| | | | | | | Presented By Bank of America | | | | Axios AM | | By Mike Allen · Apr 23, 2022 | | Happy Saturday. Smart Brevity™ count: 1,453 words ... 5½ mins. Edited by TuAnh Dam. 🇪🇺 Breaking: European lawmakers agreed in Brussels today on a law that will force Big Tech to police social platforms more strictly for hate speech and disinformation — with big fines if they don't, Axios' Ashley Gold reports. - Why it matters: Europe has led the way in regulating the digital age, setting the tone for the world's handling of online privacy and competition.
| | | | | | 1 big thing: Biden PG-13 | | President Biden listens during an event yesterday at Green River College in Auburn, Wash. Photo: Andrew Harnik/AP Reporters talk about "Trump porn" — combustible accounts about the former president that juice web traffic and consume cable news. - Last night, I read "This Will Not Pass," by the N.Y. Times' Jonathan Martin and Alexander Burns (out May 3), drawn from hundreds of interviews about the 2020 campaign and President Biden's first year.
It's more PG-13, but their Biden reportage is illuminating. - Why it matters: Republicans got the first headlines from the book, "an account of a political emergency in the United States." But this also was a rocky year for Biden and Dems.
"These guys": After delivering an address on national unity at Gettysburg in the campaign's final month, Biden issued a similar plea from Warm Springs, Ga., home of FDR's Little White House. Speaking with historian Jon Meacham, Biden expressed misgivings "about inviting comparisons twice in a month to the greatest American leaders." - "I'm not one of these guys," Biden said.
- Meacham replied: "Neither were they, until they were." (p. 109)
POTUS takes notes: "Al Sharpton pushed Biden on the filibuster, telling the president that if the procedural roadblock remained in place then Democrats would suffer in the midterms. Biden took notes laboriously, but he and his aides were noncommittal." - "So what did that leave the civil rights groups with, as they departed the White House? Like so many other White House visitors in 2021, they collected praise from the president about the importance of their electoral constituency."
- "Biden again hailed the role of Black voters in his campaign ... [saying] Black women were the reason he occupied the Oval Office. It was a flattering and sincere sentiment. But flattery would not protect the franchise." (p. 323-4)
Aging pitcher: When Biden addressed House Dems at the Capitol on Oct. 1, with infrastructure and reconciliation bills in the balance, they "were braced for a moment of political climax. ... [But Biden] had decided [that] was not the day to demand a vote. ... The president did share a story about Satchel Paige, the legendary Black pitcher who played baseball deep into his forties ... - "Paige, Biden said, had once been asked about his capacity to play at such an advanced age. ... 'How old would you be,' [Paige] supposedly asked, 'if you did not know how old you were?' It was not clear what message Biden intended to convey with that story. ... Biden's yarn about an aging pitcher was not altogether reassuring." (p. 403-4)
Cover: Simon & Schuster Begala's zinger: In fall 2021, "the prominent Democratic strategist Paul Begala contacted Klain ... The president, Begala said, was too Olympian, too prone to putting himself above the partisan fray ... Offering Klain a ready-to-go attack line, Begala proposed Biden tell Americans that Republicans 'fear Trump more than they care about you.' - "It was a smooth line easy to imagine coming from Begala's most famous client, Bill Clinton. Well, Klain replied, that approach isn't this president's comfort zone. That's not his brand." (p. 422)
Klain to Harris: "The vice president had one vocal and unyielding defender in the West Wing: the president's chief of staff. ... Yet even Klain understood that something was not working. He told Harris in the fall that she had erred by holding her Latin American assignment at arm's length: Yes, he acknowledged, it was a politically delicate portfolio, but there had been an opportunity there for her to take full ownership of something, sink into the policy details and produce results. - "That, Klain told Harris, was the way to succeed as a vice president." (p. 424-5)
"Harris knew well enough that she had a political problem. One senator close to her, describing Harris's frustration level as 'up in the stratosphere,' lamented that Harris's political decline was a 'slow-rolling Greek tragedy.'" (p. 425) |     | | | | | | 2. 🥊 Biden readies for GOP probes | | The White House is preparing for a barrage of congressional investigations — including hiring new staffers and potentially restructuring the counsel's office — if the GOP takes control of one or both chambers of Congress next year, the WashPost's Tyler Pager writes. - Why it matters: "The moves reflect an expectation that newly ascendant House Republicans ... would immediately launch oversight investigations into such matters as the business dealings of President Biden's son Hunter, the rocky U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan" and the administration's handling of COVID, The Post reports.
| | | | | | | | 3. 🏛️ Meadows was warned about 1/6 | | The House's Jan. 6 committee said in a court filing last night that former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows was warned about potential violence ahead of the attack on the Capitol. - Cassidy Hutchinson, a former executive assistant to Meadows, testified:
I know that there were concerns brought forward to Mr. Meadows. I don't know — I don't want to speculate whether or not he perceived them as genuine concerns, but I know that people had brought information forward to him that had indicated that there could be violence on the sixth. But, again, I'm not sure ... what he did with that information internally. Why it matters: "But despite ... warnings, President Trump urged the attendees at the January 6th rally to march to the Capitol to 'take back your country,'" the committee wrote in the filing. | | | | | | | | A message from Bank of America | | Proterra: The future of clean, sustainable transportation | | |  | | | | The EPA estimates the transportation sector accounts for more than 29% of total U.S. greenhouse gas emissions. Proterra is committed to changing that by developing safer, cleaner, more reliable transportation — with the support of partners like Bank of America. | | | | | | 4. 🇺🇦 Zelensky: "Who is next?" | | Cookies at a Pentagon meeting Thursday between Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and Ukraine Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal. Photo: Brendan Smialowski/AFP via Getty Images Ukrainian officials acknowledged that Russian forces seized 42 small towns in their initial drive this week to seize eastern Ukraine, the N.Y. Times reports (subscription). - Russian forces resumed air and ground attacks on a massive steel plant that is Ukraine's final stronghold in Mariupol, and a shelter for 1,000 civilians. Get the latest.
🪖 Rustam Minnekayev, a senior Russian military official, publicly outlined wider ambitions than the Kremlin had admitted. He said Russia aims to take full control of not just eastern Ukraine but also the south. - The general said that would open the way to Moldova, which shares a border with Ukraine.
Zelensky said in his nightly video address (via Bloomberg): - "This only confirms what I have said many times: the Russian invasion of Ukraine was intended only as a beginning, then they want to capture other countries ... Who is next?"
| | | | | | | | 5. "Sniper-style" attack panics D.C. | | Police evacuate people, including Sarah Cope running with her dog, near the scene of a shooting yesterday in Northwest Washington. Photo: Carolyn Kaster/AP Four people, including a 12-year-old girl, were shot when a gunman unleashed a flurry of bullets in Northwest Washington yesterday, leading to lockdowns at several schools. The suspect was found dead hours later in an apartment at the scene, AP reports. - The gunfire erupted shortly before 3:30 p.m. near the corner of Connecticut Avenue and Van Ness Street in the Van Ness neighborhood — just as parents were picking up their children from the Edmund Burke School, a private college-prep school.
Police believe he erected a "sniper-type setup" with a tripod and rifle in his apartment and began firing indiscriminately at people walking below, Metropolitan Police Chief Robert Contee said. - The man is believed to have shot himself, the WashPost reports.
- The shooting was recorded and posted online on 4chan, the online message board.
The four victims — a 54-year-old man who is a retired police officer, a woman in her 30s, a woman in her mid-60s who was grazed by a bullet, and a 12-year-old girl shot in the arm — are all expected to recover. | | | | | | | | 6. 📱 Hiker seeks phone, falls in toilet | The rescue scene. Photo: Brinnon (Wash.) Fire Dept. A woman accidentally dropped her cellphone into the hole of an outhouse in Olympic National Forest northwest of Seattle — then fell in headfirst while trying to fish it out, The Kitsap (Wash.) Sun reports. From the Brinnon (Wash.) Fire Department's just-the-facts incident report from the top of Mount Walker: Initial reports that a female in her 40s fell into a vault toilet. The patient states while using the toilet, she dropped her cell phone down into the vault. She then attempted to dismantle the toilet and retrieve it. After disassembling the seat and housing, she used her dog's leash to try fishing it out. Eventually, she took the [leash] to help support herself, which failed, and she slid into and fell into the vault head first. After 15-20 minutes of attempting to get out, she used her phone to call 911. Firefighters pulled her out with a harness. She was uninjured. - "The patient ... was strongly encouraged to seek medical attention after being exposed to human waste," the report concludes, "but she only wanted to leave."
| | | | | | | | A message from Bank of America | | Innovative solutions driving sustainability | | |  | | | | Transitioning public transportation to clean energy could reduce global CO2 emissions by 20%. Leaders from Proterra discuss how Bank of America's commitment to sustainable finance is helping them develop innovative solutions for our communities. | | | | 📬 Invite your friends to sign up here to get their daily essentials — Axios AM, PM and Finish Line. |  | It's called Smart Brevity®. Over 200 orgs use it — in a tool called Axios HQ — to drive productivity with clearer workplace communications. | | | |
No comments:
Post a Comment