Thursday, September 19, 2024

🗽 Axios PM: Web of scandal

Plus: The internet's favorite hippo | Thursday, September 19, 2024
 
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Axios PM
By Mike Allen · Sep 19, 2024

Good afternoon. Today's newsletter, edited by Sam Baker, is 570 words, a 2-min. read. Thanks to Sheryl Miller for copy editing.

  • 🚨 Breaking: North Carolina's GOP gubernatorial candidate, Mark Robinson, defied calls to drop out after CNN reported that he had posted a series of offensive messages on a porn-focused message board, including one in which he called himself a "black NAZI." Go deeper.
 
 
1 big thing: NYC's web of scandals
 
Illustration of the Statue of Liberty gasping, with her hand in front of her mouth.

Illustration: Allie Carl/Axios

 

New York City Mayor Eric Adams and his inner circle are staring down a growing list of legal problems and a full-blown political firestorm, Axios' Noah Bressner writes.

🔎 At least four agencies — the Justice Department, the FBI, the IRS and the city's Department of Investigations — are now involved in four separate corruption probes of people in Adams' orbit.

  • One investigation is reportedly focused on whether Adams' campaign illegally conspired to receive foreign money.
  • Two more involve alleged corruption by people whose relatives are high-ranking city officials.
  • The last known investigation appears to involve Adams' director of Asian affairs, according to local news website The City.
  • The NYPD commissioner resigned last week after the FBI had raided his home earlier this month. Adams' chief counsel quit a few days later. This week, two senior fire department chiefs were arrested on bribery charges.

🔮 What's next: Adams is already facing tough primary challenges next year, and some critics have called for him to resign even before any of these investigations' findings are made public.

🏙️ What they're saying: "New Yorkers still expect us to do our jobs every day, and that's what we're doing," mayoral spokesperson Fabien Levy told Axios.

  • Adams also has said he's focused on his governing priorities — this week, for example, he's hosting New York City's first-ever "Rat Summit."

Go deeper.

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2. 🚙 We're driving more
 
A grouped bar chart showing the change in average daily vehicle miles traveled from spring 2019 to spring 2024 by metro area. The greatest increase was seen in McAllen, Texas (+67%). The greatest decrease was seen in Los Angeles (-16.6%).
Data: StreetLight; Chart: Axios Visuals

Americans are driving even more than they did before the pandemic, Axios' Alex Fitzpatrick reports.

  • Average daily vehicle miles traveled increased 12% across the 100 biggest metro areas this past spring, compared to the same period in 2019.

🚦 Zoom out: Experts said the size of that increase is surprising, given the persistence of remote work and many cities' recent efforts to improve public transit and bike infrastructure.

  • "Whatever efforts we've strived for to keep [vehicle miles] down, they're not quite working — or they're not working yet," said Emily Adler, director of content at StreetLight Data.

Go deeper.

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A message from FICO

Myth or fact: Only mortgage lenders use the FICO® Score
 
 

Myth! FICO® Scores are relied on by lenders — but these same scores are essential to mortgage insurers, ratings agencies, regulators, investors and others — all to provide millions of Americans with homeownership.

Learn more.

 
 
3. Catch me up
 
Lebanese soldiers prepare to explode a walkie- talkie they found thrown away today. Photo: Stringer/picture alliance/Getty Images
  1. 🇮🇱 Hezbollah's leader called Israel's remote detonations of pagers and walkie-talkies a "declaration of war," and U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin postponed a visit to Israel because of the escalation in fighting. Go deeper.
  2. ⚖️ An Alaska man was arrested for threatening to injure and kill six Supreme Court justices and some of their family members. Go deeper.
  3. 🌎 "Isolationism will not keep anyone safe. We live in an interconnected world," outgoing NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg warned in his farewell speech.
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4. 🦛 1 hip hippo
 
Moo Deng plays with a zookeeper in the Khao Kheow Open Zoo in Thailand today. Photo: Sakchai Lalit/AP

Thailand's hottest celebrity is Moo Deng, a 2-month-old pygmy hippo whose expressive face has made her an Internet sensation.

  • Several professional sports teams in the U.S. have made memes with her, as has the official account for X, and any number of Thai businesses.

😎 She's so popular IRL that her zoo has had to limit visitors to five minutes of cooing and snapping photos.

  • The number of weekday visitors to the zoo, which is about two hours outside Bangkok, has more than quadrupled since Moo Deng came on the scene, and hippo-watchers line up well before the zoo opens.

Go deeper.

Moo Deng and her mother Jona today at the Khao Kheow Open Zoo. Photo/Sakchai Lalit/AP
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A message from FICO

Myth or fact: FICO® Scores cost less than a slice of pizza
 
 

Fact!

What you need to know: Mortgage closing costs can be thousands of dollars, but FICO's price is less than a slice of pizza — and it's the foundation of a safe housing ecosystem.

Test your knowledge and get the facts about FICO® Scores.

 
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