| | | | | | | Presented By Bank of America | | | | Axios AM | | By Mike Allen · May 23, 2022 | | Hello, Monday. Smart Brevity™ count: 1,486 words ... 5½ mins. Edited by Noah Bressner. 🚨 Today at 2 p.m. ET, Jonathan Swan interviews Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in Davos. Watch live here. | | | | | | 1 big thing: Republicans plot isolationist surge |  | | | Illustration: Maura Losch/Axios | | | | Key GOP lawmakers — following former President Trump's lead — are working with powerful conservative groups to cut American support for Ukraine, the Middle East and Europe, Axios' Lachlan Markay reports. - Why it matters: With the GOP poised to retake control of the House and perhaps the Senate next year, this contingent could grow substantially. Trump is backing candidates who've explicitly broken with Republican foreign policy orthodoxy.
Eleven Senate GOP "no" votes on a $40 billion Ukraine aid package last week was the clearest sign the new coalition's influence is expanding. Behind the scenes: Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), who led the Senate opposition, huddled in his office with several of the coalition's key players before the House voted on the measure earlier this month. - They included representatives from the Koch political network, Cato Institute, the populist-oriented group American Moment and the American Conservative magazine.
The group discussed messaging and strategy on Ukraine, and U.S. foreign policy more generally. - Paul sees the Ukraine vote as a catalyst for elements in the party seeking to pull the U.S. back from deeper overseas involvement.
- It comes as the Biden administration escalates U.S. involvement in Somalia, a move that members of the new GOP coalition plan to fight.
Republican leadership has tried to downplay the influence of this new bloc of members pushing "restraint" in foreign policy, describing it as a marginal faction that still represents a small minority. - Its backers in Congress, and in groups forming an outside policy infrastructure, say they're more aligned with core Republican voters and donors — and, crucially, with Trump.
📺 Tucker Carlson is a key voice of this wing. His top-rated Fox News primetime show routinely questions U.S. aid for Ukraine and foreign military entanglements. |     | | | | | | 2. 🇹🇼 Biden vows to defend Taiwan | | President Biden at Akasaka Palace in Tokyo today, with Rahm Emanuel, U.S. ambassador to Japan (to Biden's immediate left). Photo: Evan Vucci/AP President Biden said in Tokyo today that the U.S. would intervene militarily if China were to invade Taiwan — one of the most forceful presidential statements in support of Taiwan in decades, AP reports. - Biden, at a news conference with Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, said "yes" when asked if he was willing to get involved militarily to defend Taiwan if China invaded.
- "That's the commitment we made," he said.
Why it matters: The U.S. traditionally has avoided making such an explicit security guarantee to Taiwan — instead maintaining a policy of "strategic ambiguity" about the response if China invaded. | | | | | | | | 3. ✝️ Southern Baptist corruption, cover-ups | | Southern Baptist Convention headquarters in Nashville. Photo: Mark Humphrey/AP A report commissioned by the Southern Baptist Convention, America's largest Protestant denomination, found that leaders mishandled sexual abuse claims and survivors were "met, time and time again, with resistance, stonewalling, and even outright hostility." - The 288-page report, covering allegations of abuse dating back to 2000, was published yesterday following a seven-month investigation by Guidepost Solutions, an independent firm contracted by the denomination's Executive Committee, Axios' Rebecca Falconer writes.
"While stories of abuse were minimized, and survivors were ignored or even vilified," the report says, "some senior SBC leaders ... protected or even supported alleged abusers." Russell Moore — a former top SBC official who resigned last year over the denomination's handling of race and sexual abuse issues — wrote yesterday: "[A]s I read the report, I found that I could not swipe the screen to the next page because my hands were shaking with rage." - "[T]he investigation uncovers a reality far more evil and systemic than I imagined it could be," he wrote for Christianity Today, a leading evangelical outlet. "I cannot help but wonder what else this can be called but a criminal conspiracy."
- Moore's headline: "This Is the Southern Baptist Apocalypse."
SBC president Ed Litton said in a statement he's "grieved to my core" for the victims, and said Southern Baptists will "chart a new course" at a national meeting in Anaheim, Calif., on June 14-15. | | | | | | | | A message from Bank of America | | Make everything recyclable | | |  | | | | TerraCycle has recycled more than 7.7 billion items since its founding in 2001. Its philosophy? "Everything can be recycled in the end." This Bank of America partner is working to ensure sustainable consumption and production patterns, in line with UN Sustainable Development Goal 12. See how. | | | | | | 4. 🌐 New global poll: Trust rises in West | Graphic: Edelman Trust Barometer Trust in democracies is rising in response to the war in Ukraine, Axios' Sara Fischer writes from an Edelman Trust Barometer released this morning as the Davos economic forum opens. - People in the U.S., U.K., Germany and France reported notably higher levels of confidence in their institutions in May compared to January, according to the survey in 14 countries, with 14,000 respondents.
Why it matters: Before Russia's invasion of Ukraine, trust in developed democracies was decreasing. Across Western democracies, trust in all institutions — business, government, nonprofits and media — has increased, according to the Edelman special report, "The Geopolitical Business." - In the U.S., business remains the most trusted institution by far.
Go deeper: Read the report ... Share this story. | | | | | | | | 5. 💰 Neil Irwin: What I'm watching | | Illustration: Eniola Odetunde/Axios Economic growth is on track to slow way down in the months ahead — which may be exactly what the U.S. needs, Axios chief economic correspondent Neil Irwin writes. - Why it matters: If earlier projections of continued speedy growth were coming true, it would mean rising, rather than falling, inflation pressures. The latest round of forecasts is more consistent with the economy downshifting toward normal.
By the numbers: In a survey out today from the National Association for Business Economics, the median forecaster expects 2022 GDP to rise 1.8%, compared with a median projection of 2.9% in February. (GDP growth was 5.5% in 2021.) - The revised forecasts reflect all that has happened in the last three months. Financial markets have started to price in more aggressive monetary tightening from the Fed, and the negative effects of the Ukraine war and China's COVID lockdowns.
The intuition: In an economy like 2022's, with the labor market already extremely tight, growth along the lines of the 2.9% forecasters expected months ago would imply yet more of the overheating that has fueled higher prices and discontent over shortages. - Plausibly, growth could slow to something close to its 1.8% trend and stay there for a while. That would enable the labor market, housing market, and markets for goods and services to come into better balance without the economy tipping into contraction.
Share this story. | | | | | | | | 6. Kellyanne memoir: George's attacks "sneaky, almost sinister" |  | | | Cover: Threshold Editions | | | | Kellyanne Conway, who was counselor to former President Trump, writes in a memoir out tomorrow, "Here's the Deal," that she was stunned by attacks from her husband, lawyer George Conway, who has 1.9 million Twitter followers. I had two men in my life. One was my husband. One was my boss, who happened to be president of the United States. One of those men was defending me. And it wasn't George Conway. It was Donald Trump. George Conway, she writes, disappointed her by "skipping the kinds of confidential, civil conversations spouses typically have when one has a change of heart or both agree to disagree about something big. "What are you doing, George?" I asked him plainly and calmly. I got the same answer every time ... "You work for a madman," George would say in a loud, sinister voice ... "Like everything George did during this time," Conway continues, "I found out about it after it happened or as it was happening. It was sneaky, almost sinister. Why not own it, share it, sneer in my face with a copy of tomorrow's Washington Post op-ed or next week's Lincoln Project ad?" Night after night, I would come home from a busy day at work ... While I was minding dishes, dogs, laundry, managing adolescent dramas and traumas, George would be just steps away from me, tucked away in his home office, plotting against my boss and me. When I asked Conway how her husband reacted to those passages, she replied: "I write lovingly and nostalgically about George for much of the book." - "[H]e has sent 100K tweets; we know what he thinks. Time for me to talk."
Kellyanne Conway in the White House driveway on July 16, 2019. Photo: Alex Brandon/AP At the end, Conway writes that over dinner last year at Mar-a-Lago, Trump told her: "Write a great book, honey. You made history. You were the first woman [to manage a winning presidential campaign]. You did a fantastic job. You should talk about it." - When she told him she wished he were still in the Oval Office, Trump replied: "We'll be back, honey. We'll all be back."
Share this story ... More on the book. | | | | | | | | 7. 🇦🇺 New Aussie prime minister sworn in | | Prime Minister Anthony Albanese leaves Government House in Canberra today after being sworn in. Photo: Saeed Khan/AFP via Getty Images Australia's Labor Party leader, Anthony Albanese, was sworn in as the 31st prime minister today, vowing to tackle climate change and inequality, Reuters reports. - Labor returned to power after nine years in opposition. A wave of unprecedented support for Greens and climate-focused independents, mostly women, helped unseat Scott Morrison's conservative coalition.
💡 Between the lines: The Albanese victory was a triumph for the left, driven largely by a protest vote against Morrison. | | | | | | | | 8. 📱 Push alert for the ages | | The self-published novelist, Nancy Crampton Brophy, says it wasn't her. - Read the story from Portland, Ore.: "She Wrote 'How to Murder Your Husband.' Did She Do It?" (subscription)
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