| | | | | | | Presented By Meta | | | | Axios AM | | By Mike Allen · Jun 15, 2022 | | Happy Wednesday. Smart Brevity™ count: 1,461 words ... 5½ mins. Edited by Noah Bressner. 📨 Today at 12:30 p.m. ET, please join Axios' Alexi McCammond and Aja Whitaker-Moore for a virtual event on Black women in business and equitable entrepreneurship. Guests include Council of Economic Advisers Chair Cecilia Rouse and Black Ambition CEO Felecia Hatcher. Register here. | | | | | | 1 big thing: Biden warns Big Oil |  | | | Illustration: Sarah Grillo/Axios | | | | President Biden today will send letters to CEOs of the nation's largest oil companies saying he's considering invoking emergency powers to boost U.S. refinery output. - Why it matters: Biden's direct engagement with the oil giants is part of an ongoing White House effort to tame fuel prices despite limited options — and cast oil companies as responsible for consumers' higher bills, Axios' Ben Geman and Andrew Freedman report.
Biden tells top U.S. executives of seven big refiners and fuel companies that he's "prepared to use all reasonable and appropriate Federal Government tools and emergency authorities to increase refinery capacity and output in the near term." - "I understand that many factors contributed to the business decisions to reduce refinery capacity, which occurred before I took office," he writes. "But at a time of war, refinery profit margins well above normal being passed directly onto American families are not acceptable."
Adding an olive branch, the letter — sent to the heads of ExxonMobil, Chevron, BP America, Shell USA, Phillips 66, Marathon and Valero — calls for them to offer "concrete, near-term solutions." - Biden says he wants ideas to address inventory, price and refinery capacity issues in the coming months, as well as transportation measures to bring fuel to market.
- "The crunch that families are facing deserves immediate action," Biden writes.
Between the lines: In seeking help from the oil industry, Biden is walking a political tightrope, eager to lower the cost at the pump without alienating his base, which backs policies to combat climate change. Zoom out: Average U.S. gasoline prices have risen above $5 per gallon — fueling wider inflation, hitting consumers and creating political peril for Democrats ahead of the midterm elections. What's next: Biden said Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm will convene an "emergency meeting on this topic." The other side: Before seeing the letter, industry officials said they hope to work with the Biden administration and that discussions are already occurring. - "We're encouraged by the administration reaching out and asking refiners what they can do to help resolve the situation from a policy standpoint," Frank Macchiarola, an S.V.P. at the American Petroleum Institute, told reporters on a call Tuesday.
Oil and gas producers have criticized the administration for not issuing new drilling leases on public lands, canceling the Keystone Pipeline and emphasizing its net zero carbon emissions climate agenda. |     | | | | | | 2. Yellowstone "dramatically changed" | | North Entrance Road of Yellowstone National Park in Gardiner, Mont., is flooded out on Monday. Photo: Jacob W. Frank/National Park Service via AP More than 10,000 visitors were ordered out of Yellowstone as unprecedented flooding tore through the northern half of the nation's oldest national park. - All park entrances were closed due to the deluge, caused by heavy rains and melting snowpack. The only remaining visitors were a dozen campers making their way out of the backcountry, AP reports.
Bridges and roads were washed out. An employee bunkhouse was washed miles downstream, officials said Tuesday. No one was reported injured or killed. - Yellowstone, which celebrates its 150th anniversary this year, could remain closed as long as a week. Northern entrances may not reopen this summer.
Zoom out: "The landscape literally and figuratively has changed dramatically in the last 36 hours," said Bill Berg, a commissioner in nearby Park County. "A little bit ironic that this spectacular landscape was created by violent geologic and hydrologic events — and it's just not very handy when it happens while we're all here settled on it." | | | | | | | | 3. 🗳️ Trump's big primary night | | South Carolina Rep. Russell Fry celebrates his win over U.S. Rep. Tom Rice last night at the 8th Avenue Tiki Bar in Myrtle Beach, S.C. Photo: Jason Lee/The (Myrtle Beach) Sun News via AP Five-term Rep. Tom Rice (R-S.C.), who voted to impeach President Trump, lost his GOP primary bid last night to a Trump-endorsed challenger, state Rep. Russell Fry. - Why it matters: Rice is the first House Republican to lose his seat after voting to impeach Trump over his role in the Capitol attack, Axios' Andrew Solender writes.
- Several others, including Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.), vice chair of the House Jan. 6 committee, are in danger of losing to Trump-endorsed challengers. Go deeper.
Another high-profile Trump target in South Carolina, Rep. Nancy Mace, held back a challenger. Go deeper. 🎰 In Nevada, former state Attorney General Adam Laxalt, backed by Trump, won the state's Republican Senate primary. - Why it matters: Laxalt will now take on Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto (D) in a race the GOP sees as a prime opportunity to flip a seat in their quest to take back control of the Senate. Go deeper.
Go deeper: Last night's takeaways. | | | | | | | | A message from Meta | | Doctors can practice high-risk situations risk-free in the metaverse | | |  | | | | In the metaverse, future surgeons will be able to practice advanced procedures hundreds of times before seeing real patients — helping them gain experience and master their skills. The metaverse may be virtual, but the impact will be real. Learn how Meta is helping build the metaverse. | | | | | | 4. 🧠 Adding it up: Most GOP victors back "big lie" | | An exhibit at the Jan. 6 committee hearing on Monday touts a Trump defense fund that the committee says never existed. Exhibit: House Select Committee via AP About a third of the way through the 2022 primaries, voters have nominated at least 108 Republican candidates for statewide office or Congress (more than half of races) who have directly denied or questioned the 2020 election result, a Washington Post analysis finds. - The number jumps to at least 149 winners — out of 170+ races (80%+) — "when it includes those who have campaigned on a platform of tightening voting rules or more stringently enforcing those already on the books, despite the lack of evidence of widespread fraud."
Go deeper ... Trump endorsement tracker: Which candidates have won and lost | | | | | | | | 5. Trials underway for Lyme vaccine |  | | | A tick on a leaf. Photo: Patrick Pleul/picture alliance via Getty Images | | | | Confirmed and probable Lyme disease cases in the U.S. have at least tripled since the late 1990s — and there's no vaccine, Axios' Oriana Gonzalez reports. - But clinical trials for Lyme disease vaccines are underway. Pfizer and Valneva have developed a candidate that is in phase 2 human trials, according to the CDC.
- UMass Medical School's MassBiologics is also developing a vaccine. Human trials are expected to begin soon.
What's happening: Ticks are more abundant than usual. Researchers attribute this to rising temperatures from climate change, which lead to prolonged summers and shorter winters and impact animal migration. - More people are spending time outdoors, increasing their chances of getting bitten by ticks and getting infected.
💡 What you can do: Avoid bushy areas with tall grass. In places like that, wear clothing that covers most of your skin, and treat your clothing and gear with products containing 0.5% permethrin, the CDC recommends. - After spending time outdoors, check clothing, gear and pets for ticks and remove them if spotted.
- Never squeeze a tick to remove it — that could worsen any infection. Use tweezers.
Share this. | | | | | | | | 6. ✝️ Baptists' belated reforms |  | | | Pastor Bart Barber of Farmersville, Texas — who has been outspoken on abuse — was elected president of the Southern Baptist Convention yesterday. Photo: Jae C. Hong/AP | | | | The Southern Baptist Convention — at a deeply divided annual meeting in Anaheim, Calif. — yesterday overwhelmingly adopted reforms to combat sexual abuse. - Why it matters: The reforms follow a report, commissioned by the denomination, that found SBC leaders mishandled sexual abuse claims and survivors were met with resistance and stonewalling.
The reforms include a way to track pastors and other church workers credibly accused of sex abuse + a new task force to oversee further changes at the nation's largest Protestant denomination. - Leaders declined such measures 14 years ago, the Houston Chronicle notes (subscription).
🎧 On the "Axios Today" podcast, Kate Shellnutt of Christianity Today tells host Niala Boodhoo: "I've had multiple people tell me [this gathering] might be the most important in the [177-year] history of the convention." Hear it here. | | | | | | | | 7. 👢 Another Texas win | | Photo: Wilfredo Lee/AP Heavy-equipment giant Caterpillar will move its HQ from Illinois to Texas, marking the second major company in six weeks to depart the Land of Lincoln, Axios Closer co-author Nathan Bomey writes. - Caterpillar said it's moving to the Dallas suburb of Irving, from Deerfield, outside Chicago.
- Boeing announced in May that it's moving its HQ from Chicago to Arlington, Va.
Caterpillar's move affects just 230 people based at the Deerfield headquarters. - 17,000 workers will stay in Illinois, about 12,000 of them in the Peoria area.
Share this story. | | | | | | | | 8. 🖥️ 1 for the road: Explorer out to pasture |  | | | Photo: AP | | | | So long, Internet Explorer: As of today, Microsoft will no longer support the once-dominant browser that web surfers loved to hate. - Why it matters: The 27-year-old browser joins BlackBerry, dial-up modems and Palm Pilots in the dustbin of tech history, AP writes.
What's happening: A year ago, Microsoft said it would retire Explorer today — pushing users to its Edge browser, launched in 2015. Flashback: Microsoft released the first version of Internet Explorer in 1995, the antediluvian era of web surfing dominated by the first widely popular browser, Netscape Navigator. - The launch signaled the beginning of the end of Navigator: Microsoft went on to tie IE and its ubiquitous Windows operating system together so tightly that many people simply used it by default.
State of play: Today, Google Chrome dominates with roughly a 65% share of the worldwide browser market, followed by Apple's Safari with 19%, according to internet analytics company Statcounter. - IE's heir, Edge, lags with 4% — just ahead of Firefox.
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