| | | | | | | Presented By BlackRock | | | | Axios AM | | By Mike Allen · Sep 15, 2022 | | Hello, Thursday. Smart Brevity™ count: 1,494 words ... 5½ mins. Edited by Noah Bressner. ð§Ŧ Join Axios' Tina Reed today at 12:30 p.m. ET for a virtual event on preparing for the next pandemic. Register here. | | | | | | 1 big thing: Amazon's historic NFL play |  | | | Illustration: Shoshana Gordon/Axios | | | | Amazon's "Thursday Night Football" debut tonight is a landmark event for the sports world, and a seminal moment for the media industry, Axios' Kendall Baker and Sara Fischer report. - Why it matters: L.A. Chargers at Kansas City Chiefs (8:15 p.m. ET on Prime Video) will be the NFL's first regular-season game available exclusively via streaming.
Amazon's multibillion-dollar bet on football will be a litmus test for how quickly the NFL, and other sports leagues, continue moving major rights packages from traditional TV to streaming. - The NFL is still evaluating whether to grant its lucrative Sunday Ticket package to a streaming company later this year.
- All Major League Soccer games will be streamed exclusively via the Apple TV app starting in 2023.
ðŋ What we're watching: The game itself won't look all that different, but there will be a lot of new features: - New booth: An offseason talent frenzy saw Amazon land Al Michaels from NBC for play-by-play, and Kirk Herbstreit from ESPN as the main analyst.
- New jingle: Amazon composed unique theme music that fits well alongside the four established themes from CBS, Fox, NBC and ESPN.
- New tech: Uniforms will include chips to track NextGen stats, which viewers can follow in real-time using Amazon's "X-Ray" feature.
ðŧ Amazon partnered with DirecTV to air games in over 300,000 sports bars, restaurants, hotels and other venues, to help patrons without high-speed broadband access the game. ðŪ What's next: Live sports are one of the last attractions holding the cable bundle together. But that marriage has an expiration date. - Eventually, all premium content will be streamed. Tonight is a glimpse of the future.
Get Axios Sports ... Get Axios Media Trends ... Share this story. |     | | | | | | 2. ðĻ Bulletin: Biden says rail strike averted |  | | | Illustration: Megan Robinson/Axios | | | | President Biden this morning announced a "tentative agreement" to head off a rail-worker strike that was already causing disruptions across a range of industries. - He called the agreement "an important win for our economy."
- Labor Secretary Marty Walsh tweeted that the reprieve came after 20 consecutive hours of negotiations.
Why it matters: This was the latest crisis to pop up in the game of supply-chain whack-a-mole we've played for two-plus years, Emily Peck writes for Axios Markets. - Virtually every part of the economy — including food and energy — needs functioning railways. A strike would drive up prices at a time when inflation is showing signs of remaining stubbornly high.
Fearing a strike, Amtrak had shut down long-distance service everywhere outside the Northeast corridor. | | | | | | | | 3. ð Sneak peek: Trump scoops from Baker, Glasser |  | | | Cover: Doubleday | | | | Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) called his friend Donald Trump "a lying mother----er" but "a lot of fun to hang out with," according to "The Divider," by Peter Baker and Susan Glasser, out next Tuesday. - Why it matters: Graham said it with "a what-can-you-do shrug," the authors report — the mindset of so many Trump allies and enablers.
"The Divider" — a sweeping, dishy, 700+-page history of "Trump's almost cartoonishly chaotic White House" — shows he came close to taking several rash military actions, as Glasser and Baker reported in an adaptation from the book last month in The New Yorker. - The book draws on 300 new interviews (including two with Trump) + diaries, memos, contemporaneous notes, emails and text messages.
More nuggets from Glasser, a columnist for The New Yorker, and Baker, chief White House correspondent for The New York Times: - ð️ Trump enraged then-Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Joe Dunford with attacks on the integrity of generals, including accusing the military of undermining him in the press. "You guys are f---ing leakers," Trump said. "We're not f---ing leakers," Dunford shot back.
- ð· Melania Trump told former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, at the time a presidential confidant, that she had warned her husband about his COVID response: "You're blowing this."
- ð― Trump sometimes undercut Jared Kushner, his son-in-law, in meetings when he wasn't there. "Jared, all he cares about is his New York liberal crowd," Trump harrumphed. "These are not my people."
- ðŠĶ White House chief of staff John Kelly was so furious when Trump refused to lower the flag after Sen. John McCain died that he told the president: "If you don't support John McCain's funeral, when you die, the public will come to your grave and piss on it." Trump gave in.
More on the book ... N.Y. Times review (subscription). | | | | | | | | A message from BlackRock | | Invested in the future of retirees | | |  | | | | All across the country, people are working hard to build a better future. So, we are hard at work, helping them achieve financial freedom. At BlackRock, we are proud to manage the retirement plan assets of over 35 million Americans. Learn more. | | | | | | 4. Mapped: America's extreme year |  Data: NOAA. Chart: Erin Davis/Axios Visuals This summer had two constants: extreme heat in Texas and Oklahoma, and flash flooding across the country as rainfall records fell, Axios' Andrew Freedman writes from new NOAA data. ðŽ Zoom in: Look closely at the July precipitation map, and you'll see a green splotch in eastern Missouri, and another across large parts of eastern Kentucky. Those were the locations of 1,000-year rainfall events. - More of these torrential rainstorms, which some refer to as "rain bombs," occurred during August as well, yielding 1,000-year totals that prompted flash floods in unlikely places, including Death Valley, Calif.
- Another dark green area on the August precipitation map is seen across Dallas, which saw a 1,000-year rainfall event on Aug. 22.
How it works: A 1,000-year rainfall event has a 0.1% chance of occurring in any given year. | | | | | | | | 5. CEO optimism fades |  Data: Business Roundtable. Chart: Axios Visuals How CEOs feel about the economy has been downgraded from "exuberant" to just "OK," Axios' Courtenay Brown and Neil Irwin write in Axios Macro. - The latest Business Roundtable (BRT) survey of members — who include CEOs of some of the world's largest companies — shows healthy expectations for sales, hiring plans and capital investment, as of mid-August.
- But the results, shared first with Axios, point to a bleaker outlook than just a few months ago.
ðĄ What's happening: Soaring inflation has the Fed on a fast track to aggressively raise interest rates. One result: The central bank is hoping for tempered activity on the part of corporations, but not a complete collapse. The survey's results hint at that desired outcome. | | | | | | | | 6. Huge crypto moment: The Merge |  | | | Illustration: Victoria Ellis/Axios | | | | The world's second-biggest cryptocurrency network, Ethereum, completed its pivot to a new system that will use vastly less electricity, writes Brady Dale, co-author of Axios Crypto. - Why it matters: One of the big knocks on cryptocurrency is the huge amount of energy the networks consume. But with this change — known as The Merge — trading in one of the leading currencies will be no more energy-intensive than playing a video game.
ð§ How it works: Cryptocurrency networks use "consensus mechanisms" to ensure that transactions are valid. Those tools keep track of who owns what. - The original consensus mechanism, "proof-of-work," is the reason crypto uses so much energy.
- Ethereum is switching to a new strategy, "proof-of-stake." It'll be an expensive shift, but Ethereum's energy use might only be about 1% of what it was before.
Reality check: Bitcoin always has been — and will continue to be — the industry's biggest energy user, by far. ðŽ Our thought bubble: Years in the making, The Merge is easily 2022's biggest cryptocurrency moment, after the bull market's end in May. | | | | | | | | 7. ð️ Elijah Cummings portrait unveiled | | Photo: Jose Luis Magana/AP Adia Cummings (left) and Jennifer Cummings unveil the official portrait of their father, the late Congressman Elijah Cummings of Baltimore, at the Capitol yesterday. - At Cummings' death in 2019, the N.Y. Times obit called him a "son of sharecroppers who rose to become one of the most powerful Democrats in Congress and a central figure in the impeachment investigation of President Trump."
The portrait, by Baltimore artist Jerrell Gibbs, will hang in the Elijah E. Cummings Room — the hearing room for the House Committee on Oversight and Reform, which Cummings chaired at his death. | | | | | | | | 8. ð Caddy daddy | | Photo: Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty Images President Biden takes the wheel of an all-electric Cadillac Lyriq SUV yesterday at the North American International Auto Show in Detroit. - "You all know I'm a car guy," Biden told a roaring crowd of autoworkers. "Just looking at them and driving them, they just give me a sense of optimism — although I like the speed, too."
Photo: Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty Images Biden also hopped into the driver seat of a bright-orange Chevrolet Corvette Z06 — which starts at $106,000, and is not an EV — and fired up the engine, aided by GM CEO Mary Barra (above), AP reports. - "He says he's driving home," she joked.
Biden drove the Lyriq, which starts at $63,000, down an aisle in the blue-carpeted hall. It marked a rare chance for the president to drive — albeit at little more than a walking pace. - "Jump in! I'll give you a ride to Washington," he joked to reporters. "It's a beautiful car ... but I love the Corvette."
White House fact sheet, "America's Electric Vehicle Manufacturing Boom." | | | | | | | | A message from BlackRock | | Invested in the future of education | | |  | | | | Americans everywhere are working hard to build a better future. So at BlackRock, we're hard at work to help them achieve financial freedom. We're proud to help families invest to save for education by managing their 529 College Savings Plans. Learn more. | | | | ðŽ Invite your friends to sign up to get 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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