| | | | | | | Presented By Facebook | | | | Axios AM | | By Mike Allen · Apr 08, 2022 | | Happy Friday. Today's Smart Brevity™ count: 1,496 words ... 5½ mins. Edited by Zachary Basu. | | | | | | 1 big thing: Historic justice, landmark docket | | President Biden and Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson watch in the Roosevelt Room as the Senate votes to confirm her. Photo: Kevin Lamarque/Reuters A pile of big, polarizing cases awaits Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, who made history yesterday as the first Black woman to be confirmed (53-47) to the Supreme Court. - Jackson will take her seat as the court dives headfirst into the most controversial issues in American politics, Axios' Sam Baker writes.
Jackson will start hearing cases when the court's next term begins in October. The term will be epic: - Affirmative action: The use of race in college admissions has seemed to be on thin ice at the Supreme Court for years, and this term may be the final nail in the coffin.
- Same-sex marriage: Remember a few years ago, when a baker who refused to bake cakes for same-sex weddings took his case all the way to the Supreme Court? The justices punted in that case, but it seemed pretty clear that future plaintiffs in the baker's situation were likely to win their cases. The court almost always sides with people trying to live by their religious beliefs more freely.
- Voting rights: When Alabama drew new boundaries for its congressional districts last year, it ended up with one majority-Black district and smaller numbers of Black voters dispersed through several other districts. Critics sued, calling it an illegal act of racial gerrymandering. This case matters not just for Alabama, but as part of the court's approach to voting rights cases overall.
🔮 What's next: Before Jackson even takes her seat, the court is expected to significantly roll back abortion rights — which would open the door to a flood of new state laws restricting the procedure. - Go deeper: Axios' Sam Baker walks through the next term's huge cases.
This will be the most diverse Supreme Court in history. Graphic (subscription): Jim Sergent/USA Today. Used by kind permission When Jackson takes the bench, she'll be one of four women and two Black justices. 🗞️ N.Y. Times Quote of the Day ... Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer on the Senate floor: "Today is one of the brightest lights. Let us hope it's a metaphor, an indication of many bright lights to come." |     | | | | | | 2. Axios interview: Captured by Taliban | | Safi Rauf and his girlfriend, Sammi Cannold, at Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar on the day after his release. Photo: Sammi Cannold Safi Rauf — a 27-year-old former Afghan refugee and nonprofit founder from Omaha — returned to the U.S. this week after he and his brother were detained by the Taliban for 105 days. - Rauf tells Axios' Zachary Basu they were wrongly accused of espionage.
- The 15-week ordeal was so surreal that when Rauf arrived at Dulles, he was questioned for four hours by customs agents who, Rauf recalls, "couldn't fathom" his explanation for where he'd been.
- For the first month, Rauf and his older brother — Anees Khalil, a U.S. green-card holder who works with him — weren't allowed to speak to anyone.
Why it matters: Unbeknownst to them, they had become a case study in secret U.S. diplomacy with the still-unrecognized Afghan government. - President Biden called Rauf yesterday, and invited him and his family to the White House next week, Rauf's girlfriend, Sammi Cannold, told Axios.
Rauf's aid group, Human First Coalition, helped evacuate thousands of at-risk Afghans during the fall of Kabul — including an interpreter who once helped rescue Biden. - Rauf says that when he visited Kabul in November, he worked closely with the U.S. government and the Taliban to evacuate Afghans who had documents to leave: "We were not sneaking around."
But he says he earned enemies by calling out corrupt "middlemen" in Afghanistan's humanitarian aid network, who were exploiting Afghan civilians' desperation to extract cash. - On Dec. 18, nine days after Rauf had returned to Kabul for a second time, senior Taliban officers came to his hotel and asked to interview all the foreigners.
The officials assured Rauf he'd be released after recording a statement at headquarters. He cooperated. | | | | | | | | 3. 🧠 Mind of McConnell | | Photo: Chuck Kennedy for Axios Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell started yesterday's crackling half-hour interview with a jab at Jonathan Swan's Australian accent: "Do we have an interpreter to help me?" - From there, the audience was treated to a captivating sparring contest between a master of the Senate and a hyper-prepared interviewer.
- If you're an aspiring power broker or reporter, watch this tape for a master class.
Why it matters: McConnell gave up little. But we got a real-time window into a famously inscrutable mind — and one that will be running the Senate come January, if Republicans stay on their current track to taking back the majority. Asked about Justice Clarence Thomas and efforts by his wife, conservative activist Ginni Thomas, to overturn the 2020 election, McConnell said: "Nobody's questioned his standards, his ethics. ... I have total confidence ... in Justice Thomas." - "[Y]ou say no one has questioned his ethics," Swan volleyed. "I mean, plenty of people have," he said, citing a few examples.
- "Hey, good luck!" McConnell replied. "I don't know how much time you want to waste on this, but I have complete confidence in Justice Thomas."
Asked about his low approval rating even with Republican voters, McConnell responded with a laugh: "If I had a theory about it, I wasn't going to sit here and discuss it with you, Jonathan." When McConnell wouldn't answer whether he would, as majority leader, commit to holding hearings on a Supreme Court nomination by President Biden if a vacancy occurred in 2023, Swan followed up: - "In 2016, you made what you called a principled argument for not holding hearings on President Obama's Supreme Court nominee, Merrick Garland. ... The argument you made was: It was an election year ... Are you suggesting that you are developing an argument for not holding hearings on a Supreme Court nominee if it's not an election year?"
- "I'm suggesting that I'm not going to answer your question," McConnell said.
Swan: "Don't you think the public before the November elections has a right to know how you would approach such a weighty topic?" - McConnell: "I choose not to answer the question."
After Swan said he genuinely wanted to understand McConnell's unwillingness to rule out supporting former President Trump in light of the leader's view of Jan. 6, McConnell said with a chuckle: - "Do you want to spend more time on this?"
- And later: "I say many things I'm sure people don't understand."
As the interview closed, McConnell turned to the audience: "How many questions has he asked that I have refused to answer?" 🍿 Watch the full interview. | | | | | | | | A message from Facebook | | Facebook has invested $16 billion to keep you safe on our platform | | |  | | | | Facebook invested $16B in safety and security over 6 years. The impact? - Quadrupled safety and security teams.
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Learn what's next. | | | | | | 4. 📷 1,000 words | | Photo: Suzanne Cordeiro/AFP CEO Elon Musk celebrates yesterday at the Cyber Rodeo grand opening party for Tesla's Giga Texas plant in Austin yesterday. Watch a video. | | | | | | | | 5. Cars could get more dangerous before they get safer | | Illustration: Sarah Grillo/Axios Automated driving features are supposed to make cars safer. But in the hands of drivers who over-trust them, they could make roads more dangerous, Axios' Joann Muller reports from Detroit. - Why it matters: Many new cars are equipped with driver-assistance features that people don't understand — or even worse, think they understand, then misuse.
Reality check: No, your Tesla can't drive you home on Autopilot after a night at the bar. New research from the AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety found that even after six months of use, people couldn't fully master advanced driver-assistance systems. - "You can't fake it 'til you make it at highway speeds," said Jake Nelson, AAA's director of traffic safety advocacy and research.
The federal government is investigating a series of deadly accidents involving Teslas with Autopilot. - Safety advocates argue that marketing terms like "Autopilot" and "Pro Pilot" breed driver complacency.
Keep reading. | | | | | | | | 6. 🛢️ Stealth inflation |  Data: FactSet. Chart: Jared Whalen/Axios The price surge for industrial fuel, including diesel and jet fuel, has far outstripped the pain at the pump, Matt Phillips writes in Axios Markets. - Why it matters: This is a stealth inflationary force, pushing up prices of air travel, and anything that's trucked in.
| | | | | | | | 7. ⛳ Tracking Tiger | | Tiger plays his shot from the fourth tee during the first round of The Masters. Photo: Kyle Terada/USA TODAY Sports On Day 1 of The Masters, Tiger Woods shot 1 under 71, and is tied for 10th. - Why it matters: The full allotment of patrons was crammed into Augusta National to watch a tournament round the first time since the pre-pandemic days of 2019, the year in which Woods won the most recent of his five green jackets. They watched a man who could have lost a leg — or his life — in a car crash 15 months ago return to the spot of his past glory, albeit moving perhaps a bit more slowly. —AP
Tiger after his tee shot on the fourth hole. Photo: Robert F. Bukaty/AP Video: Every shot of Tiger's Round 1. | | | | | | | | 8. ⚾ Parting shot | | Photo: Quinn Harris/Getty Images This was Chicago's Wrigley Field yesterday during the national anthem on Opening Day. - Cubs beat Milwaukee Brewers, 5-4, in what turned out to be the first game of the season, because of rainouts elsewhere.
Opening day roundup. | | | | | | | | A message from Facebook | | Choose end-to-end encrypted messages on Messenger | | |  | | | | Your personal conversations should be as private as you want them to be. That's why you can add a layer of protection to your chats in Messenger, and even voice and video calls, with end-to-end encryption. So you can connect in a more private, secure way. See how else we're keeping you safe online. | | | | 📬 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. | | | |
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