Axios AM: Mike's Top 10 — Schumer has "painful talks" with Feinstein about cognitive decline — Color of the year

1 big thing: U.S. housing prices march upward | Thursday, December 10, 2020

Open in app View in browser   Presented By UnitedHealth Group   Axios AM By Mike Allen ·Dec 10, 2020 🕎 Good Thursday morning. Hanukkah begins at sundown. Today's Smart Brevity™ count: 1,202 words ... 4½ minutes     1 big thing: U.S. housing prices march upward Illustration: Sarah Grillo/Axios   Middle-income housing across America — particularly in big coastal cities — is growing scarcer than ever, as the wealthy bid up properties that might once have been considered "affordable," Jennifer A. Kingson writes. Why it matters: The pandemic's effects on the housing market may turn out to be permanent. Renters and buyers alike face rising prices that outstrip income growth and favor people with cash savings. The median price of a single family home in California crossed the $700,000 mark this summer — a record. Nationally, the story is the same: The cost of buying a house was up 7% in September, the Case-Shiller index showed. Phoenix, Seattle and San Diego were the cities with the biggest price leaps, Case-Shiller found. Starter homes in cities that attract young people are almost nowhere to be found. The backdrop: The last five months have seen a real estate frenzy. Even as many Americans have struggled to pay rents and mortgages, the wealthy have paid above-asking prices for homes that used to be worth a lot less. From there, a chain reaction keeps low and middle-income people in rentals and leaves fewer financial incentives for developers to build anything but high-end homes. Share this story.     2. Jane Mayer: "Feinstein's Missteps Raise a Painful Age Question" Sen. Dianne Feinstein on Oct. 15, during Senate Judiciary Committee confirmation hearings for Judge Amy Coney Barrett. Photo Greg Nash via Getty Images After this fall's Supreme Court confirmation hearings, Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer had several "serious and painful talks" with Sen. Dianne Feinstein, 87, who announced Nov. 23 that she won't seek to continue leading Democrats on the Judiciary Committee next year, Jane Mayer reports in The New Yorker: Overtures were also made to enlist the help of Feinstein's husband, Richard Blum. Feinstein, meanwhile, was surprised and upset by Schumer's message. He had wanted her to step aside on her own terms, with her dignity intact, but "she wasn't really all that aware of the extent to which she'd been compromised," one well-informed Senate source told me. ... Compounding the problem, Feinstein seemed to forget about the conversations soon after they talked, so Schumer had to confront her again. "It was like Groundhog Day, but with the pain fresh each time." Keep reading.     3. Surprises in Facebook suits Illustration: Sarah Grillo/Axios   Yesterday's Facebook lawsuits by the FTC and state attorneys general showed enforcers want to go a lot further than many observers thought, Axios' Margaret Harding McGill and Ashley Gold write: The FTC wants the U.S. District Court in D.C. to require Facebook to provide prior notice and seek approval for future acquisitions, going beyond what's already required. States were united: 48 attorneys general (46 states + D.C., Guam) joined the state suit, including California, which had been cagey about its involvement. (The exceptions: Alabama, Georgia, South Carolina and South Dakota.) By contrast, the Justice Department antitrust case against Google in October won support from only 11 states, all with Republican leadership. Privacy, regulators now say, is a competition concern. The state lawsuit mentions privacy dozens of times, arguing that Facebook users have a closely surveilled experience on the platform due to Facebook's size and scope. What's next: Regulators hope the case will deter other companies from similar practices. But the feds will have to win in court for that message to stick. Share this story.     A message from UnitedHealth Group Helping people afford prescription drugs     Optum is helping people afford prescription drugs by estimating cost and approval information when a medication is being prescribed: 400,000 providers use the tool 9 million people have benefited People save $225 per prescription Learn about OptumRx's PreCheck MyScript.     4. Big Tech's reversal of D.C. fortune Data: Company filings. Chart: Axios Visuals The landmark lawsuits against Facebook cap four years in which tech companies' national standing has turned upside-down even as their business fortunes boomed, Kyle Daly and Ashley Gold write. When Vice President Joe Biden left office in January 2017, Facebook, Google and other tech giants had the proud luster of American success stories. When President Biden takes office next month, his government will be charging Facebook and Google both as harmful monopolists. Between the lines: The cases are in some sense a rebuke of the Obama administration's regulatory policy, which broadly looked on tech combinations as part of Silicon Valley's virtuous cycle of growth and innovation. Biden is seeking a return to Obama-era normalcy in many respects, but is unlikely to do so here. The bottom line: Taking on Big Tech is now mainstream Democratic orthodoxy. The catch: The FTC and states have to prove that rejecting Facebook's acquisitions would have made life better for consumers and increased industry competition — a tough case to make, legal experts told Axios. Share this story.     5. Musk: "Mars, here we come!!" Photo: Gene Blevins/Reuters   SpaceX launched its shiny, bullet-shaped, straight-out-of-science fiction Starship several miles into the air from a remote corner of Texas yesterday. The 6½-minute test flight ended in an explosive fireball at touchdown, AP reports. Why it matters: It was the highest and most elaborate flight yet for the rocket ship Elon Musk says could carry people to Mars in as little as six years. Musk tweeted: "Fuel header tank pressure was low during landing burn, causing touchdown velocity to be high & RUD, but we got all the data we needed! Congrats SpaceX team hell yeah!!"     6. Tax probe of Hunter Biden President-elect Biden embraces Hunter on Nov. 7 in Wilmington. Photo/Andrew Harnik/AP The Justice Department is investigating the finances of President-elect Joe Biden's son, Hunter Biden, including scrutinizing some of his Chinese business dealings, AP reports. Why it matters: The Biden administration will inherit an investigation of the president's son. Trump folks say the disclosure shows Hunter's business dealings were worth more pre-election scrutiny. Hunter Biden said in a statement from the transition yesterday: "I learned yesterday for the first time that the U.S. Attorney's Office in Delaware advised my legal counsel, also yesterday, that they are investigating my tax affairs." "I take this matter very seriously but I am confident that a professional and objective review of these matters will demonstrate that I handled my affairs legally and appropriately." Statement from the Biden-Harris Transition: "President-elect Biden is deeply proud of his son, who has fought through difficult challenges, including the vicious personal attacks of recent months, only to emerge stronger."     7. People are living longer, but chronic disease is killing more Adapted from World Health Organization. Chart: Andrew Witherspoon/Axios Worldwide life expectancy is now up to an average of 73 years — six years longer than it was in 2000. But chronic, and in some cases preventable, disease is also taking a bigger toll than it was 20 years ago, Maria Fernandez writes from a World Health Organization announcement. Keep reading.     8. Our weekly map: America's deadliest virus day Data: The COVID Tracking Project, Census Bureau; Map: Andrew Witherspoon/Axios A COVID record: One day, 3,000 deaths .... States reported 3,054 deaths from COVID — the highest single-day total yet. (The Atlantic) The Midwest and Great Plains continue to lead the U.S. with the densest concentration of coronavirus cases, Sam Baker and Andrew Witherspoon report. The hottest spots: Over the past week, Indiana, Rhode Island, South Dakota and Utah racked up an average of at least 100 new cases per day for every 100,000 residents. Share this map.     9. Scoop: New renewable group's Obamaworld CEO Heather Zichal in 2012. Photo: Alex Wong/Getty Images   A new renewable-energy trade group has announced its chief executive will be Heather Zichal, a top adviser to former President Obama, Amy Harder writes. Why it matters: President-elect Biden has promised to drastically increase clean energy. So this group — the American Clean Power Association — will be at the center of Washington's biggest debates. Since the Obama administration, Zichal has worked at The Nature Conservancy and as executive director of another climate-oriented group, the Blue Prosperity Coalition. She earlier worked for then-Sen. John Kerry, who is a top climate official in the incoming administration and said in a statement to Axios: "Heather is an extraordinary warrior on climate and she was fighting this fight long before it was cool." The American Clean Power Association, which was announced in September and formally launches Jan. 1, is the result of the 46-year-old American Wind Energy Association broadening its mission to include other renewable energy. Share this story.     10. 1 smile to go: Color of the year Courtesy Pantone Pantone, the color bible, announced that the Color of the Year 2021 combines Ultimate Gray + Illuminating — a mood of "strength and hopefulness." Vanessa Friedman, the N.Y. Times chief fashion critic, had the perfect translation: "light at the end of the tunnel."     A message from UnitedHealth Group How to make health care more affordable     Transitioning to value-based arrangements for prescription drugs will lower consumer out-of-pocket costs by 28%, improve outcomes, and speed access to new curative therapies. Learn more about UnitedHealth Group's ideas to make health care more affordable.   📬 Thanks for starting your day with us. 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