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| Presented By BlackRock |
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| Axios AM |
| By Mike Allen · Sep 12, 2022 |
| Hello, Monday. Smart Brevity™ count: 1,179 words ... 4½ mins. Edited by Noah Bressner. 🗳️ Join Axios' Alexi McCammond and Alayna Treene — in person! — at 8 a.m. ET tomorrow in Washington for an event on voter access for the midterms. Guests include Keisha Lance Bottoms — former Atlanta mayor, now a White House official. |
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| 1 big thing: New supply-chain threats |
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| Illustration: Allie Carl/Axios |
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| Two huge labor disputes — with railroads and ports — threaten to re-tangle U.S. supply chains. The White House is pushing to avert disaster, engaged at a level not seen in decades, Axios' Emily Peck reports. - Why it matters: The economic stakes are sky high. A shutdown of the nation's rail system could cost $2 billion a day, according to an industry estimate. And we've already seen what backed-up ports do.
- Politically, a work stoppage would spell disaster for a pro-labor White House determined to keep inflation in check and avert bottlenecks.
🚂 Negotiations continued over the weekend between the country's largest freight railroad companies — including Berkshire Hathaway's BNSF, Union Pacific and CSX — and unions representing 115,000 workers. - They're racing to meet a Friday deadline.
- If the rails grind to a halt, it would be left to the nation's trucking system to pick up the slack. That would be costly, and there isn't enough capacity to handle all the extra stuff.
🚢 Port workers on the West Coast have been in negotiations for a new contract. The last one expired in June. 🕶️ What we're watching: In the modern era, White Houses typically stay out of labor negotiations — maybe just swooping in at the last moment. - But the Biden administration has plunged in.
- The White House in May appointed a port czar.
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| 2. ⛽ Gas prices keep plunging |
 Data: U.S. Energy Information Administration. Chart: Axios Visuals Gas prices continue to tumble throughout the U.S., cheering up consumers and taking the starch out of the stiff rise in inflation, Matt Phillips writes for Axios Markets. - A gallon of regular averages $3.72 nationwide, per AAA — more than 25% lower than the $5.02 peak in June.
Between the lines: In California, it's still $5.41. The Golden State has some of the country's most expensive gas because it requires refiners to produce a blend that meets more stringent anti-pollution requirements. |
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| 3. 📊 Two Americas Index: Democracy deniers |
 Data: Axios/Ipsos. Chart: Tory Lysik/Axios One-third of Americans think presidents should be able to remove judges over their decisions, David Nather and Margaret Talev write from a new installment of our Axios-Ipsos Two Americas Index. - Democrats were more likely than Republicans to say presidents should be able to remove judges when their decisions go against the national interest.
Many Americans also believe the government should follow the will of the majority even at the expense of ethnic and religious minority groups' civil rights. - And roughly a third said the federal government should be able to prosecute members of the news media who make offensive or unpatriotic statements.
Between the lines: "There's a lot of anti-democratic sentiment — a lot more than we might have expected," said Justin Gest, an associate professor at George Mason University who studies the politics of demographic change, and advises the project. |
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| A message from BlackRock |
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| 4. 📷 1,000 words |
| Photo: LM Otero/AP Former President George W. Bush, 76, takes the field in Arlington, Texas, yesterday — the 21st anniversary of 9/11 — for the ceremonial first pitch before his Texas Rangers played the Toronto Blue Jays. (Details.) Photo: Doug Mills/AP 21 years earlier ... Bush, 55 — to chants of "U-S-A!" — delivers a perfect strike before Game 3 of the World Series at Yankee Stadium on Oct. 30, 2001, just weeks after the Twin Towers fell. |
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| 5. 🇨🇳 Biden to hit China on chips |
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| Semiconductor chips on a circuit board. Photo: Florence Lo/Reuters |
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| The Biden administration plans to broaden curbs on U.S shipments to China of semiconductors used for artificial intelligence and chip-making tools, Reuters reports. - Why it matters: The planned Commerce Department action comes as President Biden seeks to thwart China's advances, by targeting technologies where the U.S. maintains dominance.
👀 What we're watching: U.S. officials have reached out to allies to lobby them to enact similar policies so that foreign companies would not be able to sell technology to China that American firms would be barred from shipping. The bottom line: "The strategy is to choke off China and ... chips are a choke point," said Jim Lewis, a technology expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. |
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| 6. 📚 Sneak peek: How Trump fired his man in Manhattan |
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| Cover: Penguin Press |
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| Geoffrey Berman — fired in 2020 by President Trump as the top Manhattan federal prosecutor — writes in "Holding the Line," a memoir out tomorrow, that the Justice Department "quickly turned off the service on my DOJ-issued cell phone and revoked access to my email." - "Our chief of security apologized for doing it so abruptly, explaining, 'I was told to get you out of the office immediately.'"
Berman, who was U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, writes that he "resisted the worst of the attempted interference, whether from Main Justice or the White House": But I did not leave with a sense of triumph. What I felt — and continue to feel — is worry. ... [It] is important to understand how fragile the system is and how vulnerable it can be when powerful people attempt to abuse it for political gain. In SDNY, we did not let that happen. But it still could. Berman adds: "I was allowed to come into my old office the next weekend to box up my personal belongings and take them home." |
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| 7. 🎥 First look: Brian Stelter's next gig |
| "Reliable Sources" opening from 1992. Screenshot: CNN Brian Stelter, whose "Reliable Sources" was canceled by CNN last month, is headed to Harvard as a home base while he figures out his next gig: - He'll join the Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy at the Kennedy School as the Fall 2022 Walter Shorenstein Media and Democracy fellow.
- Stelter will convene discussions about threats to democracy — and possible responses by the media — with news leaders, policymakers, politicians, and Kennedy School students, fellows, and faculty.
Between the lines: Stelter thinks of the fellowship as bringing the "Reliable Sources" show to campus — holding 60-minute discussions about media and democracy, instead of six-minute chats on TV. |
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| 8. 🗞️ Fake news in old guise |
| Publications tied to a conservative operative have been mailed to thousands of homes in Chicago and the suburbs. Photo: Todd Panagopoulos/Chicago Tribune via Getty Images Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker (D) is speaking out against a new round of political ads disguised as newspapers being delivered in Chicago and the suburbs, Justin Kaufmann writes for Axios Chicago. - Why it matters: The publications are designed to trick readers into thinking they are reading a vetted, objective news source.
The mailers are distributed by conservative radio host Dan Proft, who also is behind the People Who Play By the Rules PAC. - The papers focus mainly on the Safe-T Act, a criminal-justice reform law going into effect in January that includes the elimination of cash bail in Illinois.
Between the lines: The "newspapers" are political ads in disguise, but they aren't illegal. The state attorney general's office tells Axios it hasn't received any complaints and isn't pursuing legal action. |
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