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| Presented By Facebook |
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| Axios AM |
| By Mike Allen ·Jun 28, 2021 |
| Happy Monday! Smart Brevity™ count: 1,463 words ... 5½ minutes. Edited by Zachary Basu. 📈 Crypto event: Please join Axios' Kia Kokalitcheva and Dan Primack tomorrow at 12:30 p.m. ET for a 30-minute virtual event on the future of cryptocurrency policy. Guests include Rep. Bill Foster (D-Ill.) and Grayscale Investments CEO Michael Sonnenshein. Sign up here. |
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| 1 big thing: Alzheimer's drug may be catastrophe in the making |
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| Illustration: Aïda Amer/Axios |
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| The FDA's approval of an Alzheimer's treatment — the first in two decades — should have been a cause for celebration. Instead, it's a scientific and financial mess, Axios' Sam Baker and Bob Herman report. - Why it matters: Experts fear the FDA's decision will undermine medical standards, explode the federal budget and fill millions of desperate people with false hope.
The backstory: FDA approval of Aduhelm, developed by Biogen, was controversial at the time, and criticism has only gotten louder. - The evidence that the drug works is extremely thin. The FDA's own statisticians said it didn't meet the agency's usual standards.
- An outside advisory panel — whose advice the agency usually follows — recommended against approving the drug. Three members quit in protest. One of them called this "probably the worst drug approval decision in recent U.S. history."
The bottom line: Patients will likely take it for several years. If it doesn't provide any clinical benefit, it will simply add billions more to the financial and emotional costs that Alzheimer's already extracts. |
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| 2. Trump's Situation Room shouting match |
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| President Trump and Gen. Mark Milley in 2019. Photo: Ron Sachs/CNP via Getty Images |
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| Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, repeatedly blew up at President Trump over how to handle last summer's racial-justice protests, The Wall Street Journal's Michael Bender writes in his forthcoming book, "Frankly, We Did Win This Election." - Trump wanted to invoke the Insurrection Act and put Milley in charge of a scorched-earth military campaign to suppress protests that had spiraled into riots in several cities.
- Milley — now a GOP villain for his testimony last week on critical race theory — pushed back, Bender writes in a passage we're reporting here for the first time:
Seated in the Situation Room with [Attorney General Bill] Barr, Milley, and [Secretary of Defense Mark] Esper, Trump exaggerated claims about the violence and alarmed officials ... by announcing he'd just put Milley "in charge." Privately, Milley confronted Trump about his role. He was an adviser, and not in command. But Trump had had enough. "I said you're in f---ing charge!" Trump shouted at him. "Well, I'm not in charge!" Milley yelled back. "You can't f---ing talk to me like that!" Trump said. ... "Goddamnit," Milley said to others. "There's a room full of lawyers here. Will someone inform him of my legal responsibilities?" Asked for a response, Trump told Jonathan Swan through an aide: "This is totally fake news, it never ever happened. I'm not a fan of Gen. Milley, but I never had an argument with him and the whole thing is false. He never talked back to me. Michael Bender never asked me about it and it's totally fake news." - Trump later added: "If Gen. Milley had yelled at me, I would have fired him."
Bender told Swan: "I asked the former president for his side of this particular argument in a written question — as he requested — along with other queries included in my thorough fact-checking process. He did not reply." |
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| 3. Surfside tower needed $9 million in urgent repairs |
| Notice how tightly the floors pancaked. Photo: Giorgio Viera/AFP via Getty Images Owners in the Surfside condo building were just days away from a deadline for steep payments toward more than $9 million in repairs that had been recommended three years earlier, AP reports. - Why it matters: Engineers and experts say documents make clear that several major repairs needed to be done as soon as possible. Other than some roof repairs, that work had not begun, officials said.
Owners were facing payments of anywhere from $80,000 for a one-bedroom unit to $330,000 or so for a penthouse, to be paid all at once or in installments. Their first deadline was July 1 — this Thursday. - One resident whose apartment was spared, Adalberto Aguero, had just taken out a loan to cover his $80,000 bill.
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| A message from Facebook |
| The internet has changed a lot since 1996 - internet regulations should too |
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| It's been 25 years since comprehensive internet regulations passed. See why we support updated regulations on key issues, including: - Protecting people's privacy.
- Enabling safe and easy data portability between platforms.
- Preventing election interference.
- Reforming Section 230.
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| 4. Pics du jour |
| Photo: Andrew Harnik/AP Secretary of State Tony Blinken tours the Sistine Chapel today, ahead of a meeting with Pope Francis. Photo: Andrew Harnik/AP Father Bruno Silvestrini, custodian of the Apostolic sacred sites, closes the door of the Sistine Chapel. |
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| 5. 🌡️ "Heat dome" signals warming's march |
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| Austun Wilde rests with her two dogs, Bird Is the Wurd and Fenrir, at a cooling center in the Oregon Convention Center in Portland yesterday. Photo: Nathan Howard/Getty Images |
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| The dangerous heat wave enveloping the Pacific Northwest is shattering weather records by such large margins that it is making even climate scientists uneasy, Axios' Andrew Freedman writes. - Why it matters: Infrastructure, including heating and cooling, is built according to expectations of a "normal" climate. Human-caused climate change is quickly redefining that normal, while dramatically raising the likelihood of events that simply have no precedent.
Portland, Ore., reached 112°F yesterday, breaking the all-time record of 108°F set just the day before. - Canada set a national all-time heat record on Monday, smashing the old record by nearly 3°F.
How it works: The heat dome over the Northwest, which is a sprawling, intense area of high pressure aloft, causes air to sink, or compress. As it does so, the air temperatures increase. Winds blowing from land to sea around this high are pushing temperatures higher. |
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| 6. Beijing's toll on Hong Kong |
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| Illustration: Sarah Grillo/Axios |
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| One year after Beijing imposed a sweeping national security law on Hong Kong, the city's political freedoms have been dramatically curtailed, leaving residents to cope with their home's authoritarian transformation, Axios China author Bethany Allen-Ebrahimian writes. - Why it matters: The Chinese Communist Party has effectively shut the pro-democracy movement out of politics and cracked down on its leaders. The effects have rippled through business and even art.
Journalists face increased risk of prosecution and police searches. Authorities have denied visas for foreign journalists. - The New York Times has moved part of its Asia hub from Hong Kong to Seoul.
Businesses haven't fled Hong Kong, as some predicted. But financial institutions are struggling to comply with conflicting sanctions regimes. |
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| 7. GOP's new plan to tax Big Tech |
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| Illustration: Sarah Grillo/Axios |
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| Key Republicans are warming to an idea that was once anathema to the party — new taxes on big American companies to pay for internet subsidy programs, Axios' Margaret Harding McGill writes. - Why it matters: Republican interest in taxing Big Tech could help shore up a struggling subsidy fund that supports broadband in rural areas, schools, libraries and hospitals.
An idea from GOP FCC commissioner Brendan Carr to force tech companies to pay into a pool of money used to fund broadband programs is gaining steam with some key lawmakers. - House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy called the proposal "thought-provoking." His office notes that video streaming accounts for more than 50% of web traffic, and online advertising is a $100-billion-a-year industry.
The Internet Association, a trade group that includes Big Tech companies, called the idea an attempt to punish its members. |
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| 8. 📚 First look: Ro Khanna book |
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| Cover: Simon & Schuster |
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| Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.), who represents Silicon Valley, will be out Feb. 1 with "Dignity in a Digital Age: Making Tech Work for All of Us." - The publisher, Simon & Schuster, says the book "imagines how the digital economy can create opportunities for people all across the country," and "offers a vision for democratizing digital innovation in order to build economically vibrant and inclusive communities."
💠Steve Case says Khanna "makes a compelling case for place-based policymaking, and how a more well-dispersed innovation economy can help rising cities thrive." |
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| 9. 🚌 Startup tries smarter busing |
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| Photo: Zum |
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| Zum, a Bay Area startup that launched six years ago as an Uber-like ride service for families with children, is now working directly with school districts to modernize student transportation, Axios' Joann Muller writes. - Zum uses a mix of cars, vans and school buses, with tracking software to let schools and parents monitor every student's trip.
The big picture: Student transportation is the largest mass transit system in the United States — a $28 billion industry. For most districts, it's the second-largest budget item after teacher salaries. - But it's inefficient, with long travel times and frequent delays.
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| 10. 🎞️ 1 film thing: "F9" set pandemic record |
| Vin Diesel and Michelle Rodriguez in "F9: The Fast Saga." Photo: Giles Keyte/Universal Pictures via AP "F9: The Fast Saga," the ninth installment in the "Fast and Furious" franchise, had the top weekend box-office haul in North America since before the pandemic, Axios Media Trends expert Sara Fischer reports. - Why it matters: The weekend blowout is a huge sign of optimism for the struggling movie theater industry, which has been ravaged by pandemic-driven theater closures and the rise of streaming.
"F9" blew past estimates and brought in $70 million this weekend — beating the previous pandemic champ, Paramount's "A Quiet Place Part II," which brought in $50 million on Memorial Day weekend. - That makes "F9" the biggest box-office opening winner domestically since "Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker" debuted in theaters in December 2019.
What's next: Disney's Marvel action film "Black Widow" debuts July 8, and Warner Bros.' "Space Jam: A New Legacy" on July 16. |
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| A message from Facebook |
| Why Facebook supports updated internet regulations |
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| 2021 is the 25th anniversary of the Telecommunications Act of 1996, the last major update to internet regulation. It's time for an update to set clear rules for addressing today's toughest challenges. See how we're taking action on key issues and why we support updated internet regulations. |
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