| | | | | | | Presented By Google | | | | Axios AM | | By Mike Allen ·Aug 01, 2021 | | 🏖️ Welcome to August! Smart Brevity™ count: 990 words ... 4 minutes. Edited by Fadel Allassan. ⚡ Breaking: Dr. Anthony Fauci told Jonathan Karl on ABC's "This Week" that the U.S. is unlikely to return to lockdowns, but that the Delta outbreak is likely to worsen. Video. | | | | | | 1 big thing: No words needed |  Data: CDC and state COVID dashboards, via NBC. Chart: Danielle Alberti/Axios If you want words ... Share this graphic. - N.Y. Times Quote of the Day ... Dr. Laolu Fayanju, a family medicine doctor in Ohio: "We live in an era of unprecedented scientific breakthroughs and expertise. But we're also stymied by the forces of misinformation that undermine the true knowledge that is out there."
|     | | | | | | 2. $15 wage becoming norm |  | | | Spotted near the Pilgrim's Pride chicken processing plant in Moorefield, W.Va. Photo: Sara Kehaulani Goo/Axios | | | | The federal minimum wage is $7.25, and hasn't been raised since 2009. But for many workers, a floor of $15 an hour is increasingly the reality, AP Economics Writer Chris Rugaber reports. - Businesses, particularly in the restaurant, retail and travel industries, have been offering a $15 wage to try to fill enough jobs to meet surging demand from consumers.
- Amazon was an early adopter, announcing in 2018 that it was "increasing its minimum wage to $15 for all full-time, part-time, temporary (including those hired by agencies), and seasonal employees across the U.S."
State of play: The change has been swift. For years, and notably in the 2020 presidential race, labor advocates trumpeted $15 an hour as a wage that would finally allow low-paid workers to afford basic necessities and narrow inequality. It struck many as a long-term goal. - Now, many staffing companies say $15 an hour is the level that many businesses must pay to fill their jobs.
- "That number is not a coincidence," said Aaron Sojourner, an economist at the University of Minnesota. "It's the number that those activists and workers put on the table 10 years ago, and built a movement towards."
Reality check: Millions of Americans are still earning less than $15 an hour. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office calculates that even by 2025, roughly 17 million workers will remain below that level. - Yet at ZipRecruiter, the number of job postings on the site that are advertising $15 an hour has more than doubled since 2019.
What we're watching: Mathieu Stevenson, the CEO of Snagajob, a site for hourly workers, says a handful of restaurant chains are going so far as to offer retirement plans. - "The $15 an hour debate," Stevenson said, "is essentially being resolved through market forces."
Go deeper: If you missed our business team's Deep Dive in your in-box yesterday afternoon, "Inside the jobs bonanza," check out this friendly version. | | | | | | | | 3. Article of the day: FDR Zoom | | President Roosevelt's War Cabinet on Dec. 20, 1941. FDR is wearing a mourning band for his mother, who died 104 days earlier. Photo: Bettmann Archive via Getty Images Ninety years on, descendants of the FDR administration have reconstituted his Cabinet in hopes of summoning a new New Deal from President Biden, Ruby Cramer writes for Politico Magazine: At 6 p.m., two rows of elderly faces appeared on [a Zoom] screen, staring into the camera: June Hopkins, Henry Scott Wallace, Tomlin Perkins Coggeshall and James Roosevelt Jr. If their names sound vaguely familiar it's because their relatives — Harry Hopkins, Henry Wallace, Frances Perkins and Franklin Delano Roosevelt — formed the nucleus of one of the most famous and influential Oval Office rosters in American history. The group, which has been meeting nearly weekly since last June, wants Biden to embrace "activist" government, Cramer writes: - "They want him to eliminate the filibuster. They spend hours parsing his words for echoes of the stirring language that helped defeat the Great Depression."
Henry S. Wallace, 69, grandson of Henry A. Wallace, the second for FDR's three VPs, said: "The New Deal would have been impossible under today's filibuster regimen ... In FDR, his first 100 days, he got 15 major pieces of legislation passed, every single one was subject to nothing more than the majority." | | | | | | | | A message from Google | | Shielding four billion devices from malware every day | | |  | | | | Google's protections like Safe Browsing are designed to automatically detect threats and can alert you when you might visit a risky site. To make the internet safer for everyone, Google makes this technology free for other companies to use in their browsers. Learn more. | | | | | | 4. Ina's Tokyo diary: BMX takes off |  | | | Photo: Ina Fried/Axios | | | | Axios' Ina Fried writes from Tokyo that watching freestyle BMX (bicycle motocross) is reminiscent of watching skateboarding. - But the bikes put the best tricks on steroids — adding options to hang on by one hand, flip the handlebars around and more.
Above: Japan's Rim Nakamura. - Below: Charlotte Worthington of Great Britain.
Photo: Ina Fried/Axios BMX results ... Events to watch today ... Axios Olympics Dashboard. | | | | | | | | 5. Ghost on the coast | | Photo: Joe Raedle/Getty Images This is the cleared lot in Surfside, Fla., that used to be the 12-story Champlain Towers South condo building. - The final victim has been identified, more than a month after the middle-of-the-night collapse that claimed 98 lives.
| | | | | | | | 6. 💰 Trump war chest: $100 million | Notes released Friday from a President Trump call with the Justice Department on Dec. 27: "Just say the election was corrupt and leave the rest to me and the [GOP] Congressmen." Former President Trump and his affiliated political committees raised $81.8 million from Jan. 1 to June 30, and have $102 million cash on hand, his Save America PAC announced last night. - Why it matters, from The Wall Street Journal: Despite election loss and social-media ban, Trump remains a draw for Republican donors.
Read the release. | | | | | | | | 7. Qaddafis may try comeback | | Seif al-Islam el-Qaddafi in Zintan in May. Photo: Jehad Nga for The New York Times. Used by kind permission Seif al-Islam el-Qaddafi, 49 — second son of the late Libyan dictator Muammar el-Qaddafi, who died in 2011 — hinted at a bid for Libya's presidency, which many Libyans support, in an interview with Robert F. Worth for The New York Times Magazine. - It was the first time a foreign journalist had seen him in a decade.
One of Seif 's political advantages is his name. Another is the peculiar fact that Muammar el-Qaddafi's son — the same man who promised "rivers of blood" in a 2011 speech — is now seen by many as the presidential candidate with the cleanest hands. All the other political contenders have compromised themselves much more recently, both with self-dealing and with their connections to the gun-toting thugs once hailed as heroes of the revolution. To many Libyans, Seif al-Islam's return would be a way of closing the door on a lost decade. Keep reading (subscription). | | | | | | | | 8. Freeze-frame Olympics | | Photo: Laurence Griffiths/Getty Images Suni Lee of Team USA competes today in the women's uneven bars final at Ariake Gymnastics Centre. Results. Photo: Ryan Pierse/Getty Images Katie Ledecky of Team USA wins the women's 800-meter freestyle final at Tokyo Aquatics Centre yesterday. Results. Photo: Francois Nel/Getty Images Caeleb Dressel of Team USA at today's men's 4 x 100-meter medley relay final. Results. | | | | | | | | A message from Google | | Google blocks 100 million phishing attacks every day | | |  | | | | To keep hackers from accessing your personal information, Gmail uses industry-leading technology to automatically detect threats, blocking more than 99.9% of spam, phishing attempts, and malware from reaching your inbox. Learn more. | | | | 📬 Please invite your friends, family, colleagues to sign up here for Axios AM and Axios PM. |  | | It'll help you deliver employee communications more effectively. | | | |
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