Rafael Abarca is a patient man.

Ever since he lost his job as a line cook in a high-end Boston steakhouse in March, he’s been unemployed and hasn’t succeeded in collecting benefits from the state of Massachusetts. Except for the odd job he can pick up from friends and the hours of weekly temp work his longtime partner can get, he’s had no income to stash away. His relief check went to pay back rent.

Despite all this, he remains upbeat, except when it comes to Congress. “This division they have between [the House] and Senate is just ridiculous,” he says. “This is a war against a virus. ... They turn it into a civil war.”

By failing to pass a relief bill so far and letting programs lapse that have kept the unemployed and small businesses afloat during an unprecedented downturn, Congress is risking raising the ire of voters less than three months before the election. It is also taking a huge economic risk at a time when the nation’s recovery is showing signs of stalling. Rather than reducing uncertainty, the nation’s politicians are raising it. By allowing key relief programs to expire this past week, some economists argue that Congress is making recovery even more difficult as consumers and businesses lose confidence in the economy and reduce their spending.

The irony is that the political disagreement is not over whether to keep up Washington’s relief efforts. However imperfect, the federal relief programs have helped power a recovery from an economic plunge this spring that was faster and sharper than any recession in modern times. Instead, Congress is haggling over the size of a new relief package.

What’s needed to keep the recovery going, economists say, is continuity.

The political brinkmanship “introduces a big increase in uncertainty,” says Nicholas Bloom, an economist at Stanford University’s graduate business school. “The worst thing is that they wait until Labor Day [to reach a deal] and then backdate the checks,” he adds. The longer the impasse continues, the greater the economic damage. And there’s less relief bang for the buck, he adds, a little like advertising Christmas toys in January.

Andrew Harnik/AP

A statue of President George Washington is visible as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California and Senate Minority Leader Sen. Chuck Schumer of New York step away from reporters after meeting with Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows as they continue to negotiate a coronavirus relief package on Capitol Hill in Washington on Aug. 7, 2020.

Politicians on both sides of the aisle acknowledge the need for more relief. In May, the Democratic-controlled House passed a $3 trillion-plus relief bill. Late last month, Senate Republicans unveiled a $1 trillion plan. After talks between House Democrats and the Trump administration collapsed this past Friday, President Donald Trump on Saturday signed a set of executive orders intended to keep some aid flowing to the unemployed.

While challenging to implement and constitutionally questionable – Congress, not the president, holds the power of the purse – the executive orders illustrate the White House’s sense of urgency. On Sunday, both Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi signaled they could restart negotiations sooner rather than later. “Right now, we need to come to agreement,” Ms. Pelosi told Fox News.

The urgency stems from mounting evidence that the recovery is faltering. Last month, the U.S. created only a little over a third of the new jobs that it did in June. Unemployment remains above the worst levels of the Great Recession. Consumer spending, according to various measures, appears to have flatlined since mid-June.

Policy continuity is one important way to battle such uncertainty. “No matter what policymakers decide to do, it’s always good to know what’s going to happen in advance,” says Rachel Greszler, an economist with the Heritage Foundation in Washington.

One key area of contention between Democrats and Republicans is over special unemployment benefits. In March, Congress passed a huge relief package that included $600 a week in additional benefits to the unemployed who were already receiving state aid. Studies suggest this had a huge positive effect on the economy, allowing spending by low-income households to rebound smartly despite the loss of jobs. But it also created a controversy.

Thanks to the extra money, some two-thirds of recipients were getting more money from unemployment than they were when they were working, according to one study. Republicans charged the benefits were discouraging the unemployed from going back to work. Their $1 trillion or so relief package cut those benefits to $200 a week. Democratic leaders want to keep the level at $600, contending there were not enough jobs in hard-hit sectors like hospitality for everyone to go back to work.

The continued flow of federal money would help unemployed low-income workers who are dealing with a future clouded by everything from job prospects to school reopenings to evictions, says Mike Leyba, director of development for City Life/Vida Urbana, a tenant advocacy group in Boston. “People are overwhelmed right now with a sense of uncertainty. And this uncertainty, it permeates every part of their life.” 

Economists across the ideological spectrum are suggesting compromise measures that would target the money more precisely. Ms. Greszler, of the conservative Heritage Foundation, has proposed a 40% federal match to state unemployment aid, with the idea of getting total benefits to around 70% of what the jobless previously earned – a level that would be gradually reduced over time. Former Obama administration officials Jason Furman and Timothy Geithner have suggested a $400 per week payment, which would fall as the state’s unemployment rate drops.

Another key program – forgivable loans to small businesses – garners more bipartisan support. Despite criticism that the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) is overly complicated and sometimes aided foreign businesses, the $660 billion relief nevertheless helped boost the expected survival rate of a business by a huge 14 to 30 percentage points, according to a recent study. 

The aid tended not to flow to the neediest businesses, according to the same study. It’s not clear whether that’s a bad thing, says Christopher Stanton, an economist at Harvard Business School and coauthor of the study. The neediest firms are the most likely to fail during a downturn and firms that looked stronger in the spring may have been weakened as the recession rolled into summer.

Despite constantly changing rules, a PPP loan helped Kim Davis when her Cypress Elite Dance Studio in Tomball, Texas, had to close in mid-March because of a statewide lockdown. She was able to keep all of her employees and pay them through the spring. Having reopened May 18 and relying on a combination of video instruction and live, socially distanced classes, she says she’d definitely consider another PPP loan if a new round of funding is approved by Congress. Receipts are down. Fall registration is so far only a little over half of last year’s level. Her level of optimism or panic varies by day.

But the biggest cloud on her horizon is not policy related. It’s the possibility of another lockdown in the face of a surge of coronavirus cases in Texas, she says. “My big fear is going to be that they shut us down.”

Editor’s note: As a public service, we have removed our paywall for all pandemic-related stories.

For one week in March, Patty Leitz watched her 7-year-old son, Michael, who has been diagnosed with severe autism and is nonverbal, not follow her directions or even respond when she’d try to teach him at home.

Then everything changed. Michael’s special education teacher started sending her not only a video greeting for Michael and lesson plans and timing for everything every day, but also a five- to six-minute video for Ms. Leitz. In it, the teacher walked her through exactly how to teach her son.  

“As soon as I came along and imitated the teacher and used the exact words that the teacher uses, all of a sudden he’s complying and doing everything immediately,” says the Columbus, Ohio, mother.

The daily lessons for both student and parent meant that Michael was keeping up with his skills. But they also empowered his mother, helping her realize that she can be an effective part of his education.

“To be able to sit there and watch my kid count money, knew a quarter is 25 cents, that he knew how to tell time, it was amazing,” she says.

Families and educators of the estimated 7 million special education students in the United States faced a myriad of challenges in the spring, as well as some out-of-the-box successes, after the coronavirus forced many to suddenly navigate remote learning. Heading into the fall with a majority of the nation’s largest school districts planning to start the year online-only, parents and teachers again face the task of managing learning. This time around, though, adults won’t be starting from scratch, but building off of the long list of lessons learned in the spring. Among them: Collaboration is key.

“This is where the parent is critical,” says Sean Smith, special education professor at the University of Kansas, who says the crucial role of guardians, particularly at the elementary level, was a surprise for some in the spring. “Part of the job of the teacher is to actually empower and interact and facilitate with the parent or the adult.” 

Already districts, often asked about how they are planning to help their special education population, are prioritizing solutions and training. Some schools have explored offering evening or weekend support, in order to better accommodate families where parents work full time, says Professor Smith. The idea of having special education students start in person has also been suggested, with some parents petitioning for it, and some districts planning to give students priority access to buses to get them to on-site instruction. Some students already have been attending summer school. 

Special education in the U.S. is based on the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, or IDEA, which requires that districts provide individualized, appropriate, and free education for children with disabilities. It includes specifications about creating each student’s individualized education program, or IEP, which details annual goals and service needs.

In addition to academic instruction, some students require physical and occupational therapy, all of which has often been difficult to provide during the pandemic and has resulted in lawsuits by parents. The Department of Education, while encouraging flexibility, has generally not allowed waivers for IEP rules and has been firm in its message to schools: Find a way. 

Lisa Thomas, associate director at the American Federation of Teachers, a union, says after the switch to remote learning in the spring, she noticed teachers and specialists, including occupational and physical therapists, working more collaboratively with each other and parents in order to adapt to the new reality.

“This pandemic forced a level of collaboration that they typically just didn’t have the opportunity to do in a regular school day,” she says.

In her own family, says Ms. Thomas, she saw a Maryland district develop a remote learning service plan as a supplement to her daughter’s IEP. With the teacher, physical therapist, occupational therapist, and other specialists all working together, they conducted an audit of her daughter’s services and figured out how all but seven hours of her 32-hour IEP could be done remotely.  

Even so, working together will likely mean frequent reevaluation of what’s working and what isn’t. In March, when Chris and Jill Reffett helped their 9-year-old daughter, who has been diagnosed with Down syndrome and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, participate in a Zoom social hour set up by her teacher, it was clear almost immediately it wasn’t going to work for her. The sessions were meant to give the students in the second grade classroom in Lawrence, Kansas, a chance to be around each other as they did an art project or some other type of activity together.

“She couldn’t get that they could actually see her on the other side. And to her it was noisy, it was uncontrolled,” says Ms. Reffett. “It made me a little bonkers. So for her, with ADHD, it was too much.”

Mr. Reffett says they ended up only having their daughter take part a few times, before skipping the social sessions altogether.

Julie Shepard and her husband in Spokane, Washington, had a similar experience with their 7-year-old son, Demetri, who has been diagnosed with autism and is legally blind.

For two months in the spring, Ms. Shepard managed to carve out time for his general education and special education lessons, as well as his more specialized services, including vision therapies. But the tablet he was using was too small for him to see clearly, and Demetri, who typically loves school, was becoming increasingly frustrated and angry trying to learn remotely. In May, she realized that this wasn’t working for her or her son: “It’s full time, and I can’t do my job and do his teaching full time,” she says.

They temporarily switched to just focusing on general education lessons and attending only one digital therapy appointment a week. The change improved his mood and allowed Ms. Shepard to keep up with everything, but his instructors told her he is falling behind. 

This fall, overcoming situations like those will occupy special education teachers, who are already gleaning insights from the spring. Kareem Neal teaches 15 high school students in a self-contained special education classroom in Phoenix. In the spring, he started holding virtual class meetings every Monday with students and their families, and once a day one-on-one virtual lessons with each of his pupils. The result, he says, was a lot more communication and a stronger relationship with each family. He also says he has a better understanding of his students from observing them at home, pointing to one in particular as an example.

“I think it was really a telling thing to me to say, ‘Wow, he is in my classroom getting all the attention he can because he may go home and not get much,’” says Mr. Neal.  

For some students, though, being at home may offer fewer distractions than a busy classroom, says Denise Stile Marshall, CEO of the Council of Parent Attorneys and Advocates, a national organization that helps to protect the rights of students with disabilities. A child may also thrive off of virtual sessions in which they are the central focus of their teacher’s attention, she adds.

For her own 7-year-old grandchild, who has been diagnosed with Down syndrome, she says simply being out of his special education classroom and among his typically developing siblings at home helped him: “He’s been saying a lot more words spontaneously because of that and really imitating what they’re doing all day long.” 

Overall, she says she has mixed feelings about the fall. “[I'm hopeful] that we all can take what we’ve learned from this process into the new school year. But we also are concerned because of the unknowns. We don’t know how long this is all going to last. We don’t know what the continued effect is going to be for some students or whether they’ll receive the services that they need. And that’s worrisome.”

In a brightly colored sitting room somewhere in Nigeria, a couple and their teenage daughter are gathered comfortably in front of the television, watching a foreign film. Suddenly, the two characters on the screen kiss, and everyone freezes.  

“Go inside!” shrieks the mother in panic, as her daughter scurries out of the room. For the next two minutes, the same scene plays out several more times, each with a different awkward parental reaction. In one iteration, the mother deflects the room’s attention by chattering away about grocery shopping. In another, the father flails frantically for the remote to change the channel.

Since it was first posted last year, this 2-minute skit by the rising Nigerian comedy star Gloria Oloruntobi (known as Maraji) – who plays mother, father, and daughter in the scene – has been watched more than 800,000 times on YouTube.

The video captures what has made the 20-something comedian such a viral sensation – her knack for using relatable social interactions to elicit laughs.

But her social media stardom also points to how the internet is helping democratize who gets to make Nigerians laugh. Like in many countries, the comedy scene here has historically been a boys club, where success meant making your way up through the male-dominated world of standup gigs, headline shows, and television appearances.

On the internet, there are no such gatekeepers. And for Nigerian women, that means they are finally beginning to see their own experiences reflected back on their smartphone screens. Instead of being the butt of male comedians’ jokes, female comedians like Maraji say they are flipping the script, showing that women can dish out humor too.

“I don’t know how it would have been possible for me to reach the audience that I have, both within and outside Nigeria, without the internet,” says Maryam Apaokagi (known as Taaooma), another young female comic, who has endeared herself to her 1.3 million Instagram followers with her skits lampooning traditional family dynamics.

Nigeria – home to the world’s second-largest film industry – has long been a country that put a premium on locally told stories. And just as a far-flung Nigerian diaspora and international streaming platforms like Netflix have helped give Nollywood a worldwide reach, the internet has given the country’s comedy a wider fan base.

Earlier this year, for instance, Nigerian comedian Josh Alfred (known as Josh2funny) touched off a global hashtag, #dontleaveme, with an Instagram video featuring a series of puns on the word leaf. By early August, the hashtag had close to 5 billion views on TikTok.

Like social media influencers the world over, Nigeria’s online comedians tend to be Generation Zers fluent in sharing their lives across a wide variety of digital platforms. But they’ve struck a particular chord here for their skill at poking fun at Nigerian culture from the inside.

And for Taaooma and Maraji in particular, their ability to crack jokes about Nigerian cultural sensitivities and domestic life without being dismissive or exploitative has won them legions of fans, says Fareeda Abdulkareem, a culture writer and development worker in Kaduna, who credits their high level of “imagination and empathy” for their success.

Courtesy of Poshclick

“I don’t know how it would have been possible for me to reach the audience that I have ... without the internet,” says Maryam Apaokagi (known as Taaooma), a comedian in Nigeria.

That distinguishes them, observers say, from a crop of comedians who have often leaned on sexism and homophobia for laughs. Taaooma’s skits, for instance, often explore family relationships, humorously probing the tensions between traditionally minded parents and their irreverent offspring.

The videos themselves are often clunky, with amateurish camerawork and editing. But that, their creators say, is part of the charm.

“The videos I create most times are not always set out to make people laugh but for people to relate to,” says Maraji, who has more than 1.2 million followers on Instagram. “​I just live life and I don’t stress it really.”

But if the clips have an amateur’s charm, they are also the work of savvy businesswomen. Maraji and Taaooma live completely off the income they make from their comedy, often collaborating with local brands including banks and skin care lines – though both fell into comedy accidentally, pursuing their passion without an end goal in sight.

And both are clear that they would like to someday take their comedy to the silver screen as Nollywood actors and producers. In the meantime, they hope their rise can provide a template to other female comedians.

“It is amazing” to see other women becoming popular comedians on social media, says Maraji. “A lot of young women are on it right now. It’s their creativity and if I have been of help in any way, then I am honored.”

AP

Protesters celebrate after removing a barrier to the parliament building Aug. 10.

Leaders of nearly 30 countries met virtually on Sunday to fill a vacuum of governance in one of the world’s most fragile states. They agreed to provide aid to Lebanon, just days after a giant explosion rocked the capital. The speed of the humanitarian response was impressive. So was the amount of pledged donations – nearly $300 million. But what was rare was the decision to ensure the aid directly reaches the Lebanese people with “utmost efficiency and transparency.”

Such qualities of governance have been missing for a long time in Lebanon, triggering mass protests last October. Two prime ministers have fallen since then, the latest on Aug. 10. Rather than allow the aid to flow through a disunited and corrupt bureaucracy, the donors plan to channel it through nongovernmental organizations. Spain, for example, will deliver wheat to a nonprofit. Brazil will send rice. Egypt is providing field hospitals.

“In these horrendous times, Lebanon is not alone,” concluded the statement from the Aug. 9 video conference.

The aid bypass reveals the latest chapter in the international community’s attempt to deal with a 21st-century challenge: weak states imploding from a lack of governance. To head off a potential rise in chaos, violence, famine, or exodus of refugees, the world came together quickly after the Aug. 4 explosion in Beirut in an attempt to fill a vacuum of governance.

The coalition of political parties that holds power in Lebanon has been unable to pay the country’s huge debt, feed its people, provide electricity, or prevent the flow of arms to the terrorist group Hezbollah. With power divvied up between religious-based parties, Lebanon needs a touchstone for good governance. The foreign donors will be working with private groups that come with a record of legitimacy and competency.

The world order depends on preventing fragile states from becoming failed ones – places like Somalia, Syria, Yemen, and Zimbabwe. With so many Lebanese citizens clamoring for democracy based on transparency, accountability, and equality, it was easy for so many nations to respond to the crisis. The aid itself is almost secondary to the signal sent about finding the common good that helps keep the world safe.