💡 Axios AM: Rip Van Winkle summer

Plus: "Lightyear" stumble | Monday, June 20, 2022

Open in app View in browser   Presented By Google   Axios AM By Mike Allen · Jun 20, 2022 Good Monday morning. It's the Juneteenth federal holiday. Smart Brevity™ count: 1,181 words ... 4½ mins. Edited by Donica Phifer.     1 big thing: Rip Van Winkle summer Illustration: Victoria Ellis/Axios   Tomorrow is the official first day of summer. But for people determined to take full advantage of the least pandemic-y summer in two years, there's a Rip Van Winkle effect: Inflation is dragging down the celebration, Axios' Emily Peck writes. Why it matters: Most Americans — anyone who wasn't an adult by the '70s — are getting a first taste of living with high inflation. Prices are up for most of our favorite summer things: Flying on a plane. Sending kids to camp. Booking a hotel room. Lighting fireworks. Renting a car. Buying food for backyard barbecues. The big picture: The Consumer Price Index shows average prices rose 8.6% over the past year — a level last seen in the 1970s, an era known for such mood-dulling terms as stagflation and malaise. Reality check: The unemployment rate is a low 3.6%. And Americans are doing substantially better than people in many corners of the world. 🕶️ The bright side: People who are already frugal are certainly having a moment. And you could spend your summer sipping AriZona iced tea and eating Costco rotisserie chicken and hot-dog combos — products with famously stable prices. Share this story.     2. Yellowstone battles back A Yellowstone National Park ranger stands on a road wiped out by flooding along the Gardner River in Montana. Photo: Matthew Brown/AP Most of Yellowstone National Park should reopen within the next two weeks — much faster than originally expected, AP reports. Yellowstone will partially reopen at 8 a.m. Wednesday, more than a week after 10,000 visitors were forced out when the Yellowstone and other rivers went over their banks. Yellowstone Superintendent Cam Sholly said the park will admit fewer visitors for the time being. It may take years to restore some roads. Only portions of the park that can be accessed along its "southern loop" of roads will be opened initially. Within two weeks, officials plan to also open the northern loop, giving visitors access to Tower Fall and Mammoth Hot Springs. Photo: David Goldman/AP Above: Harley Holmes, 8, cleans out her room in Fromberg, Mont. Flood damage is forcing her family from their home. More photos.     3. 🗳️ The New Yorker on DeSantis: "The Next Trump?" Gov. Ron DeSantis leads an event in Miami in January to promote monoclonal antibodies for COVID patients and bash Biden administration restrictions. Photo: Joe Raedle/Getty Images The New Yorker's Dexter Filkins writes that in a recent phone interview, former President Trump took credit for the victory by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis: "If I didn't endorse him, he wouldn't have won." Trump told Filkins he's "very close to making a decision" about whether to run in 2024: "I don't know if Ron is running, and I don't ask him ... It's his prerogative. I think I would win." Why it matters: The Florida governor "channels the same rage as the former President, but with greater discipline," the magazine says. Filkins quotes a consultant to Republican candidates as saying lots of colleagues are angling to work for DeSantis in a presidential race: "Everyone is trying to get a piece of him." "DeSantis has remade the political landscape in Florida," Filkins concludes: It seems conceivable that he could attempt something similar on a national level — though some political observers wonder whether he could endure the countless hours of banal conversation required to succeed in a national election. "He's going to have to go sit in a diner and listen to the local county chairman ... for twenty minutes," a Republican consultant told me. "It is possible that the only thing that will complicate DeSantis's ascent is his own impatience," Filkins adds: At 43, "he can afford to wait. But there is every indication that he doesn't want to. 'Ron has been told for four years that he's Trump's successor ... ,' the consultant told me. "Ron has heard way too many times, 'You're next.'" Keep reading.     A message from Google Making sign-in safer with two-step verification     Adding two-step verification to your account is the best thing you can do to help prevent cyber attacks. That's why Google has made it easy to sign into your account with this additional layer of protection. Just one tap and you're in. Learn more.     4. 📷 Juneteenth across America Photo: Brandon Bell/Getty Images Above: Rebecca Jones worships yesterday at Reedy Chapel A.M.E. Church in Galveston, Texas — the island where Juneteenth was born. Juneteenth, marking the end of legal enslavement of Black Americans, is also known as Emancipation Day, Freedom Day and Jubilee Day. Photo: Nathan Layne/Reuters Western Connecticut State University in Danbury, Conn., held a Juneteenth "Independence Day" Celebration. Photo: Rich Pedroncelli/AP The Juneteenth flag flies the California State Capitol in Sacramento, along with the U.S., state and POW/MIA flags. Go deeper: Juneteenth abroad.     5. 📚 Sneak peek: "A tonic at this frightening moment" Cover: Flatiron Books   The legendary Marie Brenner tells me it's "a tonic at this frightening moment in our history": In "The Desperate Hours: One Hospital's Fight to Save a City on the Pandemic's Front Lines" (out tomorrow), Brenner draws on 200+ interviews for a gripping account of NewYork-Presbyterian's heroics — with too little federal help — as COVID smothered the city. Why it matters: "COVID would reveal everything — the pressure that made some crumble but also the valor that meant confronting the fragility of the big-business hospital system, with its marble halls and gleaming towers paid for by New York titans," Brenner writes. Brenner writes that Dr. Steven Corwin, the hospital system's president and CEO, had said somberly as he addressed thousands of NewYork-Presbyterian employees at an all-hospital briefing in March 2020: "We are in this together — the cavalry isn't coming." "But Corwin was wrong," Brenner writes. "The cavalry rushed in from every department in the hospital": Accountants worked as transporters, wheeling the dying and the dead. At the height of the surge, Corwin got authorization to pay for three thousand hotel rooms around the city, food for the extended families of all employees who needed help, day care, and transportation — a billion-dollar outlay. In one call, he snapped, "I don't give a damn what it costs." He insisted on an unlimited line of credit to fund the hiring of doctors and nurses and former Air Force pararescue medics and to make sure that the hospital had a field hospital and oxygen farms. "I found 200 N95s in a storage cabinet," a Goldman Sachs partner texted Corwin. We will take them, the CEO replied, Brenner continues: Cosmetics companies and gourmet markets delivered crates of skin creams and delicacies for everyone working on the front lines. Surgeons, urologists, medical students, cardiologists, retired NewYork-Presbyterian internists fanned out through the corridors of the system's ten hospitals, emptying trash cans and relearning how to titrate medicines in the ICU — a skill many of the older doctors had not used since medical school. Brenner's cast of characters includes a first-year internal medicine resident ... a security guard ... a housekeeper ... a morgue attendant ... and the hospital system's director of supply chain. Preorder.     6. 🎞️ 1 film thing: "Lightyear" stumble Buzz Lightyear, voiced by Chris Evans, in "Lightyear." Photo: Disney/Pixar via AP "Lightyear" didn't go to infinity — or beyond: Pixar's first major theatrical release since March 2020 blasted off with a lower-than-expected debut weekend, AP reports. The film opened with an estimated $51 million in North American sales vs. some projections of $70 million. "Jurassic World: Dominion" stayed in first place. Why it matters: The family audience has proved a little more reluctant than other segments to return to theaters. Many studios, including Disney and Pixar, have opted for streaming or hybrid releases for animated titles. Zoom out: "Lightyear" is an origin story about the movie that inspired Buzz Lightyear, the space-ranger action figure in the "Toy Story" movies.     A message from Google Google expands phishing protections to keep more people safe     To counter the rise in phishing attempts in collaborative working tools, Google is expanding its proven AI-powered phishing protections to Google Workspace. You are automatically alerted if the doc you're working in contains a suspicious link, and are taken back to safety. Learn more.   📬 Invite your friends to sign up here to get their daily essentials — Axios AM, PM and Finish Line. Like this email style and format? It's called Smart Brevity®. 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