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| Presented By Bank of America |
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| Axios AM |
| By Mike Allen ·May 27, 2021 |
| Happy Thursday! Smart Brevity™ count: 1,132 words ... 4 minutes. Edited by Zachary Basu. 💼 Today at 12:30 p.m. ET, please join Axios' Erica Pandey and Bryan Walsh for a virtual event on higher education's role in the future of work. Guests include Handshake CEO and co-founder Garrett Lord and Ford Foundation "Future of Work(ers)" director Sarita Gupta. Sign up here. |
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| 1 big thing: The Jeff Bezos show |
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| Photo: Greg Doherty/Getty Images |
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| Jeff Bezos has become one of the most influential executives across an array of industries beyond online retail — including aerospace, newspapers, and now movies, Axios' Sara Fischer and Felix Salmon write. - Why it matters: Bezos' splashy and far-reaching investments distinguish him from other tech leaders, who are trying to lay low as regulatory pressures mount.
Bezos preserved his reputation as a quirky, efficiency-obsessed engineer during the years he spent building Amazon into an empire. - As he prepares to step down as Amazon's CEO — he'll leave that role on July 5, the company said yesterday — his personal hobbies and penchant for the spotlight are an increasingly visible element of his business ambitions.
Until recently, Amazon had largely avoided the regulatory spotlight and Bezos was rarely the story himself. But lawmakers have become wary of the tech giant's power and Bezos' influence. - Amazon's acquisition of MGM Studios for $8.5 billion, announced yesterday, didn't set off anti-competitive alarm bells. But it drew concerns from some lawmakers, who argue that it gives Amazon too much power in yet another industry.
The bottom line: Wall Street is happy to take risks on Bezos' passion projects or new business lines. |
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| 2. Biden's antennae: McCaskill may get Europe plum |
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| Claire McCaskill campaigning for Senate in 2018. Photo: Scott Olson/Getty Images |
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| Former Sen. Claire McCaskill is under consideration for a plum ambassadorship in western Europe — another sign President Biden will tap party allies over big-dollar donors when he starts to name his political ambassadors as soon as next week, Axios' Hans Nichols reports. - Why it matters: Biden will have political antennae across the globe.
McCaskill is to be joined in the diplomatic corps by Rahm Emanuel, who has been promised ambassador to Japan ... L.A. Mayor Eric Garcetti, headed for India ... and Tom Nides, Democratic confidant and former deputy SecState, in line for Israel. - Cindy McCain is expected to be the ambassador to the World Food Program in Rome.
- Ken Salazar — President Obama's Interior secretary, and a former senator from Colorado— is preparing to go to Mexico.
- Nick Burns, a career diplomat, is Biden's likely choice for China.
The intrigue: Biden is also considering former Republican Sen. Jeff Flake of Arizona, who endorsed him at the Democratic convention, for an ambassadorship. - Former Sen. Chris Dodd turned down an embassy offer, and will instead be available for discreet diplomatic missions as one of Biden's oldest Senate friends.
The big picture: White House officials are working to ensure that his picks reflect the diversity of the country, meaning that many wealthy white male donors will see their ambassadorial ambitions quashed after a lifetime of giving. - Biden will likely draw on political allies and donors for roughly 30% of the 190-ish available ambassadorships.
- The remaining 70% will go to career foreign service officers.
Share this story. |
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| 3. Republicans' Hail Mary |
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| President Biden meets with Senate Republicans in February. Photo: Saul Loeb/AFP via Getty Images |
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| Some Senate Republicans are offering to add to the national debt to pay for a scaled-back infrastructure plan— one more grasp at a deal with President Biden before Democrats pack up and go it alone, Axios' Hans Nichols reports. - Why it matters: Skipping over the thorny question of how to offset up to $1 trillion in new projects could actually be easier for GOP lawmakers than agreeing on tax increases.
The context: Former President Trump drove up the national debt during his presidency and showed fellow Republicans there weren't immediate political ramifications for deficit spending. Deficit spending "could be part of the discussion," Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) told Axios. "It would be for what we would consider to be the hard infrastructure — the roads, bridges, the ports." The other side: Some Democrats are reluctant to open the door to deficit spending on a bipartisan bill — convinced that corporations and wealthy Americans need to pay higher taxes. |
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| A message from Bank of America |
| Why affordable housing is more crucial than ever |
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| Millions of Americans struggle with high housing costs, or, worse, find themselves at risk of losing their homes altogether. With COVID-19 leaving more Americans struggling to afford a home, these nonprofits are working to provide housing in their communities with support from Bank of America. |
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| 4. Pic du jour: History at the White House |
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| Photo: Evan Vucci/AP |
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| Karine Jean-Pierre yesterday became the first openly gay woman to deliver the White House press briefing and only the second Black woman in history to take on the role, AP reports. - Judy Smith, a deputy press secretary to President George H.W. Bush in 1991, was the first Black spokesperson to brief at the podium.
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| 5. Graphed: Our COVID year |
 Data: CSSE Johns Hopkins University. Chart: Andrew Witherspoon/Axios Axios Sports author Kendall Baker's lens on America's year of COVID.  Data: CSSE Johns Hopkins University. Map: Andrew Witherspoon/Axios The pace of new coronavirus infections in the U.S. fell by nearly 20% over the past week — the fifth straight week of double-digit declines, Axios' Sam Baker and Andrew Witherspoon report. |
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| 6. San Jose marks this year's 15th mass killing |
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| Law enforcement officers yesterday at the scene of a shooting at a Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority (VTA) facility in San Jose, Calif. Photo: Noah Berger/AP |
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| An employee who gunned down eight people at a Northern California rail yard, then killed himself as law enforcement rushed in, had talked about killing people at work more than a decade ago, his ex-wife told AP. - The mass shooting in San Jose was the deadliest in the Bay Area since 1993, when a gunman killed eight people and himself at law offices in San Francisco's Financial District.
Screenshot via CNN It was the 15th mass killing (defined as shootings that claim at least four lives, excluding the shooter) in America this year — a total of 86 deaths, according to a database by AP, USA Today and Northeastern University. - That five-month toll compares with 106 for all of 2020.
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| 7. Biden's Asia czar: Era of engagement with China is over |
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| Chinese President Xi delivers a speech to the Global Health Summit on May 21. Photo: Huang Jingwen/Xinhua via Getty Images |
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| President Biden's top national security aide for Asia said U.S. policy toward China will now be viewed through the lens of intense competition as a result of Xi Jinping's embrace of "hard power," Bloomberg reports. - Why it matters: "The period that was broadly described as engagement has come to an end," Kurt Campbell, the National Security Council coordinator for Indo-Pacific affairs, told a Stanford event yesterday.
Campbell cited China's military clashes on the border with India, an "economic campaign" against Australia and the rise of "wolf warrior" diplomacy as "signals that China is determined to play a more assertive role." |
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| 8. Howard names college for alumnus Chadwick Boseman |
| Chadwick Boseman gives a Wakanda salute to the crowd at Howard commencement in 2018. Photo: Bill O'Leary/The Washington Post via Getty Images Howard University announced that the newly reestablished College of Fine Arts will be named in honor of the late Chadwick Boseman, whose "career as an actor, director, writer, and producer inspired millions." - Boseman graduated from Howard in 2000 with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in directing.
Disney executive chairman Bob Iger "will personally lead fundraising efforts in honor of Boseman, a cherished member of the Disney/Marvel family, to build a new, state-of-the-art facility to house the college and an endowment for the Chadwick A. Boseman College of Fine Arts." |
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| 9. The senator from Central Casting: Remembering John Warner |
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| In 1977, Sen. John Warner and Elizabeth Taylor (he was the sixth of her seven husbands) attend the New York Film Critics Circle Awards dinner in New York. Photo: AP |
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| I covered Sen. John Warner of Virginia over three decades — first when I was a college newspaper editor, later at the Richmond Times-Dispatch, then as a Metro scribe for The Washington Post. - His greeting summed him up. "I'm proud but humble," he'd boom, "to be your senior senator."
- A great American life: Warner volunteered for the Navy at 17, and three decades later was Secretary of the Navy.
The legendary Don Baker, The Post's longtime Richmond bureau chief, has the obit on p. A1, "5-term senator from Va. often went his own way": John W. Warner, the five-term U.S. senator from Virginia who helped plan the nation's 1976 bicentennial celebrations, played a central role in military affairs and gained respect on both sides of the political aisle for his diligence, consensus-building and independence, died ... at his home in Alexandria, Va. He was 94. ... Because of his willingness to buck his increasingly conservative party, Mr. Warner became the Republican whom many Virginia independents and Democrats respected and voted for. ... In 1994, Mr. Warner interceded in an ideologically fractious Senate contest between incumbent Charles S. Robb (D) and Oliver North (R). Keep reading. |
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| 10. 📺 1 tube thing: "Friends," 27 years apart |
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| Photo: HBO Max |
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| Above: Debuting tonight on HBO Max .... For "Friends: The Reunion," Jennifer Aniston, Courteney Cox, Matthew Perry, Lisa Kudrow, David Schwimmer and Matt LeBlanc return to the original soundstage — Stage 24, on the Warner Bros. Studio lot in Burbank. Photo: Reisig & Taylor/NBCUniversal via Getty Images Above: Season 1, 1994 .... Left to right: David Schwimmer as Ross Geller, Jennifer Aniston as Rachel Green, Courteney Cox as Monica Geller, Matt LeBlanc as Joey Tribbiani, Lisa Kudrow as Phoebe Buffay and Matthew Perry as Chandler Bing. |
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| A message from Bank of America |
| Revitalizing an iconic Los Angeles neighborhood |
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| Jordan Downs, a 1950's-era public housing project in the Watts neighborhood of LA, needed critical updates to support its residents. An innovative partnership and financing from Bank of America is building 1,400 new affordable homes, shops, green spaces and more. |
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| 📬 Please invite your friends, family, colleagues to sign up here for Axios AM and Axios PM. |
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