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| Presented By American Bankers Association |
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| Axios Sneak Peek |
| By the Axios Politics team · May 02, 2022 |
| Welcome back to Sneak. A big day tomorrow in the Buckeye State (and Indiana votes too!). Smart Brevity™ count: 924 words ... 3.5 minutes. Edited by Glen Johnson. |
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| 1 big thing: Scoop - Pence crosses Trump |
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| Vice President Mike Pence and Chief of Staff Marc Short in 2017. Photo: Chip Somodevilla/Getty |
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| Marc Short, former Vice President Mike Pence's chief of staff, has joined Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp's campaign team as a senior adviser, Axios' Emma Hurt and Jonathan Swan have learned. Driving the news: Former President Trump has endorsed Kemp's re-election challenger, former Sen. David Perdue. Kemp is leading the polls in their May 24 primary, though, and Short has been brought in to turbocharge the governor's national fundraising ahead of a potential general election re-match with Stacey Abrams. - Short has also been advising Kemp's team on broader political strategy, according to a source familiar with the arrangement.
- The Kemp campaign confirmed Short's involvement to Axios.
Why it matters: Short's move to join one of Trump's most prominent GOP targets illuminates the deepening fault lines inside the party — and between Trump and his former vice president. - The campaign is one of the nation's most high-profile contested Republican primaries.
- Short is closely aligned with Pence — and now working for a candidate who refused Trump's demands to overturn the state's 2020 election results.
- Georgia not only went for Joe Biden in 2020 but sent two Democrats to the Senate in January 2021. That resulted in their party gaining control not just of the White House but the Senate as well as the House.
Keep reading. ✍️ Go Local: Read all of the reporting by Emma — co-author of Axios Atlanta — and Axios' growing stable of Local reporters by signing up for their free city newsletters through this link. |
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| 2. Biden learns to love defense contractors |
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| Illustration: Annelise Capossela/Axios |
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| When President Biden travels to a Javelin missile factory in Troy, Alabama, tomorrow, he'll embrace a group his immediate Democratic predecessors kept at a distance: defense contractors. Why it matters: Much like the energy industry, Biden needs defense contractors in this time of war, writes Axios' Hans Nichols. Not only does the president want more anti-tank and anti-aircraft missiles, he also wants to send a clear message to Russia's Vladimir Putin. - "This will be the most publicized visit of a Democrat to a defense contractor since Michael Dukakis jumped into a tank," Joe Cirincione, a fellow at Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, told Axios. "You can bet his team will be keenly aware of the optics."
- In his FY23 budget, Biden asked Congress for a 4% increase in military spending — for a total of $813 billion. And in Troy, he'll celebrate the anti-tank Javelin, which President Obama refused to send to Ukraine.
- "He is not getting any significant blowback for a budget this large," said Circincione, a former president of the Ploughshares Fund, a nonproliferation group. "The arms control and peace community are too weak and ineffective to punish him."
Driving the news: Biden will also use his visit to the Lockheed Martin facility to press Congress to pass a China competitiveness bill. He'll draw an explicit link between supporting Ukraine and the bill's $55 billion for the semiconductor industry. - Each Javelin requires more than 200 semiconductor chips.
- Passing the bill is a priority for the president, but he needs the House and Senate to resolve their differences.
Keep reading. |
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| 3. Charted: Ukraine's thought about leadership |
 Data: Rating Group Ukraine; Chart: Kavya Beheraj/Axios The president's approval rating among everyday Ukrainians shot up by 20 points between January and April, as the U.S. led and steadily ramped up efforts to arm Ukraine against Russia's invasion, according to polling by Rating Group Ukraine reviewed by Axios' Zachary Basu. Why it matters: The prevailing sentiment about Western assistance and solidarity has been overwhelmingly positive within Ukraine, despite some recurring frustrations from Kyiv about the pace and scale of sanctions and military aid. - The survey was conducted a day after Biden announced a fresh package of $800 million in military aid to Ukraine, but before he asked Congress to authorize a staggering $33 billion in additional security and economic assistance.
- The results of the poll also do not take into account the recent visits to Kyiv by Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
Methodology: The Rating Group polled 1,000 Ukrainians aged 18 and older in all oblasts, except for the temporarily occupied territories of the Crimea and Donbas. The margin of error is ±3.1%. Keep reading. |
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| A message from American Bankers Association |
| America's banks protect seniors from scams and fraud |
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| Elder financial exploitation costs seniors $120,000 on average, which adds up to billions of dollars annually. Thanks to the ABA Foundation's Safe Banking for Seniors program and other industry initiatives, banks across the U.S. continue to step up to protect their older customers. Learn more. |
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| 4. Worthy of your time |
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| U.S. Capitol Police officers give a tour of the Russell Senate Office Building to new contract security officers today. Their use is part of a new program to alleviate Capitol Police staffing shortages. Photo: Bill Clark/CQ-Roll Call via Getty Images |
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| 🦠 Vice President Kamala Harris tested negative for COVID-19 on a rapid test and plans to return to work — masked and in person — tomorrow, her press secretary said. Harris, who's fully vaccinated and boosted, tested positive last Tuesday, Axios' Andrew Solender reports in tonight's Sneak roundup. ✅ Some of Rep. Shontel Brown's colleagues in the Congressional Progressive Caucus are questioning the Ohio Democrat's liberal bonafides — and whether she should have been endorsed by the group ahead of her primary tomorrow, Axios' Alexi McCammond reported tonight. 💵 The White House has begun adopting Senate Democrats' strategy of taking aim at Sen. Rick Scott's (R-Fla.) agenda. A fact sheet put out last week targets Scott's proposal that "all Americans should pay some income tax," and Biden's Twitter account has tweeted about it three times during the last four days. 🤝 Sen. Maggie Hassan (D-N.H.) is set to top the Lugar Center's bipartisan index after getting bipartisan co-sponsors on all 48 bills she has introduced, according to Politico. Hassan beat out Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), who's led the list for eight straight years, as she fights for re-election in what could be a tough year. |
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| 5. Pic du jour |
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| Photo: Nicholas Kamm/AFP via Getty Images |
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| President Biden and first lady Jill Biden were the focal point as they arrived for an Eid al-Fitr reception in the East Room. - The occasion marks the end of the holy month of Ramadan — a period of daily fasting — for Muslims.
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| A message from American Bankers Association |
| America's banks protect seniors from scams and fraud |
| |
 |
| |
| Elder financial exploitation costs seniors $120,000 on average, which adds up to billions of dollars annually. Thanks to the ABA Foundation's Safe Banking for Seniors program and other industry initiatives, banks across the U.S. continue to step up to protect their older customers. Learn more. |
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| 📬 Thanks for reading tonight! Please tell your family, friends and colleagues they can subscribe to Sneak or any of Axios' other free local and national newsletters through this link. |
 | 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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