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| Presented By Facebook |
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| Axios AM |
| By Mike Allen ·Oct 27, 2021 |
| 🐪 Happy Wednesday. Smart Brevity™ count: 1,179 words ... 4½ minutes. Edited by Zachary Basu. |
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| 1 big thing: Climate reckoning for oil and gas CEOs |
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| Illustration: Aïda Amer/Axios |
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| Top executives from ExxonMobil, BP, Chevron and Shell will be grilled on Capitol Hill tomorrow about evidence that their companies knew for years that their products were driving climate change — but chose to downplay or deny it, Axios' Andrew Freedman writes. - Why it matters: The hearing before the House Oversight Committee will be the first time the executives have been brought together for sworn testimony on the topic.
Lawmakers want to know to what extent these top officials and their colleagues sought to mislead the public about the existence and severity of human-caused climate change, such as by funding groups that promoted climate denial. - The hearing was prompted in part by two ExxonMobil lobbyists who — caught in a Greenpeace sting operation revealed last summer — discussed tactics for evading regulation and public accountability.
What we're watching: Oversight Committee chair Carolyn Maloney (D-N.Y.) and Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.), who heads the panel's environment subcommittee, have both compared this week's hearing to the famous 1994 tobacco hearings. - Khanna plans to investigate the companies for at least the next year.
What the companies say: Shell spokesman Curtis Smith said the company is working with the committee to produce the requested information. - Casey Norton, a spokesman for ExxonMobil, stated: "We have been in communication with committee staff for months and have cooperated with the request for documents."
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| 2. 💰 Dems' twin hits on Big Money |
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| Graphic: CNN |
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| In a last-second scramble to pay for President Biden's legacy-defining plans, Senate Democrats yesterday unveiled: Details: The billionaire tax "would impose the capital gains tax — 23.8 percent — on the gain in value of billionaires' tradable assets, such as stocks, bonds and cash, based on the original price of those assets," the N.Y. Times' Jonathan Weisman writes (subscription). - For startup tycoons, "that hit would be enormous, since the initial value of their horde of stocks was zero. They would have five years to pay."
Go deeper: Senate Finance Committee 1-pager on the "Billionaires Income Tax" ... "Wealth tax" explainer. |
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| 3. Trump stars in both sides' ads |
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| Photo illustration: Aïda Amer/Axios. Screenshots: Republican super PAC (top), Democratic Governors Association (bottom) |
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| Donald Trump is a TV star again — in political ads being run by both parties, Axios' Lachlan Markay writes. - Why it matters: It's evidence of how polarizing and motivating the former president remains for Democrats and Republicans alike.
Records show millions of dollars have been spent on ads invoking Trump's name nearly a year after he lost his re-election campaign. - Trump is the central figure in campaign ads ranging from mayoral contests in Buffalo and Seattle to four different gubernatorial races, as well as heated GOP Senate primaries.
Since August, 36 campaigns and political committees have spent at least $13.5 million on 50 different television ads invoking his name, according to campaign finance records and data provided to Axios by the advertising intelligence firm AdImpact. - That's guaranteed to spike in next year's midterms.
In Virginia, Democratic gubernatorial candidate Terry McAuliffe has relentlessly sought to tie Trump to his Republican opponent, Glenn Youngkin. - McAuliffe's campaign teamed up with the Democratic Governors Association on an ad that began airing last week, calling Youngkin "Donald Trump's candidate, not yours." (Watch the ad.)
The other side: Trump also features heavily in new ads from the Club for Growth and the USA Freedom Fund, both of which are backing Republican Josh Mandel in Ohio's U.S. Senate primary. - Each group is spending about $450,000 on TV spots hitting Republican opponent J.D. Vance. Both groups' ads focus on past Vance criticism of Trump.
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| A message from Facebook |
| Why Facebook supports updated internet regulations |
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| Jack is one of 40,000 people working on safety and security issues at Facebook. Hear more from Jack on why Facebook supports updating regulations on the internet's most pressing challenges, including reforming Section 230 to set clear guidelines for all large tech companies. |
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| 4. Pic du jour |
| Photo: Nicholas Kamm/AFP via Getty Images President Biden takes selfies last night after a campaign rally for Virginia Democratic gubernatorial candidate Terry McAuliffe at Virginia Highlands Park in Arlington. |
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| 5. Milley: China "very close" to "Sputnik moment" |
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| General Milley testifies before the House Armed Services Committee on Sept. 29. Photo: Rod Lamkey/Pool via Reuters |
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| Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, warned that China's test of a hypersonic missile is "very close" to the kind of "Sputnik moment" that triggered the Space Race during the Cold War, Axios' Zachary Basu writes. - Why it matters: The alarms raised by America's top uniformed general underscore the depths of U.S. concerns about China's rapid military expansion and development of advanced weaponry.
"What we saw was a very significant event of a test of a hypersonic weapon system. And it is very concerning," Milley told Bloomberg TV's "The David Rubenstein Show: Peer-to-Peer Conversations." |
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| 6. New study: Colon cancer under 50 |
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| Illustration: Aïda Amer/Axios |
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| Young adults with colon cancer are just as likely to die from the disease as older people — in some cases, maybe even more likely — Axios health care editor Tina Reed writes from a study to be published today in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute. - Why it matters: Colorectal cancer is among the fastest-growing cancers among people younger than 50, and researchers aren't sure why.
⚡ The big picture: In May, the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force lowered the recommended age Americans should start getting screened for colon cancer, from age 50 to age 45. - The task force said the recommendation reflected the fact that colon cancer — the third-leading cause of cancer death for both men and women in the U.S. — is increasingly striking adults younger than 50.
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| 7. Disrupting Big Internet |
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| Maura Losch/Axios |
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| A new startup backed by funding from AOL founder Steve Case and Laurene Powell Jobs wants to break up broadband monopolies across the country, Axios' Margaret Harding McGill writes. - Why it matters: Internet access has been crucial during the pandemic — but it's not ubiquitous, and can be both slow and unaffordable in swaths of the country.
The startup, community infrastructure company Underline, builds and operates the fiber network while multiple service providers can use it and offer service to customers. - Its first project in Colorado Springs involves more than $100 million in capital to build 400 miles of fiber and offer service to 55,000 residences and businesses.
Keep reading. |
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| 8. 🎞️ 1 film thing: "The First Wave" |
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| Dr. Nathalie Dougé, one of the film's main participants, joins a protest over the death of George Floyd. Photo: "The First Wave" |
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| As COVID exploded last spring, Oscar-nominated director Matthew Heineman and his team were granted exclusive access inside Long Island Jewish Medical Center in Queens — the hardest-hit hospital in the country. - The footage is the subject of a new documentary, "The First Wave," which captures "the life-and-death stakes" experienced by a group of doctors, nurses and patients as they navigated the early days of the crisis.
- The crew adopted extraordinary safety protocols in order to document the "intimate, poignant moments of humanity" that so much of the general public never saw.
Heineman, whose past films go inside the Mexican drug trade and Syria under ISIS control, called the experience "particularly terrifying." - "[W]e were living through the same threat that we were documenting. There were no boundaries, there was no safe place to take cover, you could never 'turn off,'" he said.
The film has a D.C. premiere tonight and opens in theaters Nov. 19. |
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| A message from Facebook |
| Facebook invested $13B in teams and technology to enhance safety |
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| It's working: we lead the industry in stopping bad actors online. In the past few months, we took action on: - 1.7B fake accounts.
- 3.8M drugs and firearms sales posts.
- 7.1M terrorism-related posts.
- 32.8 million explicit adult posts.
Learn more about how we're making our platforms safer. |
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