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WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden and House Republicans alike are revising history when asserting that the new administration set records in U.S. job creation — either the best ever or among the worst, depending on the vantage point. The truth is in between.

While jobs are steadily being added as the nation digs out from the coronavirus pandemic, the pace is far from being No. 1 among presidents, as Biden describes it. But neither is it the worst in decades, as Rep. Elise Stefanik, the newly elected no. 3 leader of House Republicans, asserted twice in recent days.

A look at the claims:

BIDEN: “As a result of our prompt action to roll out the vaccine and boost the economy, we’ve gone from stagnation to an economy that is growing faster than it has in nearly 40 years. We’ve gone from anemic job creation to a record of creation for more — for a new administration. None has ever created this many jobs in this timeframe.” — remarks Monday.

THE FACTS: Not so fast.

He has created the most jobs in his first three months than any other president — about 1.5 million — but that’s partly because the U.S. population is larger than in the past. When calculated as a percentage of the workforce, job growth under President Jimmy Carter increased more quickly from February through April 1977 than the same three months this year.

Since the late 1970s, the U.S. population has grown by more than 100 million people. In ignoring that, Biden picked up on a trait of his predecessor, Donald Trump, who bragged that the U.S. had the largest workforce ever under his presidency and glossed over the simple fact that there are far more people.

It’s true, though, that the economy is growing rapidly — it expanded at a 6.4% annual rate in the first three months of the year — and is expected to grow this year at the fastest pace since 1984.

Biden’s $1.9 trillion rescue package contributed to the vigorous growth but much of the expansion reflects a broader bounce-back from the unusually sharp pandemic recession, the deepest downturn since the 1930s. Even before Biden’s package, for example, the International Monetary Fund was projecting U.S. growth of over 5% for this year.

Biden is also ignoring a disappointing jobs report for April, when just 266,000 jobs were gained, far fewer than expected. At that pace, it would take more than two years to regain the 8 million jobs that are still lost to the pandemic.

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STEFANIK: “In just over 100 days, we have an economic crisis … we see the worst jobs report in over 20 years. Unemployment is up.” — remarks Friday after being elected to the No. 3 House GOP leadership post that had belonged to Rep. Liz Cheney, who was stripped of the post after criticizing former President Donald Trump.

THE FACTS: Stefanik, R-N.Y., is way off in asserting that last month’s job report was the worst in decades. It actually showed job gains, just not as many as were expected. And her suggestion that Biden’s first 100 days produced an economic crisis is baseless.

In April 2020, the country lost 20.5 million jobs after much of the economy shuttered due to the coronavirus pandemic. That was by far the worst monthly loss on record.

In last month’s report, economists had predicted that about 1 million jobs would be added, compared with the actual 266,000 figure. Oxford Economics, a forecasting firm, called the miss in predictions for April “one of the largest on record.”

That’s clearly not the same as being the “worst jobs report,” as she put it. In fact, companies have added jobs for four straight months, according to the Labor Department.

Nor is it an “economic crisis” that the unemployment rate ticked up last month from 6% to 6.1%. April’s increase is a sign that resumption of U.S. hiring has encouraged some Americans to look for jobs and seek a return to the workforce.

Most economists actually expect job growth to strengthen as more vaccinations are administered and trillions in government aid spread through the economy.

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EDITOR’S NOTE — A look at the veracity of claims by political figures.

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ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (AP) — The check won’t arrive until mid-July, but Katrina Peters already knows what she’ll do with her Child Tax Credit payments. The 20-year-old mother of three has applied to work as a driver with a food delivery app, and the extra cash is earmarked for repairing, registering and insuring her car.

“I just need to make sure it’s 100% and then I can start working and get an income,” Peters said, cradling her 3-week-old son, Armani. “That’s where it starts.”

The payments are a key part of Democrats’ COVID-19 aid bill passed in March, but for policymakers they are more than just an attempt to help families recover from the pandemic. The monthly checks of up to $300 per child for millions of families are part of an ambitious attempt to shrink child poverty and rethink the American social safety net in the process.

With an emphasis on direct, no-strings cash support, the payments are a deliberate departure from a system that for decades has tried to control how Americans spend their government assistance by funneling it to food, housing or child care. Peters is as free to use the cash on her car as she is to spend it on diapers.

“There’s something huge happening with the idea that the lowest-income people need cash assistance the most,” said Teague Gonzalez, public benefits director with the New Mexico Center on Law and Poverty. “The pandemic opened up a connection to the idea of giving people cash and letting them decide how to use it.”

The expanded CTC payments, which are due to begin going out July 15, are only meant to last a year, but architects and proponents aren’t trying to hide the fact that they want to make this permanent. The coronavirus pandemic, they say, laid bare the inadequacies of America’s support system and provided the political momentum to make lasting changes.

“If implemented well, this could be transformative,” said Emma Mehrabi, director of poverty policy at the Children’s Defense Fund. “This could cut child poverty in nearly half.”

Part of the American Rescue Plan, the Child Tax Credit provisions will increase the payments and greatly expand the number of families eligible. The practical result will be direct payments for each child to families ranging from impoverished to solidly middle class — $3,600 per year for children under age 6 and $3,000 per year for older children. Roughly 39 million households will receive at least partial payments, covering an estimated 88 percent of American children.

Columbia University’s Center on Poverty and Social Policy estimates the cash infusions could lift 45% of children living in poverty above the poverty line — cutting Black child poverty by 52%, Hispanic child poverty by 45% and Native American child poverty by 62%.

In places like New Mexico, a state with one of the highest rates of children living in poverty, this is a potential crossroads. One in 4 New Mexican children is considered impoverished, compared with 1 in 7 nationally.

With three kids under age 6, Peters is due to receive up to $900 per month, and all of it is welcome. Her construction worker boyfriend has been out of work due to the pandemic, she said, her government subsidized housing voucher has expired and only the national eviction moratorium has protected her. Armani requires a special kind of baby formula that she can’t buy with her government nutrition program benefits.

“Sixteen dollars a can, and he goes through it in two or three days,” she said.

Democratic New Mexico Sen. Martin Heinrich said the philosophy behind the payments is to treat child poverty as an avoidable traumatic event — one that has been proved to impact future academic performance, emotional stability, earning power and legal record.

“It affects your ability to have positive relationships, both professionally and in your home life. … The more of these stack up, you’re more likely to have problems with the legal system, unsuccessful relationships, lower lifetime income,” Heinrich said.

Besides a basic acknowledgement by the government that raising children is expensive for almost anybody, advocates said the payments are an expression of faith in the judgment of struggling families.

“It’s an issue of trust. We need to trust these families to do what’s right,” said Jeffrey Hoehn, executive director of Cuidando Los Ninos, an Albuquerque charity that provides housing, child care and financial counseling for mothers transitioning from homelessness. “We find that our single moms, they know where every single penny goes. It’s just that they don’t have enough pennies.”

Hoehn said different families will have shifting needs and resources from month to month, putting the cash toward rent, utilities or even therapeutic leisure activities. In a sprawling town like Albuquerque, it’s hard to find work without a car, and Hoehn said many families his group works with are looking to the extra cash to acquire or fix a vehicle.

For Margarita Mora, the money is earmarked to help cushion her family’s transition to stability. The 36-year-old mother of three had been staying in an Albuquerque motel converted into a family shelter and would soon be getting her own subsidized apartment through Cuidando Los Ninos.

“I’ll be able to pay my utilities and basic supplies, plus gas to go look for work,” said Mora, an unemployed caregiver. “And I need to work on my debt. My credit score isn’t so great.”

The money isn’t only going to the neediest. Carissa Oswald, a stay-at-home mom in Albuquerque whose partner works with the local railroad, counts herself as middle class. But having given up her work as a caregiver to raise her 11-month-old daughter, she finds that money is frequently tight.

“Kids are expensive, right? It would let us breathe a little bit easier,” she said. “The tension is real. The stress is real.”

New Mexico state Rep. Javier Martinez, a Democrat from Albuquerque, calls the CTC a “philosophical shift from mid-20th century programs” like Medicaid and food stamps.

“And I don’t think we’re going back,” he said.

Martinez highlights the fact that CTC payments will be monthly, instead of some annual balloon payment, as a crucial distinction. The smaller monthly boosts, he said, are more likely to be incorporated into the household budget and “create certainty in a family.”

The expanded CTC expires in 2022, although President Joe Biden has proposed extending it through 2025. Whether that happens may depend on whether advocates can demonstrate a positive impact — and whether opponents, primarily Republicans, find evidence of waste.

Heinrich said he expects that opponents will have no problem gathering examples of parents spending money on things deemed unnecessary and he is braced for a revival of the Ronald Reagan-era “welfare queen” trope. The future of the program may well be riding on the outcome of the 2022 congressional elections, when Democrats will seek to retain their slim majorities in both the House and the Senate.

For now, CTC supporters are counting on enough positive examples to counter the criticisms, plus the fact that monthly cash should be popular with both Democratic and Republican families up and down the income ladder.

“There will be plenty of compelling anecdotes on either side of it,” Heinrich said. “At the same time we will have the data by then to show what a difference it has made. I want to see the data, and I suspect that in New Mexico, this will have an enormous impact.”

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Associated Press writer Susan Montoya Bryan contributed to this report.

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NEW YORK (AP) — More than a year after coronavirus shutdowns sent “the city that never sleeps” into a fitful slumber, New York could be wide awake again this summer.

Starting Wednesday, vaccinated New Yorkers can shed their masks in most situations, and restaurants, stores, gyms and many other businesses can go back to full capacity if they check vaccination cards or apps for proof that all patrons have been inoculated.

Subways resumed running round-the-clock this week. Midnight curfews for bars and restaurants will be gone by month’s end. Broadway tickets are on sale again, though the curtain won’t rise on any shows until September.

Officials say now is New York’s moment to shake off the image of a city brought to its knees by the virus last spring — a recovery poignantly rendered on the latest cover of The New Yorker magazine. It shows a giant door part-open to the city skyline, letting in a ray of light.

Is the Big Apple back to its old, brash self?

“Maybe 75%. … It’s definitely coming back to life,” said Mark Kumar, 24, a personal trainer.

But Ameen Deen, 63, said: “A full sense of normalcy is not going to come any time soon. There’s far too many deaths. There’s too much suffering. There’s too much inequality.”

Last spring, the biggest city in America was also the nation’s deadliest coronavirus hotspot, the site of over 21,000 deaths in just two months. Black and Hispanic patients have died at markedly higher rates than whites and Asian Americans.

Hospitals overflowed with patients and corpses. Refrigerated trailers served as temporary morgues, and tents were set up in Central Park as a COVID-19 ward. New York’s hectic streets fell quiet, save for ambulance sirens and nightly bursts of cheering from apartment windows for health care workers.

After a year of ebbs, surges, reopenings and closings, the city hopes vaccinations are turning the tide for good. About 47% of residents have had at least one dose so far. Deaths have amounted to about two dozen a day in recent weeks, and new cases and hospitalizations have plummeted from a wintertime wave.

Large swaths of the country and world are also starting to get back to normal after a crisis blamed for 3.4 million deaths globally, including more than 587,000 in the U.S.

Las Vegas casinos are returning to 100% capacity and no social distancing requirements. Disneyland in California opened up late last month after being shuttered for more than 400 days. Massachusetts this week announced that all virus restrictions will expire Memorial Day weekend.

Summer music festivals like Lollapalooza are back on, the Indy 500 is bracing for more than 100,000 fans, and the federal government says fully vaccinated adults no longer need to wear masks.

France is opening back up on Wednesday as well, with the Eiffel Tower, Parisian cafes and cinemas and the Louvre bringing back visitors for the first time in months.

In New York, Mayor Bill de Blasio has declared it the “summer of New York City.”

There are other signs New York is regaining its bustle. Some 80,000 city employees returned to their offices at least part time this month, joining the many municipal workers whose jobs never were done remotely.

Subway and commuter rail ridership is averaging about 40% of normal after plunging to 10% last spring, when the subway system began closing for several hours overnight for the first time in its more than 115-year history.

Shakeem Brown, an artist and delivery person who works late in Manhattan, spent up to three hours a night commuting back to his Queens apartment before 24/7 service resumed Monday. Brown, 26, said it’s “refreshing” to see things opening up.

At e’s Bar on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, “we feel the energy” of social life ramping up, co-owner Erin Bellard said. “People are so excited to be out.”

Still, receipts at the bar and grill have been down about 35% because of pandemic restrictions on hours and capacity, she said. The impending end of the midnight curfew will give the bar two more crucial hours, and the owners are planning to survey patrons to determine whether to regain full capacity by requiring vaccinations.

From other vantage points, “normal” looks farther off.

The sidewalks and skyscrapers of midtown Manhattan, for instance, are still noticeably empty. Big corporate employers largely aren’t looking to bring more workers back until fall, and only if they feel it’s safe, said Kathryn Wylde, CEO of the Partnership for New York City, a major employers group.

“Shutting down was easy. Reopening is hard,” Wylde said after a meeting last week with a group of CEOs. “All the employers say that there still is fear and some resistance to coming back.”

Besides virus fears, companies and workers are wondering about safety, she said.

Crime in the city has become a growing source of concern, but it’s a complicated picture. Murders, shootings, felony assaults and auto thefts rose in the first four months of this year compared with the same period in pre-pandemic 2019, but robberies and grand larcenies fell. So did crime in the transit system, probably because of the drop in ridership.

Brandon Goldgrub has been back at his midtown office since July, but it’s just in the last few weeks that he has noticed the sidewalks seem a bit crowded again.

“Now I feel it’s a lot more normal,” said Goldgrub, 30, a property manager.

Visiting from Tallahassee, Florida, Jessica Souva looked around midtown and felt hopeful about the city where she used to live.

“All we heard, elsewhere in the country, was that New York was a ghost town, and this doesn’t feel like that,” said Souva, 47. “It feels like a city in transition.”

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Associated Press writer Michael R. Sisak contributed to this report.

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TOKYO (AP) — Confronted in Japan with some of the strongest medical-community opposition yet to the Tokyo Olympics, IOC President Thomas Bach offered Wednesday to have added medical personnel available to help out when the games open in just over nine weeks.

Bach gave few details, speaking remotely at the opening of three days of meetings between the International Olympic Committee and local organizers. He said the help would come from various national Olympic committees and be available in the Olympic village and sports venues.

In his 12-minute address, Bach attempted to assure the Japanese public and athletes coming to Tokyo that the IOC will hold “safe and secure” Olympics in the midst of the pandemic.

“For obvious reasons we cannot give them (athletes) every detail yet, but the most important principle is very clear: the Olympic Village is a safe place and the Olympic and Paralympic Games will be organized in a safe way,” Bach said.

Bach said he anticipated more than 80% of those staying in the Olympic Village would be vaccinated. Reports locally say that Japan’s Olympic delegation will begin getting vaccinated in June.

Between 1-2% of Japanese are fully vaccinated, and its unlikely that even the elderly population will be fully vaccinated before the Olympics end on Aug. 8.

Bach appeared to be responding to one of the strongest demands so far to call off the postponed Olympics.

The 6,000-member Tokyo Medical Practitioners’ Association called for the Olympics to be canceled in a letter sent last week to Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga, Tokyo Governor Yuriko Koike, Olympic Minister Tamayo Marukawa, and Seiko Hashimoto, the head of the organizing committee.

The letter was made public this week on the group’s website.

“We believe the correct choice is to the cancel an event that has the possibility of increasing the numbers of infected people and deaths,” the letter said.

“Viruses are spread by people’s movements. Japan will hold a heavy responsibility if the Olympics and Paralympics work to worsen the pandemic, increasing the number of those who must suffer and die.”

Much of Japan, including Tokyo and Osaka, is under a state of emergency, which forced Bach to cancel a trip to Japan this month. Opposition to the Olympics is running at 60-80% in numerous polls, depending on how the question is phrased.

The Olympics are to open on July 23. The Paralympics follow on Aug. 24. They are a financial imperative for the IOC, which derives about 75% of its incomes from selling television rights and another 18% from sponsorship.

Japan has officially spent $15.4 billion or organize the Olympics, although government audits suggest the figure is much higher.

There is no indication the games will be canceled, though opposition continues with small street protests and online petition drives. Last month the British Medical Journal came out against holding the Olympics and many local scientists have voice their opposition.

Japan has has attributed more than 11,500 deaths to COVID-19, good by some standards but worse than most Asian neighbors.

The Tokyo Medical Practitioners’ Association warned of a possible collapse of Japan’s medical system, which could come under more pressure with Tokyo’s hot and humid summer months approaching as the Olympics open.

“Our nation is now undergoing a surge in coronavirus patients in a fourth wave, the worst so far,” the letter said. “The medical systems responding to COVID-19 are stretched thin, almost to their limits. The reality is that the entire medical system faces an almost insurmountable hardship in trying our best to respond with coronavirus measures.”

Bach said hundreds of sports events have been held safely during the pandemic, and cited recent test events in Tokyo that came off without many problems.

“None of these test events was a virus spreader for the Japanese people or the people of Tokyo,” he said.

Tokyo organizers have said about 10,000 medical personnel will be needed during the Olympics. They have also asked for 500 extra nurses, and 200 sports medicine specialists.

Several prefectures near Tokyo have said they will not give priority to treating Olympic athletes, and many towns in Japan have canceled plans to host foreign delegations.

“The doctors and nurses of the medical system who are being asked to respond are already at this point exhausted, and there is absolutely no extra manpower or facility for treatment,” the letter added.

Fans from abroad have already been banned, and Olympic organizers are expected to announce next month if local fans can attend in limited numbers — or not at all.

The Olympics and Paralympics will involve 15,000 athletes and tens of thousands of others entering Japan, which has had its borders virtually sealed for more than a year.

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More AP Olympics: https://apnews.com/hub/olympic-games and https://twitter.com/AP_Sports

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AP reporter Yuri Kageyama contributed to this report.

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GAZA CITY, Gaza (AP) — Suzy Ishkontana hardly speaks or eats. It’s been two days since the 7-year-old girl was pulled from the rubble of what was once her family’s home, destroyed amid a barrage of Israeli airstrikes. She spent hours buried in the wreckage as her siblings and mother died around her.

Children are being subjected to extensive trauma in Israel’s bombardment of the Gaza Strip. For some, it’s trauma they’ve seen repeatedly throughout their short lives.

This is the fourth time in 12 years Israel and Gaza’s Hamas rulers have gone to war. Each time, Israel has unleashed heavy airstrikes at the densely populated Gaza Strip as it vows to stop Hamas rocket barrages launched toward Israel.

According to Gaza health officials, at least 63 children are among the 217 Palestinians who have been killed in Gaza since the latest conflict between Israel and Hamas began on May 10. On the Israeli side, 12 people have been killed by Hamas rockets, all but one of them civilians, including a 5-year-old boy.

Israel says it does everything it can to prevent civilian casualties, including issuing warnings for people to evacuate buildings about to be struck. As Hamas has fired hundreds of rockets into Israel, most of them intercepted by anti-missile defenses, Israel’s military has pounded hundreds of sites in Gaza, where some 2 million people live squeezed into a tight urban fabric.

Videos on social media from Gaza have shown the grief of survivors from families wiped out in an instant.

“They were four! Where are they? Four!” wailed one father outside a hospital after learning all four of his children had been killed. Another showed a young boy screaming “Baba,” as he ran to the front of the funeral procession where men were carrying his father’s body to burial.

The Ishkontana family was buried under the rubble of their home early Sunday, after massive bombing raids of downtown Gaza City that Israel said were targeting a Hamas tunnel network. The strikes came without warning.

Riad Ishkontana recounted to The Associated Press how he was buried for five hours under the wreckage, pinned under a chunk of concrete, unable to reach his wife and five children.

“I was listening to their voices beneath the rubble. I heard Dana and Zain calling, ‘Dad! Dad!’ before their voices faded and then I realized they had died,” he said, referring to two of his children.

After he was rescued and taken to the hospital, he said, family and staff hid the truth from him as long as they could. “I learned about their deaths one after another,” he said. Finally, Suzy was brought in alive, the second-oldest of his three daughters and two sons, and the only survivor.

Though she had only limited physical bruising from her seven hours under the rubble, the young girl was in “severe trauma and shock,” said pediatrician Dr. Zuhair Al-Jaro. The hospital was unable to get her the psychological treatment she needs because of the ongoing fighting, he said.

“She has entered into a deep depression,” he said. Only today, he said Tuesday, did she eat something after she was allowed briefly outside the hospital and saw her cousins.

As her father spoke to the AP, Suzy sat on the bed next to him, silent and studying the faces of the people in the room but rarely making eye contact. When asked what she wanted to be when she grew up, she turned away. When her father started to answer for her, saying she wanted to become a doctor, the girl began sobbing loudly.

Ishkontana, 42, who recently stopped working as a waiter because of coronavirus lockdowns, said Suzy is smart and tech-savvy and loves smartphones and tablets. “She explores them, she has more experience dealing with them than I do,” he said. She also loves studying and would gather all her siblings into a play “class,” taking the role of their teacher, he said.

The Ishkontanas were just one family destroyed that day.

The strikes Sunday targeted Hamas tunnels running under Gaza City, the Israeli military said. The warplanes pounded al-Wahda Street, one of the city’s busiest commercial avenues, lined with apartment buildings with stores, bakeries, cafes and electronics shops on the ground floors.

Three buildings collapsed, and multiple people from at least three families were killed. In all 42 people died, including 10 children and 16 women.

Lt. Col. Jonathan Conricus, an Israeli military spokesman, called the situation that led to the deaths “abnormal.” He said in one location the airstrikes caused a tunnel to collapse, bringing houses down with it, “and that caused a large amount of civilian casualties, which were not the aim.”

He said the military was analyzing what happened and “attempting to recalibrate” its ordnance to prevent a reoccurrence.

He said the bombing campaign targeting tunnel networks would be expanded to more areas of Gaza and that the military tries when possible to hit tunnels under roads rather than under houses.

Israel and Hamas have fought similar conflicts in 2009, 2012 and 2014, each time wreaking heavy destruction

The Norwegian Refugee Council said that 11 of the children killed so far in this war had been going through its psycho-social programs helping children deal with trauma — a sign of how children repeatedly are victimized by the violence. Among them was 8-year-old Dana, Suzy’s sister.

“It’s the fourth time for many of them to experience” bombardment around their homes, said Hozayfa Yazji, the refugee council area field manager.

Parents in Gaza desperately try to calm their terrified children, as bombs rain down, telling the youngest ones it’s just fireworks or trying to put up a cheerful front.

The violence “will of course affect the psychology of these kids,” he said. “We are expecting that … the situation will be much worse and more children will need more support.”

The refugee council works with 118 schools in Gaza, reaching more than 75,000 students through its Better Learning Program. The program trains teachers to deal with traumatized children and organizes fun exercises to relieve stress. It also does home-checks on children to provide help.

The council’s secretary-general, Jan Egeland, called for an immediate cease-fire, saying, “Spare these children and their families. Stop bombing them now.”

But he said, longer term, an end to the blockade on Gaza and occupation of Palestinian territory is necessary “if we are to avoid more trauma and death among children.”

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