive, follow guidance that helps limit the spread of the virus. Covid cases have blown past previous peaks. Hospitalizations are as high as they were last winter and are set to rise further. About a quarter of the population has yet to receive a vaccine dose. But policymakers have given up on shutdowns. Instead they are relying more and more on Americans to navigate Covid guidance on their own by monitoring symptoms and testing and following quarantine guidance. “More people are saying things like, ‘I am over it. I am calling it,’” said Elizabeth Levy Paluck, deputy director of the Kahneman-Treisman Center for Behavioral Science & Public Policy at Princeton. “It’s relatable.” Federal and local governments need to make testing, masking and getting a vaccine as easy as possible, said Raymond Niaura, a tobacco use expert at New York University. Ideally, people should be able to get tests and vaccines within a half mile of their homes with no waits or appointments, he said. “There is always going to be a group of people who won’t budge,” he said. “The goal should be to make that group as small as possible.” Decades of behavioral science research shows that the first step to getting people to do something is to make it easy, said Paluck, who studies social psychology and behavior change in the U.S. as well as in post-conflict countries like Rwanda. “It is very hard to create motivation,” Paluck said. “The simple thing is to remove a barrier.” Yet under the Biden administration’s testing plan, only a limited supply will actually be sent to people’s homes. Federal health officials are also still weighing whether to send people high quality masks to their homes. Instead, a big part of the testing plan involves what Paluck describes as a barrier: requiring people to go to participating pharmacies to get tests covered by their insurance. Then there is a confusing patchwork of guidance from the CDC, schools and other businesses about when to test, what to do after being exposed or experiencing symptoms and how long to isolate. To nudge people to report potential exposures and to test if they have no or mild symptoms, federal and local governments and businesses need to think more creatively, Paluck said. In post-conflict zones, Paluck found that the stories people tell shift their behavior. She suggested getting people to see testing and masking as the antidote to isolation. “One thing we could try to do is brand these late-arriving measures as our ticket to more connection,” she said. Businesses, she said, could create a feeling of interdependence by making visible the names and stories of specific employees — janitors or cafeteria workers — who would be most affected by a workplace outbreak. “We need to already have these mental maps,” Paluck said, “showing us that there are so many people this would affect and I know their names.” My husband and I did take PCR tests in the end. It helped that the barriers were low: We were able to skip the hourslong testing lines because I taught a class at the University of Texas at El Paso. We were also worried about his mom and co-workers and the other kids in our day care. When we finally got our results nearly six days later, they were negative for Covid — but positive for the flu. I had meant to get my flu shot when I got my Covid booster in December, but I worried about the side effects of getting both at once, even though the experts said it was safe. So I put it off. And then I never got around to going back to the pharmacy. Welcome to POLITICO Nightly. Reach out with news, tips and ideas at nightly@politico.com. Or contact tonight’s author at rrayasam@politico.com, or on Twitter at @RenuRayasam.   BECOME A GLOBAL INSIDER: The world is more connected than ever. It has never been more essential to identify, unpack and analyze important news, trends and decisions shaping our future — and we’ve got you covered! Every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, Global Insider author Ryan Heath navigates the global news maze and connects you to power players and events changing our world. Don’t miss out on this influential global community. Subscribe now.     WHAT'D I MISS? — Schumer reveals endgame for clash over filibuster and voting reform: Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer will bring elections and voting legislation to the Senate floor in the coming days, using existing congressional rules to evade an initial GOP filibuster . The House will imminently pass a bill containing both sweeping federal elections reform and beefed up Voting Right Act provisions. Because the bill will be sent to the Senate as a “message” from the House, it will not be subject to an initial filibuster by the GOP and will be debated on the floor. The Senate will then confront its debate over the filibuster when Schumer moves to shut down debate. — NATO, Russia in standoff after talks in Brussels: NATO allies and Russia ended nearly four hours of security talks in a standoff, with the West flatly rejecting Moscow’s demands for no further expansion of alliance membership and the withdrawal of NATO forces from Eastern Europe. NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said that allies were adamant they would not accede to Russia’s demand for a guarantee that Ukraine and Georgia never join the alliance, nor would they allow Moscow to dictate where allied countries choose to position their forces. — Jan. 6 select panel to seek McCarthy’s testimony: The Jan. 6 select committee has requested House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy’s testimony about his interactions with Donald Trump as a mob swarmed the Capitol. It follows months of speculation about when the panel would seek the California Republican’s cooperation with their probe. White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany appeared virtually today for an interview with the panel. — U.S. consumer prices soared 7 percent in past year, most since 1982: Prices paid by U.S. consumers jumped 7 percent in December from a year earlier, the highest inflation rate since 1982 and the latest evidence that rising costs for food, rent and other necessities are heightening the financial pressures on America’s households. — Biden team weighs killing Trump’s new nuclear weapons: The Biden administration is considering killing off several nuclear weapons programs that were greenlit by the Trump White House . According to nine current and former officials with knowledge of the deliberations, the Nuclear Posture Review, which is expected to be completed as early as next month, is not expected to make major changes to nuclear policy. Nor is it likely to recommend deep cuts to multibillion-dollar plans to build new intercontinental ballistic missiles, nuclear-armed submarines and stealth bombers, they said. But national security officials are debating whether to jettison a new nuclear-armed cruise missile now in the research phase, retire a Cold War-era thermonuclear bomb, and possibly even remove a new “low-yield” warhead that the previous administration deployed on submarines, the current and former officials said.   STEP INSIDE THE WEST WING: What's really happening in West Wing offices? Find out who's up, who's down, and who really has the president’s ear in our West Wing Playbook newsletter, the insider's guide to the Biden White House and Cabinet. For buzzy nuggets and details that you won't find anywhere else, subscribe today.     AROUND THE WORLD Protestors set up a mock rule-breaking garden party in Parliament Square as Britain's Prime Minister Boris Johnson prepares to leave for the weekly PMQ session in the House of Commons in London. | Leon Neal/Getty Images BRITISH FRENCH LAUNDRY — It was easy to watch Boris Johnson’s baleful performance in the House of Commons today and conclude his days are numbered, Esther Webber writes. For weeks the British prime minister has faced sustained pressure following allegations that Downing Street staff — and Johnson, his wife and his top officials — held lockdown-busting parties during the height of the pandemic. Anger directed at Johnson boiled over Monday after a leaked email showed one of his senior aides had invited more than 100 staff to a gathering and encouraged them to “bring your own booze” — as well as widespread reports Johnson himself had attended. One MP was reduced to tears the following day as he recounted how his mother-in-law died alone during the pandemic. Even normally supportive newspapers turned on the prime minister. Just before facing questions from the opposition Labour leader at their weekly Prime Minister’s Questions session today, Johnson gave a short statement to the packed chamber in which he apologized for attending a drinks party in his Downing Street garden in May 2020, when everyone in the country was banned from meeting more than one other person outdoors. Johnson said he “believed implicitly it was a work event,” which Labour leader Keir Starmer instantly decried as “ridiculous.” NIGHTLY NUMBER 0.5 percent The increase in prices in December on a month-to-month basis. Much of the inflation reading is still focused on used cars , fueled by a semiconductor shortage that has made production of new cars more difficult. Rent and food — two of the items that ordinary Americans care the most about — also fed the December reading, although energy prices fell slightly. PARTING WORDS Red Square decorated for Christmas and New Year celebrations in Moscow. | AP Photo/Pavel Golovkin MOSCOW’S TAKE ON WAR — Moscow journalist Uliana Pavlova writes in POLITICO Magazine: I went to Red Square on the last weekend of the New Year holiday to try to gauge how prepared ordinary Russians might be for yet another conflict in Ukraine. For months, Russian President Vladimir Putin has been massing troops, and Russian state television has been laying the groundwork for war. State-sponsored political talk shows warn that Ukraine is growing more nationalistic, spurred on by the West and Russophobia among some Ukrainians. Russian television has broadcast footage of Ukrainians tearing down Soviet statues. It’s part of a new wave of statue-toplings in Ukraine; last summer, residents of the western Ukrainian city of Lviv dismantled a monument celebrating the Soviet Army’s defeat of Nazi Germany, a victory considered sacred in Russia. “Everything that is somehow connected with the Soviet period in Russia is subject to either public desecration or destruction in Ukraine,” TV hosts said in one broadcast. Then on the eve of Russia’s longest holiday of the year — New Year’s, which combined with Orthodox Christmas makes a nearly two-week long break at the start of January — Putin issued a set of demands that the West has interpreted as an ultimatum. If Putin follows through on his threats, it would be the third major deployment of Russian soldiers in Ukraine (although the deployments weren’t always acknowledged by the Kremlin). The first was in February 2014, when Putin sent troops to occupy Crimea, a scenic peninsula that most Russians know for its warm, rocky beaches and summer camps. The second big outbreak of hostilities came later that year when ethnic Russian separatists in the coal-mining region of Donbas seized control and proclaimed independent republics in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions. Russian-backed rebels with the support of Russia forced out Ukrainian troops. The Crimean annexation saw Putin’s approval ratings surge above 80 percent. But it hasn’t yet been clear whether or to what extent ordinary Russians support Putin’s current actions in and around Ukraine; tens of thousands of Russian combat troops have massed in three areas on the Ukraine-Russia border. According to a poll by the independent Levada Center published last month, almost 40 percent of Russians see war as either probable or certain. Almost the same number, 38 percent, consider a war between the two countries unlikely, and another 15 percent completely rule out the possibility. That means, in effect, that a majority of Russians are psychologically unprepared for war.   Follow us on Twitter Chris Suellentrop @suellentrop Tyler Weyant @tweyant Renuka Rayasam @renurayasam Myah Ward @myahward   FOLLOW US

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POLITICO NIGHTLY: The Fed's secret Santa gift for Biden

 

BY RENUKA RAYASAM Presented by Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell testifies during a Senate Banking hearing. | Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images MORE MONEY, MORE PROBLEMS — The Federal Reserve acknowledged today what those of us in the midst of Christmas shopping already know — stuff is expensive! Fed officials said today that the central bank could raise interest rates three times in 2022, no longer calling inflation “transitory.” It’s an about face from the central bank and Chair Jerome Powell that comes as unwelcome news for Democrats and President Joe Biden — inflation has a tendency to take down the party in power. Democrats’ chances in Nov. 2022 could very well depend on Powell’s ability to keep prices in check while not choking off a fragile economic recovery. Nightly parsed the latest Fed tea leaves with economics reporter and Fed guru Victoria Guida over Slack today. This conversation has been edited. Will Powell be the Grinch who stole Biden’s Christmas? Haha. Right now, the Fed’s announcement is about giving itself as many options as possible to deal with an uncertain economy. That basically means that the central bank will be able to raise interest rates sooner, if it wants to. But it won’t do that until next year, so no — Christmas seems safe for now! Do Fed officials no longer believe inflation will be transitory? They now think these supply chain problems will last much longer than they thought — so this inflation might fade eventually, but transitory gives people the impression that it also won’t take that long. But also, the Fed is more open to the idea that inflation could start taking hold more broadly. Companies might start raising prices because they can, or because they’re worried they need to. And so part of this pivot is an effort to head off any change in expectations about inflation; the Fed doesn’t want people getting the idea that they’ll just let inflation stay this high because inflation can also be sort of a self-fulfilling prophecy. Is the Fed no longer concerned with virus trends? Powell said rising cases do pose a risk to the outlook, but people are learning to live with the threat of the coronavirus. Basically, the Fed is optimistic that things will continue improving for the economy, but they know that Omicron or some new variant could throw a wrench in things at any time. Our colleagues at Playbook highlighted a memo today that said voters’ views on the economy will harden by late summer, determining whether Democrats can stave off big midterm losses. Does anything from today’s announcement signal where things could be by then? It’s the conventional wisdom that presidents like the Fed to keep interest rates lower because it boosts the economy. But with inflation a big concern among voters, Democrats probably don’t entirely mind some of the tough talk coming out of the Fed. The Fed’s announcement today makes it a safer bet that inflation will be lower next summer, but I guess one question is how much lower it will need to be for voters to worry about it less. If there’s faster growth and a stronger job market, maybe they’ll mind less regardless. If the economy starts to slow, that’s a much bigger problem for the Democrats (and it’s not great for the rest of us either!) Welcome to POLITICO Nightly. Reach out with news, tips and ideas at nightly@politico.com. Or contact tonight’s author at rrayasam@politico.com, or on Twitter at @RenuRayasam. A message from Facebook: Why Facebook supports updated internet regulations, including Section 230 Aaron is one of 40,000 people working on safety and security issues at Facebook. Hear from Aaron on why Facebook supports updating regulations on the internet’s most pressing challenges, including reforming Section 230 to set clear guidelines for all large tech companies.   ON THE HILL MOURNING JOES — Tensions are boiling over as discussions drag on between Biden and Sen. Joe Manchin over how to finish Democrats’ $1.7 trillion domestic spending bill, Burgess Everett, Alex Thompson and Jonathan Lemire write. The legislation looks increasingly likely to stall over the impending holiday break, prompting Biden himself to bemoan the slow pace. And Manchin (D-W.Va.) grew frustrated today when questioned about whether he opposes a provision in the bill to extend the expanded child tax credit, deeming those queries “bullshit” and denying that he wants to end the $300 monthly check many families receive for children. That provision expires this month and Democrats had hoped it would drive a year-end deal. Instead, Biden and Manchin don’t appear particularly close to clinching anything and Manchin has suggested pulling the child tax credit from the bill, according to a source briefed on the conversations. Publicly, Manchin himself said he does not oppose the tax credit. “The talks between [Biden] and Manchin have been going very poorly. They are far apart,” the source said. Though Manchin and Biden developed a warm rapport this year and collaborated on several prominent pieces of legislation, the plodding pace of the talks between the two Joes threatens to strain their friendly relationship. While Biden likes Manchin personally, he’s grown tired of the elongated talks and will soon push him to make a decision and support the legislation, according to two White House sources.   DON’T MISS CONGRESS MINUTES: Need to follow the action on Capitol Hill blow-by-blow? Check out Minutes, POLITICO’s new platform that delivers the latest exclusives, twists and much more in real time. Get it on your desktop or download the POLITICO mobile app for iOS or Android. CHECK OUT CONGRESS MINUTES HERE.     WHAT'D I MISS? — Navy starts kicking out sailors for refusing the Covid vaccine: Overall, 5,731 active-duty sailors remain unvaccinated, and at this point Navy officials say they believe most of those will likely continue to refuse the order, weeks after the Nov. 28 deadline for full vaccination. — Blinken cuts foreign trip short over Covid concerns: Secretary of State Antony Blinken is cutting short his weeklong overseas trip and returning to Washington, D.C., for reasons related to Covid-19 , the State Department announced today. In a call with Thai Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Don Pramudwinai, Blinken “expressed his deep regret” that he would not be traveling on to Bangkok from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, State Department spokesperson Ned Price said in a statement.       — Senate sends $768B defense policy bill to Biden: The Senate overwhelmingly approved a compromise $768 billion defense policy bill today, sending a bipartisan rebuke of Biden’s original Pentagon plans back to him for his signature. The Senate voted 89-10 to pass the National Defense Authorization Act. The blowout comes just over a week after the House approved the final defense bill. Biden is expected to sign the measure, despite Congress’ endorsement of a $25 billion increase to defense spending the administration didn’t request. — DeSantis targets critical race theory with bill allowing parents to sue school districts: Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis today escalated his ongoing crusade against “wokeness” and “elites” by pushing a bill that would allow parents to sue school districts if they teach “critical race theory” in classrooms . The state’s Republican governor also wants the GOP-controlled Legislature to help employees at private corporations who are subjected to what he called “harassment” by being forced to undergo sensitivity and racial awareness training.   STEP INSIDE THE WEST WING: What's really happening in West Wing offices? Find out who's up, who's down, and who really has the president’s ear in our West Wing Playbook newsletter, the insider's guide to the Biden White House and Cabinet. For buzzy nuggets and details that you won't find anywhere else, subscribe today.     AROUND THE WORLD British Prime Minister Boris Johnson addresses the nation during a Covid update in London. | Tolga Akmen - WPA Pool/Getty Image WAVE CRASHES OVER BRITAIN — Boris Johnson’s bracing Britain for a Christmas coronavirus tidal wave, Annabelle Dickson writes. The U.K. leader tonight urged the public to “keep giving Omicron both barrels” by getting a booster jab — as his top health officials warned “big numbers” of patients would be heading into hospital after Christmas. Britain reached a record 78,610 confirmed daily cases of Covid-19, and there were stark warnings today that the numbers are only heading in one direction. “I’m afraid we have to be realistic that records will be broken a lot over the next few weeks as the rates continue to go up,” England’s Chief Medical Officer Chris Whitty told a Downing Street press conference. That “substantial numbers” of patients would be going into hospital and intensive care units fairly soon after Christmas was a “reasonably nailed on prospect,” Whitty said. The senior medic sought to prepare the country for a “very sharp peak” which could see “significant problems” in staffing the U.K.’s already-stretched health and social care system. “We may end up with quite substantial gaps in rotas at short notice,” he said. NIGHTLY NUMBER 3.8 million The number of children the November monthly tax credit payment kept from poverty last month, the highest monthly anti-poverty seen to date, according to a report released this afternoon from Columbia University’s Center on Poverty and Social Policy. The final monthly CTC payment went out today to 35 million families. PARTING WORDS HEALTH SPENDING SPRINTS AHEAD — The rate of growth in U.S. health care spending more than doubled in the first year of the Covid-19 pandemic , leaving the medical system accounting for just less than one-fifth of the U.S. economy at the end of 2020, according to a federal report released today. Spending on health care rose 9.7 percent last year, up from 4.3 percent increase in 2019 — the fastest year-over-year jump since 2002, according to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services’ office of the actuary. Nearly the entire increase came from the burst of federal spending as the government mobilized to contain the spread of the virus, Rachael Levy writes. The surge came while the overall economy contracted by 2.2 percent, the government researchers wrote in the journal Health Affairs. Federal spending in categories like assistance to health care providers, public health programs and Medicaid payments jumped 36 percent last year, accounting for nearly all of that increase. “The substantial growth in health care spending was … driven by the unprecedented government response to the global pandemic,” Micah Hartman, a statistician in the actuary’s office, said in a statement. A message from Facebook: Why Facebook supports updated internet regulations, including Section 230 Aaron is one of 40,000 people working on safety and security issues at Facebook. Hear from Aaron on why Facebook supports updating regulations on the internet’s most pressing challenges, including reforming Section 230 to set clear guidelines for all large tech companies.     Follow us on Twitter Chris Suellentrop @suellentrop Tyler Weyant @tweyant Renuka Rayasam @renurayasam Myah Ward @myahward   FOLLOW US

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POLITICO NIGHTLY: Mild Omicron could still be bad

 

BY JOANNE KENEN Presented by With help from Myah Ward Members of the public line up for Covid-19 vaccinations and booster jabs at St Thomas' Hospital in London. | Dan Kitwood/Getty Images NOT SO TENDER AND MILD — The early indications suggest that the Omicron variant of the coronavirus typically causes disease that is “mild.” But even if that turns out to be true, “mild” doesn’t mean “no big deal.” Mild Covid-19 can still cause a whole lot of illness, a whole lot of economic disruption, a whole lot of strain on health care systems around the world. In the U.S., the big Omicron wave could hit in January when we could also be wrestling with a travel-propelled post-Christmas Delta surge. Plus maybe the flu. “I’m very worried,” said Marcus Plescia, the chief medical officer at the American Society of State and Territorial Health Officials. Obviously, a case of mild Covid is preferable to coming down with the Vaccine-Evading Killer Bug From Hell that we worried about when we first learned of mutation-riddled Omicrom over Thanksgiving. But because Omicron is so contagious, there could be many, many cases — an exponential outbreak. “This is going to take off. The numbers of people who get sick will be substantial,” Plescia said. And even if only a very small proportion of them end up with severe disease, that still adds up to a lot of very sick people. For instance, if the fatality rate for Omicron turned out to be only one-fourth of that for “original” Covid, but Omicron infected four times as many people, then the same number of lives would be lost. “It’s the math,” said Celine Gounder, an infectious disease specialist at NYU. And “mild” to an epidemiologist doesn’t mean the same thing that “mild” indicates to you and me. Mild to us means not feeling so bad. Mild to the public health professional just means you aren’t in the hospital. “It can knock you off your feet and debilitate you for a few days and we’d still call it mild,” Plescia said. Megan Ranney, an emergency physician at Brown, told Nightly that mild can mean anything from the sniffles to being so feverish and achy that you have to miss school and work — at a time when kids have already missed quite enough school and workplaces are short-staffed. She’s still wearing a mask in public settings. “Even if I don’t get super-sick, thanks to the vaccines,” she emailed me last night, “I can’t afford to take 10 days off of work.” Just as important, the whole “Omicron is mild” theory is tentative. It’s unclear how “mild” the variant’s disease will be in various populations, Gounder said — the vaxxed, the double-vaxxed, the boosted, the unvaccinated, or people with recent prior Covid infections, not-so-recent prior covid infections, no past infections. It’s also way too early to have any idea about the long-Covid risks of Omicron. As Ranney noted, the science isn’t settled on the risk of long Covid in Delta breakthroughs, and that variant has been around for several months now. With Omicron rising, the public health world really wants people who are still unvaccinated to get themselves — and their age-eligible kids — immunized. Concern about Omicron has spurred more vaccinated people to get boosters, but for the unvaccinated, the variant actually creates a tough messaging challenge. The public health messengers are saying, “The extremely contagious Omicron is coming!! Get your shot!” But the unvaccinated people are hearing, “Oh but it’s mild.” Like so much with this pandemic, it’s all in the ear of the beholder. Welcome to POLITICO Nightly. Reach out with news, tips and ideas at nightly@politico.com . Or contact tonight’s author on Twitter at @JoanneKenen. A message from Facebook: Why Facebook supports updated internet regulations, including Section 230 Aaron is one of 40,000 people working on safety and security issues at Facebook. Hear from Aaron on why Facebook supports updating regulations on the internet’s most pressing challenges, including reforming Section 230 to set clear guidelines for all large tech companies.   ON THE ECONOMY Children draw on top of a "cancelled check" prop during a rally in front of the U.S. Capitol. | Alex Wong/Getty Images BIRTH AND TAXES — The final monthly child tax credit payment of 2021 goes out Wednesday to 35 million families. Now it’s up to Democrats to pass President Joe Biden’s Build Back Better bill by Dec. 31 if they don’t want the benefits to lapse in January — or even become the final payment, period, writes Nightly’s Myah Ward. The American Rescue Plan, passed in March, increased the tax credit from $2,000 per child to as much as $3,600, depending on the age of child. The monthly payments began in July, with deposits of $300 for children under 6 and $250 for kids 6 to 17. Families will get the rest of the money when they file their 2021 tax returns, as will other parents who didn’t opt to receive monthly cash. Democrats are hopeful that if anything can unify their party as monthslong, grueling negotiations have forced them right up against the year-end deadline, it’s a historic antipoverty effort for children, POLITICO’s Congress team reported this week. Roughly 450 economists signed a letter to Congress this fall in support of extending the fully refundable child tax credit. In the letter, the economists, including several Nobel Prize winners, cited a growing body of research that indicates the expanded CTC “can dramatically improve the lives of millions of children” while also “promoting our country’s long-term economic prosperity” by addressing child poverty. “It’s hard to get economists to agree on things, but this is one of those cases where the economic research is so strong and telling such a consistent story,” Jacob Goldin, an economist and law professor at Stanford University who signed the letter, told Nightly. “They’re such a good long-term investment, and to do anything that would jeopardize that investment, doesn’t make any sense at all.” In October, CTC payments reached 61.1 million children and kept 3.6 million from poverty, according to Columbia University’s Center on Poverty and Social Policy, which releases monthly numbers showing how many children the CTC has kept from poverty. November’s numbers are expected to be even higher when the center releases the data later this week, Megan Curran, policy director at the center, told Nightly. Families’ most common use of CTC payments was for purchasing food, according to national data from researchers at Washington University in St. Louis, using Census data. Food tops the list in every U.S. state, except for Mississippi, where food and school essentials are neck and neck. U.S. Census data shows significant drops in food insecurity and that families spent CTC checks on school costs and child care when children returned to classrooms this fall. Mastercard data paints the same picture, showing that CTC money drove back-to-school spending in late August. Republicans have called the expanded credit “welfare,” expressing concerns the extra cash keeps otherwise working parents at home. But six months in, Curran said, there is no evidence CTC payments have reduced employment. A national survey from the Center for Law and Social Policy shows that some families say CTC has helped them work more hours outside of the home. “The fact that a single policy can reduce child poverty by 3 to 3.5 million children in a single month is not something that we see in terms of policy impacts for kids in child poverty in this country,” Curran said. Democrats’ biggest barricade to passing their social safety net bill, Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.), is telling colleagues that the CTC is the biggest inflation driver in the bill, Axios reported Monday. The argument is that inflation is hurting the poor, and by stopping CTC payments, people would spend less and therefore reduce inflationary pressures. But the argument is thin, Goldin said, adding that there are other ways to reduce inflationary pressures without cutting resources to families in need. “The weight of the evidence is that the factors driving inflation are primarily short-term factors,” Goldin said. “And the idea that we would cut short this long-term, important investment out of a misguided effort to deal with those short-term inflationary pressures would be about as big a mistake as we can make.”   DON’T MISS CONGRESS MINUTES: Need to follow the action on Capitol Hill blow-by-blow? Check out Minutes, POLITICO’s new platform that delivers the latest exclusives, twists and much more in real time. Get it on your desktop or download the POLITICO mobile app for iOS or Android. CHECK OUT CONGRESS MINUTES HERE.     ON THE HILL VOTING OR BBB? Senate Democrats are desperately trying to avoid ending the year stalled on their two top priorities: elections reform and their expansive bill to address climate and the social safety net. At the center of it all sits Manchin. During Majority Leader Chuck Schumer’s leadership meeting on Monday evening, Democratic senators hotly debated how to handle their two biggest unfinished tasks, Marianne LeVine and Burgess Everett write. Some Democrats say they should kick both issues until next year. Others argue the party’s leverage over Manchin won’t improve over time and want action now. And interviews today revealed a party wrestling with how to clinch its top priorities. Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-Ga.) said he spent the weekend talking to Manchin and other Democrats about prioritizing legislation on ballot access, which he called a “moral question” that his party needs to confront. “Voting rights should be the very next thing we do,” Warnock told reporters. “We’ve got to get Medicaid expansion, we’ve got to get child care, we’ve got to get relief to farmers. All of those things matter. But the point I’m making in this moment is: we have to have a democratic framework to continue to push for those things.”       WHAT'D I MISS? — Judge scraps Trump lawsuit to shield tax returns from Congress: A federal judge has rejected former President Donald Trump’s bid to block congressional Democrats from obtaining his tax returns . Judge Trevor McFadden, a Trump appointee to federal District Court in D.C., said Trump was “wrong on the law” and that Congress is due “great deference” in its inquiries. “Even the special solicitude accorded former Presidents does not alter the outcome,” McFadden wrote in a 45-page ruling. “The Court will therefore dismiss this case.” — Senate passes $2.5T debt limit increase, sending to House: The Senate passed a measure tonight to raise the debt limit to nearly $31 trillion as Democrats race to clear the increase before the United States risks an economically devastating default. The chamber voted 50-49 to adopt the legislation. Across the Capitol, House Democrats are ready to clear the measure for President Joe Biden’s signature as soon as tonight, saving the Treasury Department from fully exhausting its ability to pay interest on the nation's $29 trillion in loans — an economic crisis that could hit as soon as Wednesday. — Ethics board: Cuomo must give back money from $5.1M book deal: The New York state Joint Commission on Public Ethics will require former Gov. Andrew Cuomo to forfeit the money he made from his $5.1 million book deal in 2020. The move comes a month after the commission revoked its authorization allowing Cuomo to profit from his memoir, “American Crisis: Leadership Lessons from the Covid-19 Pandemic.” The book was published in October 2020. — Report: Socialism attacks hurt Dems with Latino voters: A new post-mortem on the 2020 election results reveals that GOP attacks claiming Democrats embrace socialism helped fuel Donald Trump’s gains with Latino voters last year . More than 40 percent of Latino voters across the country expressed concern that Democrats are embracing socialism and leftist policies, according to a survey included in a report released today by Equis, a Democratic research firm. Among those who voted for Trump, more than 70 percent were concerned. And Latino voters said they are more concerned with Democrats moving to the left than with Republicans embracing fascist and anti-democratic politics. — “We owe them action”: Biden honors Sandy Hook victims on 9th anniversary: Biden addressed the families of the victims of the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting today , marking the tragedy’s nine-year anniversary by calling it “an unconscionable act of violence.” Biden, who was President Barack Obama’s vice president at the time of the shooting, led the Obama administration’s effort to enact tougher gun control laws in Sandy Hook’s wake. That effort was ultimately unsuccessful when legislation to impose tougher background checks on gun sales — a bill that had been significantly pared back amid fierce opposition — failed on the Senate floor. — D.C. suing the Oath Keepers, Proud Boys for damage caused on Jan. 6: The attorney general of the District of Columbia is suing the Proud Boys, Oath Keepers and 31 members of the far-right groups for participating in the mob that breached the Capitol on Jan. 6. It’s the first government-backed legal action against the groups whose members allegedly stormed the Capitol. Members of Congress and the Capitol Police have already filed similar suits in their personal capacities. — Biden taps Thompson for full term as top housing regulator: Biden will nominate Sandra Thompson, currently the acting director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, to a full term at the regulator, the White House announced today . If confirmed, Thompson would be the country’s top housing regulator, with oversight of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the government-controlled companies that stand behind about half of the roughly $11 trillion residential mortgage market. AROUND THE WORLD British Prime Minister Boris Johnson visits Stow Health Vaccination center in London. | Jeremy Selwyn - WPA Pool/Getty Images BORIS SCRAPES OUT A WIN — Boris Johnson suffered the biggest parliamentary rebellion of his premiership and had to rely on opposition support to pass plans for tighter coronavirus restrictions, Esther Webber writes. Some 98 Conservative MPs voted against the U.K. leader’s policy that will see a Covid pass — comprising either proof of vaccination or a negative test — required for entry to venues including nightclubs. The rebellion — which came as the government tries to contain the spread of the Omicron Covid variant — effectively wipes out the 80-seat majority he won in 2019. The measure passed thanks to the support of the opposition Labor Party, by 369 votes to 126. But the sheer scale of the rebellion reflects the mounting pressure the prime minister is facing from his own party over his handling of the Covid-19 pandemic. Shadow Health Secretary Wes Streeting told Sky News in the aftermath of the vote that the result reflects “the shattered authority of Boris Johnson.” Conservative MP Geoffrey Clifton-Brown said a leadership challenge to Johnson next year has now “got to be on the cards.” The senior Tory told Sky News: “He’s got to realize that and he’s got to change.”   STEP INSIDE THE WEST WING: What's really happening in West Wing offices? Find out who's up, who's down, and who really has the president’s ear in our West Wing Playbook newsletter, the insider's guide to the Biden White House and Cabinet. For buzzy nuggets and details that you won't find anywhere else, subscribe today.     NIGHTLY NUMBER 89 percent The reduction of risk of hospitalization or death with Pfizer’s antiviral Covid-19 pill in high-risk patients who’d been experiencing symptoms for three days or fewer, according to final results from a trial of 2,246 adults the company released today. The results tracked with interim findings the company reported last month, which prompted it to petition the Food and Drug Administration for emergency use authorization of the pill, called Paxlovid. PARTING WORDS OSLO GOES DRY — Norway will ban the serving of alcohol in bars and restaurants, Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre said , as part of new Covid-19 restrictions intended to stem the spread of the Omicron coronavirus variant, Thibaul Spirlet writes. There’s “no doubt the new variant changes the rules,” Gahr Støre told a news conference Monday, announcing the country’s fourth round of measures in two weeks. “That’s why we need to act fast and we need to act again.” The government also announced stricter rules for schools and the closure of gyms and swimming pools to some users as well as speeding up its vaccination campaign. “For many this will feel like a lockdown, if not of society then of their lives and of their livelihoods,” the PM added. Norway has reported the largest outbreak of Omicron in continental Europe, with 958 cases confirmed, according to the daily bulletin of the EU’s disease control agency on Monday. A message from Facebook: Why Facebook supports updated internet regulations, including Section 230 Aaron is one of 40,000 people working on safety and security issues at Facebook. Hear from Aaron on why Facebook supports updating regulations on the internet’s most pressing challenges, including reforming Section 230 to set clear guidelines for all large tech companies.     Follow us on Twitter Chris Suellentrop @suellentrop Tyler Weyant @tweyant Renuka Rayasam @renurayasam Myah Ward @myahward   FOLLOW US

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