| | | | | | | Presented By Google | | | | Axios AM | | By Mike Allen · May 10, 2022 | | 🗳️ Good Tuesday morning. It's primary day in Nebraska and West Virginia. What to watch ... Trump's clout tested. - Smart Brevity™ count: 1,367 words ... 5 mins. Edited by Zachary Basu.
🎓 At 12:30 p.m. ET today, please join an Axios virtual event with Education Secretary Miguel Cardona, on financial barriers in higher ed. Sign up here. | | | | | | 1 big thing: Great GOP divide on abortion |  | | | Illustration: Aïda Amer/Axios | | | | Republicans are deeply split on their abortion strategy, with top officials pushing restraint, even silence, while activist GOP candidates demand an all-out campaign for a national ban and harsher penalties. - Why it matters: Republicans' confidence in landslide victories this fall was shaken by the leaked abortion ruling — in part, because they know the topic invigorates their base, while rattling many swing voters.
A top adviser to House Republican leaders tells me their polling shows that in races that matter, voters aren't "hip to this kind of seismic change." - The adviser said lawmakers are asking for guidance on how to talk about issues like abortion in cases of rape or incest — knowing a hardline view is wildly unpopular.
The GOP establishment's initial marching orders, in an NRSC memo leaked to Axios' Alayna Treene, counseled caution and even silence. - But activist candidates and voters couldn't care less what the establishment wants — and see this as the moment to fulfill their lifelong dream of strict abortion bans, with few exceptions, and penalties for those carrying out abortions.
What we're hearing: Tony Perkins — president of the Family Research Council, who's been fighting on the issue for 30 years — told me in a phone interview that there's "some caution about overreach" among GOP leaders. - But they're privately promising to help push America to be a "predominantly pro-life nation," Perkins said.
What to watch: Cook Political Report's Dave Wasserman points to swing state Nevada, which has toss-up Senate and governor's races. The GOP needs suburban voters in the Silver State — but the party's base is pushing hard for more abortion restrictions. The takeaway ... One thing is certain about modern politics: Rarely does moderation or restraint prevail — especially on cultural, religious or identity issues. In fact, one truism of modern conservatism is: The more the establishment pushes something, the more the base recoils. |     | | | | | | 2. 🎢 Trillion-dollar tech plunge |  | | | Yesterday's closing stats. Screenshot: CNBC | | | | Tech giants have lost over $1 trillion in value in just three trading sessions, CNBC reports. - The losses are by Microsoft ... Tesla ... Amazon ... Alphabet ... graphics card maker Nvidia ... and Meta.
Zoom out: "A cocktail of geopolitical risks and economic headwinds is posing the biggest threat to global growth in years and rattling markets," The Wall Street Journal writes (subscription). ₿ Bitcoin has fallen 54% from its record, set in November. - Go deeper: Crypto prices tank, by Axios' Matt Phillips.
| | | | | | | | 3. Steve Schmidt: McCain lied to my face |  | | | Via Twitter | | | | After a weekend of angry tweeting, Steve Schmidt launched a new Substack yesterday by asserting that the late Sen. John McCain lied to him, to The New York Times and to America about his longtime relationship with a female lobbyist. - Schmidt, the top strategist on McCain's 2008 presidential campaign, wrote: "John McCain told me the truth backstage at an event in Ohio ... Understandably, he was very concerned about this potentially campaign-ending issue. He kept saying, 'The campaign is over.'"
- Earlier, Schmidt writes, McCain denied it "dozens of times to my face."
Schmidt's post followed a weekend-long Twitter diatribe directed primarily at Meghan McCain, the senator's daughter. - A source close to Meghan McCain told Axios the two haven't spoken since 2008.
- Schmidt — now a consultant, and a co-founder of the Lincoln Project — says he's taken too much blame for his role in choosing Sarah Palin as McCain's running mate, which has brought him 14 years of agony.
During a 40-minute phone interview, I asked Schmidt if he worries about appearing unhinged. - "There is some soft consensus that has emerged, mostly from soft people," he replied, "that responding to smears and slurs and insanity is some combination of unhinged or giving attention. This is as profoundly wrong a sensibility as there could conceivably be."
"I just completely reject the idea at every conceivable level — in part informed by 14 years of pain and abuse — that carrying a secret ... is healthy," he added. "It's not." - "I will sleep softly tonight — unburdened and much lighter than I was yesterday morning."
The McCain Institute for International Leadership, a nonprofit affiliated with the McCain family, didn't respond to a request for comment. A New York Times story during the campaign (Feb. 2008) reported McCain's "close bond with a lobbyist whose clients often had business" before the Senate Commerce Committee, which McCain chaired. - Following the story's publication, Schmidt writes, McCain "lied to the American people at a news conference" for which Schmidt helped him prep.
I asked Schmidt if he has qualms about attacking a man who can't defend himself. "It's the truth," Schmidt said. "It's history. John McCain does not exist in a protected space." - I asked Schmidt if he had proof. "What will happen next is a number of people will go out and try to debunk what I said, maybe," he said. "And if they do, the conclusions of that effort will be solidifying the proof of what I said."
Share this story. | | | | | | | | A message from Google | | Protecting websites and organizations from digital attacks | | |  | | | | Project Shield protects news and human rights organizations, government entities, and more from Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks. These digital attacks are used by bad actors and cyber criminals to censor information by taking websites offline. Learn more. | | | | | | 4. First look: Narrowing the racial wealth gap |  Data: Alliance for Entrepreneurial Equity. Chart: Erin Davis/Axios Visuals Only 2% of businesses in the U.S., or 134,600, are Black-owned, even though 13% of the country's population is Black. If business ownership were proportional to population, there would be 872,200 Black-owned businesses, according to a new report shared first with Axios' Emily Peck. - Why it matters: This entrepreneurial inequality is an under-appreciated driver of the racial wealth gap. "Entrepreneurship is essential for wealth building," the deck says. "Entrepreneurial equity could unleash a new era of business growth, hiring and wealth."
The Alliance for Entrepreneurial Equity produced the report. AEE is a new partnership by the center-left think tank Third Way and the National Urban League, formed to focus on fostering more minority and women-owned businesses. - 6% of businesses are Hispanic-owned, or 346,800, the report notes. If the numbers were proportionate, there'd be 1.2 million.
"Not enough people are really focused on the specific barriers holding people of color back throughout the entire entrepreneurial ecosystem," said Gabe Horwitz, SVP for Third Way's Economic Program. | | | | | | | | 5. Mapped: Abortion havens |  Data: Axios research. Map: Axios Visuals Go deeper ... Axios explains: Abortion. | | | | | | | | 6. 🇵🇭 A Marcos returns | | Ferdinand Marcos Jr. speaks yesterday in Manila. Photo: Bongbong Marcos Facebook page via AP Ferdinand Marcos Jr., 64, known as Bongbong — namesake son of the late Philippine dictator Ferdinand Marcos — appeared to have been elected Philippine president by a landslide. - Why it matters: It's an astonishing reversal of the 1986 "People Power" pro-democracy revolt that ousted his father.
Keep reading. South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol is inaugurated today. Photo: Jeon Heon-Kyun/Pool via Reuters 🇰🇷 Yoon Suk Yeol, 61, a conservative political neophyte, was sworn in today as South Korea's new president with a vow to pursue a negotiated settlement of North Korea's threatening nuclear program. - Why it matters: The former prosecutor-general offered "an audacious plan" to improve Pyongyang's economy if Kim Jong-un abandons nuclear weapons.
Keep reading. | | | | | | | | 7. 📷 Pulitzer moment | | Photo: Drew Angerer/Getty Images This photo by Getty Images' Drew Angerer — part of a package that yesterday won a Pulitzer Prize for breaking-news photography — shows Capitol Police officers aiming at the main door of the House Chamber, while a mob tries to break in on Jan. 6, 2021. - The award went to Angerer, Win McNamee, Spencer Platt, Samuel Corum and Jon Cherry of Getty Images "for comprehensive and consistently riveting photos of the attack on the U.S. Capitol."
Go deeper: Winners ... Long list, with finalists ... Arts Pulitzers. | | | | | | | | 8. 🖼️ Auction record | | Photo: Ted Shaffrey/AP Andy Warhol's "Shot Sage Blue Marilyn" sold for $195 million yesterday, making the iconic portrait of Marilyn Monroe the most expensive work by a U.S. artist ever sold at auction, AP reports. - The 1964 silkscreen image shows Monroe in vibrant close-up — hair yellow, eyeshadow blue and lips red — on a rich blue background.
It's also the most expensive piece from the 20th century ever auctioned, according to Christie's auction house in New York, which sold it. - The Warhol sale unseated the record by another modern master — Jean-Michel Basquiat, whose 1982 "Untitled," of a skull-like face, sold for a record $110.5 million at Sotheby's in 2017. See the painting.
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