| | | | | | | Presented By PhRMA | | | | Axios AM | | By Mike Allen · Jul 27, 2022 | | Happy Wednesday. Smart Brevity™ count: 1,496 words ... 5½ mins. Edited by Noah Bressner. 🎰 Situational awareness: The Mega Millions lottery jackpot ballooned to $1.02 billion — fourth-largest in U.S. history — after no one won last night. Go deeper ... Top 10. | | | | | | 1 big thing: Mood inequality |  Data: Morning Consult. Chart: Erin Davis/Axios Visuals Consumer sentiment worsened in July for lower-earning households, but improved for those with more money, Axios' Emily Peck writes from the new Morning Consult/Axios Inequality Index. - Consumer sentiment fell 2.7% in households with annual incomes of less than $50,000 a year, but ticked up 1% among those earning more than $100,000.
What's happening: Higher earners got a mood boost as the stock market improved in July. For those at the bottom, inflation is making it harder to afford the basics, said Jesse Wheeler, a Morning Consult economic analyst. - High-income Americans have more flexibility to deal with inflation: They can put off big-ticket purchases or switch brands.
- That doesn't cut it for those on tight budgets, with less fat to trim.
Share this story. |     | | | | | | 2. 💬 Talking up a downturn |  Data: Signal AI. Chart: Erin Davis/Axios Visuals It's not just rising gas prices and falling stocks that make Americans think we're in a recession: - It's also recession chatter in the media, Axios chief financial correspondent Felix Salmon writes.
State of play: We're in a bull market for recession explainers ahead of the Fed's policy meeting today, and the release tomorrow of second-quarter gross domestic product (GDP) numbers. Signal AI measured the number of economics stories with the word "recession" in the headline or first paragraph. - In the U.S., there were 6,882 such stories in the week ending Monday, down 68% from 21,576 in the week of June 13 — around the time that both gas prices and mortgage rates were peaking.
- Globally, the 19,828 such stories were also down 68% from the high point reached in the week of June 20.
💡 How it works: Repeated information is more likely to be perceived as true. If we hear the word "recession" often enough, we're more likely to think that we're in one. 🔮 What's next: If tomorrow's GDP figure is negative, expect a massive increase in recession stories, pegged to the fact that the U.S. will have seen two successive quarters of negative prints. - If GDP growth comes in above zero, there'll be hope that the media meta-recession is beginning to ebb.
Share this story. | | | | | | | | 3. Trump wants greater presidential power | | Former President Trump leaves the stage yesterday. Photo: Sarah Silbiger/Reuters Former President Trump, returning to Washington yesterday for the first time since President Biden was inaugurated, called for greater presidential power to fire federal workers and instill loyalists. - Why it matters: Although Trump didn't name-check Schedule F, his remarks amplify plans from well-funded outside allies, as reported in Jonathan Swan's two-part series, "Inside Trump '25," about the intricate, ambitious planning for a second Trump term.
Trump, speaking at an American First Policy Institute summit, said: "We need to make it much easier to fire rogue bureaucrats who are deliberately undermining democracy or, at a minimum, just want to keep their jobs." - "Congress should pass historic reforms empowering the president to ensure that any bureaucrat who is corrupt, incompetent or unnecessary for the job can be told — did you ever hear this? — 'You're fired. Get out. You're fired.' Have to do it. Deep state."
- Read Swan's Part 1 ... Part 2 ... Schedule F explainer.
🚨 Bulletin: The Justice Department is investigating Trump's actions and conversations, as part of a criminal probe of efforts to overturn the 2020 election, the WashPost reports. - "The prosecutors have asked hours of detailed questions about meetings Trump led in December 2020 and January 2021," The Post reports.
| | | | | | | | A message from PhRMA | | Government price setting could mean fewer new medicines | | |  | | | | Today, there are: - 90 medicines in development for Alzheimer's disease.
- 26 for childhood diabetes.
- 119 for breast cancer.
And the list goes on — but which diseases could go untreated if Congress passes government price setting? There is a better way to lower costs without risking new medicines. | | | | | | 4. 🎞️ Ken Burns interview: Holocaust film speaks to today's America | | A German police officer checks identification papers of Jewish people in the Krakow ghetto, Poland, circa 1941. Photo: National Archives in Krakow. Courtesy "The U.S. and the Holocaust" Ken Burns told me that during the seven years he worked on his forthcoming three-part documentary, "The U.S. and the Holocaust," he struggled with the "opacity" of the unfathomable fact that 6 million Jews were killed by Germany during World War II. - So the legendary documentarian said he opens with "a young, beautiful German woman leaning out a window and her parents or two other people come into the frame. And you're hearing that there were 9 million Jews in Europe in 1933. By 1945, two out of three are dead."
The series — directed and produced by Burns, Lynn Novick and Sarah Botstein — will air on PBS on Sept. 18, 19 and 20, from 8 to 10 p.m. ET. - "The U.S. and the Holocaust" is 90% black and white — archival images and interviews. "The evidence," Burns calls it.
I asked Burns, age 68, how he kept the film raw and real — without making it so painful that it's unwatchable. - "We're in the job of calibration," he said. "I live in New Hampshire — we make maple syrup up there. We collect 40 gallons of sap for every gallon of maple syrup."
- On the Holocaust, he said, you "have to disarm the unexploded bombs of false scholarship, of misinformation on a conventional wisdom level, of the superficial information that many people ... seem to have."
- "You do not want to privilege the perpetrators. Much of the footage that's taken by German and their allies, you have to use very sparingly. ... You don't want people to be either turned away or, I hate to say this, even drawn to the horror in the wrong way. It has to be calibrated."
"As the film progressed through the last six or seven years," Burns said, "we began to realize just how terrifyingly rhyming these stories and moments and individuals and actions were with our present moment." - "The worst thing [would be] to wag your finger," he added. "You just have to understand that the things that became so intolerably out of control with the Nazi regime are not alien to any other culture."
🎥 Watch a 30-sec. preview ... Learn about the Holocaust ... Share this story. | | | | | | | | 5. 🗳️ The biggest megatrend in politics ... | | ... is perpetual volatility: Graphic: Bruce Mehlman of Mehlman Castagnetti Rosen & Thomas Why it matters: "Backlash is baked in," lobbyist Bruce Mehlman writes in his latest big-think slide deck. | | | | | | | | 6. 📊 AJC poll: Georgia races tighten |  Data: Atlanta Journal-Constitution poll. Chart: Thomas Oide/Axios Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-Ga.) is in a statistical tie with Republican nominee Herschel Walker in an Atlanta Journal-Constitution/University of Georgia poll shared early with Axios' Emma Hurt. - Republican Gov. Brian Kemp holds a slight lead over Democratic challenger Stacey Abrams.
Why it matters: This is the paper's first poll since the state's May primary. Georgia is one of the nation's top bellwethers for '22 and '24. Warnock has a three-point lead over Walker among likely Georgia voters — inside the margin of error of 3.3 percentage points. - Kemp holds a five-point lead over Abrams.
🔭 Zoom out: The results closely track polling averages at FiveThirtyEight, which show Warnock up 1 point and Kemp up 6 points. - That shows the possibility of split-ticket voting, which Georgia saw during the 2021 Senate runoffs.
Between the lines: With independent voters, Kemp and Abrams polled evenly. Warnock held an 11-point lead. - Abrams polled 80% among Black voters; Warnock had 85%.
- Kemp pulled in 10% of Black voters' support. Walker had 9%.
Read the AJC story ... Share this story. | | | | | | | | 7. 📺 Chris Cuomo going back on TV | | Screenshot: NewsNation Former CNN anchor Chris Cuomo will join NewsNation — an upstart, Chicago-based cable news network owned by Nexstar Media Group — with a prime-time show this fall, Axios' Sara Fischer writes. - "I want to build something special here," Cuomo told NewsNation anchor Dan Abrams. "I have decided that I can't go back to what people see as 'the big game.' I don't think I can make a difference there. I think we need insurgent media."
- "I think I can help," Cuomo added. "And I think if I can do that, it makes everything I've gone through completely worthwhile. ... My shtick is having no shtick."
Cuomo has been off air since he was indefinitely suspended last November (and later fired), following revelations about his involvement in managing his brother Andrew Cuomo's sexual harassment scandal. - Cuomo appeared on NewsNation last night for his first major TV interview since he was fired.
Watch the video ... Share this story. | | | | | | | | 8. ⚾ Jackie Robinson museum opens this fall | | Photo: Julia Nikhinson/AP The Jackie Robinson Museum was unveiled on Varick Street in Manhattan with a gala ceremony attended by the widow of the barrier-breaking ballplayer and two of his children, AP's Ronald Blum reports. - Rachel Robinson, who turned 100 last week, watched the half-hour outdoor celebration from a wheelchair in the 80-degree heat, then cut a ribbon to cap a project that's been 14 years in the making.
- The museum opens to the public on Sept. 5.
Robinson, who died in 1972, helped galvanize American public opinion, boosting the civil rights movement. - Former Yankees pitcher CC Sabathia said: "Without him, there would be no me ... I wouldn't have been able to live out my dream of playing Major League Baseball."
A display at the Jackie Robinson Museum. Photo: Julia Nikhinson/AP Director Spike Lee (wearing a Brooklyn Dodgers cap) and tennis great Billie Jean King attended. - The museum has 4,500 artifacts, collected over generations by Robinson's friends and family.
The collection includes Robinson's 1946 minor league contract for $600 a month, and his 1947 rookie contract for a $5,000 salary. | | | | | | | | A message from PhRMA | | Patients lose when the government sets prices | | | | | | | | Government price setting cripples innovation and has potentially devastating consequences for patients. Why it's important: There are 119 medicines in development for breast cancer, but price-setting policies can change that. Tell Congress to protect access to new medicines. | | | | 📬 Invite your friends to sign up here for their daily essentials — Axios AM, PM and Finish Line. |  | | Are you a fan of this email format? It's called Smart Brevity®. Over 300 orgs use it — in a tool called Axios HQ — to drive productivity with clearer workplace communications. | | | |
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