How Do Economists Determine Whether the Economy Is in a Recession?

This has been settled for a long time.

The recent interest in changing the definition of recession all of a sudden by the White House and the defenders of the administration in the media is simple: this week, we are going to get the data that demonstrates that, far from having "the strongest" economy in decades, we are in a recession.

Planet Money had a good episode on this recently - https://www.npr.org/2022/06/24/1107581150/recession-referees