| | | | | | | Presented By Facebook | | | | Axios AM | | By Mike Allen · Sep 09, 2022 | | It's already Friday. Smart Brevity™ count: 1,460 words ... 5½ mins. Edited by Noah Bressner. 🍞 Situational awareness: Oberlin College said it would pay $36.59 million to a local bakery that successfully argued it was defamed and falsely accused of racial profiling after a shoplifting incident. Go deeper. | | | | | | 1 big thing: Trumpier than Trump |  | | | Doug Mastriano appears with former President Trump in Wilkes-Barre, Pa., last Saturday. Photo: Michelle Gustafson/Bloomberg via Getty Images | | | | Some GOP candidates are softening their rhetoric and scrubbing their campaign websites of hardline positions as the midterms get closer. - But Doug Mastriano is doing the opposite in the Pennsylvania governor's race, one of the nation's most important contests, Axios' Jonathan Swan, Josh Kraushaar and Lachlan Markay report.
The Trump-endorsed state senator has doubled down on false claims about the 2020 election. He's ghosting the mainstream media — and spending nothing on TV advertising, relying instead on Facebook livestreams and far-right media. - He has a small staff largely unknown to Pennsylvania politicos. And he may tap a woman who has described QAnon as a "very valuable resource" to be the state's top election official.
Why it matters: Mastriano, who was at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, is a new model of ultra-MAGA candidate. - If Mastriano achieves an unlikely victory in November, he would control election machinery of a key battleground state in 2024.
Mastriano completely avoids the mainstream media. He rarely appears even on Fox News. - When Mastriano does do interviews, it's almost entirely with far-right personalities like Steve Bannon. Until recently, Mastriano refused to even allow mainstream news reporters into his events.
Mastriano appears to have very little money: - His opponent, Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro, has already committed around $35 million to TV advertising, including $16.9 million for the fall. Mastriano has so far reserved zero dollars in fall advertising spending, according to a Pennsylvania operative closely monitoring campaign advertising data.
Instead, Mastriano has built an organic grassroots following through Facebook. - The MAGA base loves Mastriano. At Saturday night's Trump rally in Wilkes-Barre, Pa., Mastriano connected powerfully. His speech was frequently interrupted by roars from the crowd.
Mastriano has made no apparent effort to pivot to the center — a common tactic for candidates as they end their primaries and face a broader electorate. - Mastriano expanded his website's section on "election integrity" after winning his primary. He has also talked about how the election is crucial because the winner will choose the secretary of state, who'll oversee Pennsylvania elections in 2024.
Mastriano has said he's already chosen this person, and let slip that it's a "her." Pennsylvania operatives following the race closely speculate he'll pick Toni Shuppe, co-founder and CEO of Audit the Vote PA, who claims the 2020 election was stolen from former President Trump. |     | | | | | | 2. Companies are dropping vaccine mandates |  | | | Illustration: Sarah Grillo/Axios | | | | Some companies are rolling back mandates for employee COVID vaccination — but few are making official public statements about it, Emily Peck reports for Axios Markets. - Why it matters: The moves signal that we've shifted into a new chapter of the pandemic — and that employers are desperate to get people back to the office.
What's happening: Employers are trying to reduce any barriers to entry for new hires, says Erin Grau, co-founder of Charter, a media and services company focused on the future of work. - The requirements are also expensive and time-consuming for employers — another reason to stop, she adds.
Zoom out: The White House yesterday called on businesses to take certain actions to protect employees and customers from COVID-19 this fall. Mandates weren't on the list. - Instead, the administration says employers should be "helping their employees access updated COVID-19 vaccines."
Not all companies are giving up on mandates. Many hospitals and other health care providers do require vaccination. - Boeing, Google, Edelman and Meta told Axios Seattle reporter Melissa Santos that employees who enter the office must be vaccinated.
Share this story. | | | | | | | | 3. 🇬🇧 Charles to address kingdom today |  | | | Left: "Figurehead," by Malika Favre for The New Yorker. Right: via Tomorrow's Papers Today | | | | King Charles III, age 73 — who has spent much of his life preparing for this moment — will address a nation in mourning today after the death of his mother, Queen Elizabeth II, the only monarch most Britons ever knew. - The queen — who died at 96 at her summer residence, Balmoral Castle in Scotland — was the world's longest-serving head of state, and a towering presence on the world stage for seven decades, Reuters reports.
🧠 Axios insight: Britons have long had a beloved head of state to hold the country together. - But the U.K.'s economic nightmare is now being overseen not only by a brand-new prime minister — but also by a brand-new monarch, Axios' Felix Salmon notes.
Elizabeth became queen in 1952, when Britain still retained much of its old empire. Winston Churchill was prime minister. Harry Truman was U.S. president. Josef Stalin led the Soviet Union. The Korean War raged. - President Biden said: "Her legacy will loom large in the pages of British history, and in the story of our world."
She was arguably the world's most famous person — and was the most reproduced female face in world history, ABC News anchors noted. - 2-min. video: In a solemn interruption that was rehearsed for decades, the BBC announces the death of Her Majesty the Queen — then plays "God Save the Queen," the U.K. national anthem.
Go deeper: Accession rules after Queen's death. | | | | | | | | A message from Facebook | | Facebook is taking action to keep its platform safe | | |  | | | | We have over 40,000 people working on safety and security across our platforms. That's more than the size of the FBI. And it's just one example of the work we're doing to create safer connections for our communities. Learn more about our work ahead. | | | | | | 4. 👑 1,000 words | | Screenshot: CNN President Biden was the 13th president to meet Queen Elizabeth. - She met every president beginning with Harry Truman — with the exception of LBJ, who didn't visit Britain during his presidency.
| | | | | | | | 5. 🇺🇸 Ex-colonies salute | | Photo: Lokman Vural Elibol/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images The Empire State Building was lit up in purple, and sparkled in silver. Photo: Paras Griffin/Getty Images Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport was lit in Union Jack colors. Photo: Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images I had a bet with Autumn VandeHei about this. She won, of course. I thought that because of the whole July 4th thing, the U.S. wouldn't lower the flag for the Queen. But sure enough, flags quickly went to half-staff on federal buildings and at the Capitol. | | | | | | | | 6. ⚖️ First look: Book to focus on Trump probes | Steve Bannon arrives in handcuffs yesterday for his arraignment in Manhattan on money-laundering charges. Photo: Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images A new genre of Trump books begins — the investigations. - Twelve Books tells me Michael Isikoff and Daniel Klaidman, both of Yahoo News, are writing a book — out in 2024 — about the multiple criminal investigations into former President Trump and associates.
Isikoff and Daniel Klaidman, who earlier worked together at Newsweek, will focus partly on the probe by Fulton County D.A. Fani Willis into Trump's efforts to overturn the 2020 count in Georgia. - The duo also will cover Attorney General Merrick Garland and Justice Department prosecutors as they weigh whether to bring the first federal criminal charges against a former president.
⚡ Breaking: A federal grand jury investigating the attack on the Capitol has issued subpoenas probing Trump's Save America PAC — his main post-election fundraising vehicle, the N.Y. Times reports (subscription). | | | | | | | | 7. 📺 Bernard Shaw ... CNN. | | Bernard Shaw speaks via satellite phone on the first night of the Gulf War, Jan. 16, 1991. Photo: CNN via Getty Images Bernard Shaw — a pioneering Black journalist, and CNN original who was Washington anchor when the round-the-clock network launched in 1980 — died in Washington of pneumonia unrelated to COVID. He was 82. - Shaw, with John Holliman and Peter Arnett, made TV history in 1991 by broadcasting the first night of the Gulf War in real time, CNN writes.
"The skies over Baghdad have been illuminated," Shaw said, reporting from a Baghdad hotel as bombs rained down. "We're seeing bright flashes going off all over the sky." - "I've never been there," Shaw said, "but this feels like we're in the center of hell."
A former CBS and ABC newsman, Shaw took a chance when he accepted an offer to become CNN's chief anchor at its launch in 1980, AP's David Bauder reports. - For eight years, Bernie Shaw co-anchored "Inside Politics" with Judy Woodruff. He retired in 2001.
As moderator of a 1988 presidential debate between George H. W. Bush and Michael Dukakis, he asked the Democrat whether he'd support the death penalty for someone found guilty of raping and murdering Dukakis' wife, Kitty. - Dukakis' coolly technocratic response damaged his campaign.
"Since when did a question hurt a politician?" Shaw said in a C-SPAN interview in 2001. "It wasn't the question. It was the answer." | | | | | | | | 8. 👒 Hat tip | | Photo: AFP via Getty Images The Queen "was an adept and committed practitioner of fashion diplomacy, paving the way for Michelle Obama and the Duchess of Cambridge (among other women whose roles demanded fluency in political semiology) to work with designers and brands to extend the hand of friendship across borders," writes N.Y. Times chief fashion critic Vanessa Friedman (subscription). - "And she was a master of dressing for the media: originating (and popularizing) the practice of wearing a brightly colored suit as a way to both blend in with the establishment and stand out in a crowd, thus providing the strategic template for such figures as Hillary Clinton, Angela Merkel and Nancy Pelosi."
Go deeper: Elle on her style legacy. | | | | | | | | A message from Facebook | | Over 40 million people use Facebook Privacy Checkup each month | | |  | | | | That's nearly 60 times the population of Washington, D.C. And that's just one example of the tools and technologies we're building to keep our communities safe. Facebook is taking action to keep its platform safe. Learn more about our work ahead. | | | | 📬 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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