Tuesday, September 14, 2021

BREW WITH HEADLINES

 


Daily Brew

TOGETHER WITH

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Good morning. Apologies if the newsletter is a little sloppy this morning...we’re pretty hungover from consuming too much celebrity last night at the Met Gala. And please keep words like “slay” or “icon” to yourself—we'll get nauseous.

Matty Merritt, Sherry Qin, Neal Freyman

MARKETS


Nasdaq

15,105.58

S&P

4,468.73

Dow

34,869.63

Bitcoin

$45,165.72

10-Year

1.326%

Airbnb

$160.32

*Stock data as of market close, cryptocurrency data as of 6:00pm ET. Here's what these numbers mean.

  • Economy: The S&P and Dow snapped a 5-day losing streak with Covid cases falling from their recent peak in the US. Airbnb stock slipped after Goldman Sachs analysts slapped a "sell" rating on the home rental company. 
  • Covid: An international group of scientists, including two experts from the FDA, wrote that booster shots of the Covid-19 vaccine weren’t yet needed for the average person. The US still plans to roll them out in less than a week.

GOVERNMENT

With Tax Plan, Democrats Try to Unite Democrats

Old fire extinguisher box that says "In Case of Tax Hikes, Break Glass" with wad of cash inside

Francis Scialabba

House Democrats are all of us before wedding season as they scramble to cover the bill for their pricey $3.5 trillion budget proposal. Yesterday, they released a plan that included about $2.9 trillion in tax hikes. 

Reality check: Unless you’re the CEO of Target or clutching your third boat, you won’t be targeted by the increases, which aim to raise money from corporations, wealthy Americans, and investors. Here are some of the deets:

  • For bigger, profitable companies, the corporate tax rate would jump to 26.5% from 21% currently.
  • Americans who earn more than $435,000 per year would see their top tax rate increase from 37% to 39.6%.
  • Individuals earning over $5 million would get hit with a 3% surtax.
  • The top capital gains rate (taxes on the sale of stocks, real estate, NFTs of gorillas) would jump from 20% to 25%.

On the spicy scale, this plan is mild

While it reverses many of the Republican tax cuts for 2018, the plan stops short of the ambitious tax hikes President Biden first proposed. For instance, he initially wanted to bump the corporate rate up to 28% (26.5% in the new plan) and the top capital gains rate to 39.6% (25% in the plan). Plus the proposal doesn’t include the Senate Finance Committee’s taxes on billionaires’ investments, where most of their wealth is tied up.

This tax proposal is seen as an olive branch to moderate Democrats who don’t want to play the villain to business. However, it’s not nearly tame enough to gain support from Republicans.

Zoom out: You’d think that a $2.9 trillion tax proposal to fund the biggest social spending plan since the ’60s would be the No. 1 priority on Capitol Hill, but it’s not. Lawmakers must pass a budget before Oct. 1 or else face a government shutdown, and time is also running out to raise the debt ceiling before the US defaults. – MM

        

CRYPTO

Walmart's Crypto Deal Was too Weird to Be True

Meme for Walmart-Litecoin hoax

Someone just pulled off the biggest hoax since Bishop Sycamore weaseled its way onto ESPN.

A press release published yesterday morning by GlobeNewswire stated that Walmart would accept litecoin, a small cryptocurrency, as payment. While the partnership sounded odd, the release seemed pretty legit—litecoin’s official Twitter handle tweeted out a link to the announcement, and news outlets like Reuters posted stories.

After reporters did some digging, though, it became clear this was fake news. That caused litecoin prices, which had surged up to 33% due to the “partnership,” to fall back down.

Everyone went into clean-up mode: 

  • Litecoin’s creator said its social media manager was “wrong to retweet” the announcement.
  • Intrado, the company that operates GlobeNewswire, said it is looking into how the fake release, which even included a made-up quote from Walmart’s CEO, got through its filters.

Bottom line: Scammers have faked news announcements for “pump and dump” schemes before, but cryptocurrencies, which are less regulated and more volatile than public company stocks, are particularly fertile ground for hoaxes. – NF

        

Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

California, the most populous state in the US and the fifth-largest economy in the world, will decide today whether Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom should remain in office. If Newsom is recalled, his successor would serve the remainder of his term, which is set to end in January 2023.

The backstory: Many Californians have disapproved of the governor’s handling of homelessness, water policy, and undocumented immigrants. This recall effort, which started in February 2020, grew into a real threat throughout 2020 as the pandemic worsened in the state.

This election has consequences far beyond California. It will be the first test of Democrats’ strength ahead of next year’s midterm elections, and, if certain things shake out just right, it may even influence which party has control of the US Senate. 

Here's where things stand right now:

  • The latest polls compiled by FiveThirtyEight show Newsom with a sizeable lead.
  • Radio talk show host Larry Elder is the Republican frontrunner, leading 45 other candidates trying to take Newsom’s spot. 

Bottom line: Recalls are as Californian as breakfast burritos for dinner; in fact, there have been 179 attempts since 1913. But few have prompted an election and only six officials have actually been recalled. – SQ

        

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GRAB BAG

Key Performance Indicators

ted lasso

Giphy

Stat: Jason Sudeikis will make nearly $1 million per episode for season 3 of Ted Lasso, according to the Hollywood Reporter. That's a nearly 4x raise from seasons 1 and 2. 

Quote: “New York will no longer be anti-business. This is going to be a place where we welcome business and not turn into the dysfunctional city that we have been for many years.”

Eric Adams, the Democratic nominee for NYC mayor, wants to reset the relationship between the leadership of the city and its business community. 

Read: Facebook says its rules apply to all, but company documents reveal a secret elite that’s exempt. (WSJ)

        

BIOTECH

The 'Ice Age' Remake Is Very Realistic

wooly mammoth biotech

Colossal

A new company called Colossal intends to re-create and re-introduce the extinct woolly mammoth to the Siberian tundra.

How it (could) work: Entrepreneur Ben Lamm and Harvard genetics professor George Church, who have raised $15 million in funding from strategic investors including Sid the Sloth, plan to use CRISPR gene-editing technology to create a new species that’s close to, but not an exact replica of, the woolly mammoths that roamed the Arctic before disappearing roughly 10,000 years ago.

OK, but why? A mammoth revival could contribute to the fight against climate change—for example, through slowing permafrost thaw in the tundra by removing trees and trampling moss, Dr. Church has argued.

Looking ahead...if everything goes according to plan, the company could begin “rewilding” mammoths in 15 years, Lamm said. But it’ll have to navigate an ethical minefield to get there.

Emerging Tech Brew has a whole lot more about Colossal here. – NF

        

WHAT ELSE IS BREWING

  • Apple patched a vulnerability that had reportedly been exploited by Israeli cybersecurity firm NSO Group. The University of Toronto's Citizen Lab discovered the issue and alerted Apple. 
  • Intuit, the maker of TurboTax and QuickBooks, will buy email platform Mailchimp for $12 billion. It would be the largest-ever acquisition of a company that received no outside funding.
  • Media companies linked to the Chinese exiled billionaire Guo Wengui will pay $539 million to settle the SEC’s charges that they illegally raised money from investors. 
  • The first trial of the college admissions scandal known as the “Varsity Blues” kicked off yesterday.
  • Succession season 3 finally has a premiere date: October 17.

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Tech Tip Tuesday: 40 one-sentence email tips.

International streaming guide: Some of the best shows on streaming services aren’t in English. Here is your definitive guide to the best TV and movies from around the world.

*This is sponsored advertising content

GAMES

The Puzzle Section

Brew Mini: A classic YouTube video from 2013 shows up in today's puzzle. See which one here.

iPhone Quiz 

Ahead of today's iPhone launch (here's how to watch), can you name the bestselling iPhone model of all time? 

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ANSWER

Apple sold 231 million units of the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus in fiscal 2015, making it the bestselling iPhone series ever. 

 

Photo: Kevin Mazur/MG21/Getty Images

At last night's Met Gala in Manhattan, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's white dress by Brother Vellieswas was emblazoned: "TAX THE RICH."

Axios AM
By Mike Allen ·Sep 14, 2021

Good Tuesday morning. Smart Brevity™ count: 1,468 words ... 5½ minutes. Edited by Zachary Basu.

🇺🇳 Situational awareness: 80+ world leaders, including President Biden, will speak in person at the UN General Assembly in New York next week.

 
 
1 big thing: Big Lie hits today's California recall


Illustration: Aïda Amer/Axios

 

The Big Lie — a falsehood peddled by Donald Trump that his election was stolen — is now being pushed by conservatives in today's California recall election, Axios' Sara Fischer reports.

  • Why it matters: Now that the precedent has been set, more losing pols will use unfounded allegations of fraud to try to undermine outcomes they don't agree with.

Reality check: There’s been no evidence of widespread fraud in the California election, or the 2020 election.

Right-wing media and political figures have already begun alleging that today's recall faced by Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) is "rigged."

  • Newsom's lead in polls is big enough to withstand major sampling errors, The New York Times' Nate Cohn reports (subscription).
  • Conservative radio host Larry Elder polls best to replace him.

Fox Nation host Tomi Lahren said last week that the only thing that would save Newsom in his recall election is "voter fraud." The claim has been pushed by right-wing media outlets and personalities for the past few weeks.

  • "Does anybody really believe the California Recall Election isn’t rigged?" Trump's "Save America PAC" blasted in an email to supporters yesterday.

What's happening: Tech platforms, including Twitter and Facebook, implemented systems to address false allegations of fraud in the 2020 election. But those systems may not be equipped to handle similar narratives circling down-ballot elections.

  • Data from Zignal Labs, a social-media intelligence firm, finds that between June 1 and Sept. 1, mentions of terms like "fraud," election "rigging" or "stealing ballots" received hundreds of thousands of mentions, with occurrences spiking in the past two weeks.
  • Google searches for "voter fraud" in California have increased more than 5x over the past week, according to Google Trends data.

Share this story ... Go deeper: Explainer on how the recall works.

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2. Axios-Ipsos poll: 60% of voters back vaccine mandates
Data: Axios/Ipsos Poll (1,065 U.S. adults. Margin of error: ±3.2%.) Chart: Kavya Beheraj/Axios

A strong majority of Americans — including suburban voters — support vaccine mandates for federal workers and private companies, Axios' Margaret Talev writes from the Axios/Ipsos Coronavirus Index.

  • Why it matters: The findings, on the heels of President Biden's mandate announcement last week, suggest his move is politically safer than his opponents hope.

Cliff Young, president of Ipsos U.S. Public Affairs, said Biden's move "especially reinforces himself with independents."

  • "The No. 1 issue for Biden has been COVID, and he’s been losing ground on it, especially among independents," Young said.
  • But Biden "wins no points with Republicans," Young added. "He wins a lot of points with Democrats, but they already support him."

Respondents were asked separate questions: Do you support the federal government requiring all federal employees to be vaccinated against COVID? And do you support a federal government rule that requires all businesses with 100 or more employees to make all staff be vaccinated or undergo regular COVID testing?

  • Overall responses were virtually identical: 60% supported both, and 38-40% opposed both.

Share this graphic.

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3. What it takes for citizens in space


Illustration: Sarah Grillo/Axios

 

The all-civilian SpaceX Inspiration4 crew — launching from Florida tomorrow at 8:02 p.m. ET — will test how much risk ordinary people will take to build humanity's future in space, Axios Space author Miriam Kramer writes.

  • Private individuals can't count on government regulations to keep them safe when they fly to space with private companies.
  • The FAA is allowed to regulate a private, crewed launch for the safety of people on the ground, but not the "spaceflight participants" flying to orbit or suborbital flights.
  • Keep reading.

🎧 Just dropped: Part IV, "Risk," of Axios' "How it Happened: The Next Astronauts" podcast, which is following the Inspiration4 crew.

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A message from Amazon

Tomorrow is Amazon Career Day 2021
 

 

This Career Day, Amazon is hiring for:

  • Over 40,000 corporate and tech roles across 220+ U.S. locations.
  • Tens of thousands of hourly positions within the company’s operations network.

The takeaway: Amazon Career Day is open to all, regardless of experience or professional background.

 
 
4. 👀 Stat du jour
NATO contractor guarding truck in Afghanistan


A contractor guards a NATO supply truck in Afghanistan in 2010. Photo: Rahmatullah Naikzad/AP

 

One-third to half of the $14 trillion spent by the Pentagon since 9/11 went to for-profit defense contractors, according to a study by Brown University's Costs of War project and the Center for International Policy. (AP)

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5. School lines often reflect 1930s discrimination
Children sit on the steps of Malverne High School in Malverne, N.Y., in 1962, with picket signs supporting integrated education. Photo: Marvin Sussman/Newsday via Getty Images

Today's school boundaries in many cities are still linked to a history of housing segregation that goes back to the 1930s, Axios' Russell Contreras writes from a new study.

  • Why it matters: These boundaries largely determine which schools students will attend, and in many parts of the country they're reinforcing segregation and inequality, despite years of strides.

The National Urban League examined over 65,000 school attendance boundaries.

  • More than 2,000 pairs of adjacent public school boundaries had vastly different racial compositions on either side, the report found.
  • Many of today's school attendance boundaries closely track old maps of redlining — a practice explicitly designed to keep Black Americans out of certain neighborhoods.

Keep reading ... Read the report.

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6. Harder Line: Rich vs. poor countries


Illustration: Aïda Amer/Axios

 

The urgency of tackling global warming is colliding with the world’s deeply uneven use of heat-trapping energy resources that are causing it, Amy Harder writes in her final "Harder Line" column for Axios.

  • Why it matters: The long-simmering debate over the role of rich and poor countries in tackling climate change is reaching a boiling point.

Rich countries in North America and Europe, which have built their economies on oil, natural gas and coal, are calling for drastic cuts in burning these fuels. Leaders of poorer nations, particularly in Africa, are urging lenience for their still-developing economies.

Amy Harder is launching Cipher, by Breakthrough Energy, on Sept. 29 (Details from Sara Fischer here). To keep following Amy, sign up for her weekly newsletter.

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7. 📚 Out today: Evan Osnos on America's fury


Cover: Farrar, Straus and Giroux

 

One of the books of the year ... "Wildland," by The New Yorker's Evan Osnos, draws the backstory to America's rage through deep reporting and "thousands of hours of conversations" in three places he lived before D.C.:

  • Greenwich, where he grew up ... Clarksburg, W.Va., where he was a young photog for The Exponent Telegram ... and Chicago, where he was a metro reporter for The Tribune before becoming Beijing correspondent.
  • "This book is the story of a crucible, a period bounded by two assaults on the country's sense of itself" — 9/11 and 1/6, Osnos writes.

"Reporting this book spanned six years, 10,172 miles, and the arrival of two kids," Evan tells me.

The moment I knew I had to write this book was August 6, 2015 — the night of the first Republican presidential debate, which I watched at the home of some Trump supporters in Ohio. The host was drinking from a coffee cup with a swastika on it. I had absolutely no expectation that Trump would win, but I decided that a pre-history of Trump would be vitally necessary someday, to understand how he became remotely possible in American politics.

After Trump won, Osnos realized that the best way to write about that era in Washington "was by getting outside of it, by documenting how he was reverberating through this country":

I had no idea when the book would end. But standing at the foot of the Capitol on Jan. 6, reporting for The New Yorker, I knew this project had reached its conclusion. In the book, I write of that moment: "The scene unfolding at the Capitol was like an inferno powered by the cynicism, unreason, and deception in U.S. politics."

More on "Wildland."

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8. Hyper-politics boosts civics
Data: Annenberg Public Policy Center. Chart: Will Chase/Axios

Americans know more about the three branches of government than ever before, likely due to the massive increase of politics in our media diets, Axios Media Trends expert Sara Fischer writes.

  • "This knowledge appears to have been purchased at a real cost," said Kathleen Hall Jamieson, director of Penn's Annenberg Public Policy Center. "It was a contentious year in which the branches of government were stress-tested."

An annual civics study by the Annenberg Center finds that a more polarized society knows more about the basics of government.

  • In 2021, 56% of Americans were able to name all three branches of government, up from 33% in 2006.

🤦‍♀️ More than half of Americans (61%) incorrectly said that the First Amendment requires Facebook to let all Americans express themselves freely on its platform.

  • Nearly half of Americans (49%) believe it's accurate that arresting the Jan. 6 Capitol rioters violates their constitutional rights.

Share this story.

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9. First look: New push on entrepreneurial equity


Amaya Smith, founder of Product Junkie, prepares orders for online customers. Photo: Cheriss May/Bloomberg via Getty Images

 

A new partnership between the National Urban League and the moderate Democratic think tank Third Way aims to help level the playing field for women and minority entrepreneurs, Axios' Hope King writes.

  • The initiative, Alliance for Entrepreneurial Equity, seeks to create an agenda of policies that will eventually be supported by Congress and President Biden.
  • Expected to be on that agenda: Equalizing access to capital, networks and markets for minority and women entrepreneurs. 

Keep reading.

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10. Pics du jour
Photo: Evan Agostini/Invision/AP

Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-N.Y.) wore the purple, white and gold of the suffrage movement, with sashes promoting equality.

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A message from Amazon

Amazon hiring 40,000 corporate and tech jobs
 
Encyclopaedia Britannica | On This Day
September 14
Dante

FEATURED BIOGRAPHY


Dante

Italian poet

READ MORE
Mexican-American War

FEATURED EVENT


1847

Mexico City captured by U.S. forces

READ MORE
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MORE EVENTS ON THIS DAY

Patrick Swayze

Bud Selig

The Golden Girls

Rainier III, prince de Monaco, and Grace, princesse de Monaco

St. Elizabeth Ann Seton

Isadora Duncan

ALSO BORN ON THIS DAY
















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Trigger Warnings (And Other Stupid Things Democrats Do)

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Americans Should Be Working Hard, Not Hardly Working

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Who and What Is Tearing the US Apart?

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Very Concerning Evidence of Vote Fraud in California Recall Election

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Yes, Ocasio-Cortez Really Wanted to Send This Message at a Ritzy Gala

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'The Atlantic' Scoop: Almost Half Of Covid Hospitalizations Are Exactly What You Suspected They Were

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White House Cuts Live Stream of Biden Mid-Sentence as He Asks a Question

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FEC: Twitter Did Not Violate Any Laws by Censoring the NY Post's Hunter Biden Story

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I’m Running for Congress in Wyoming Because Liz Cheney Has Betrayed us

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Keep the Air Force Flying, Fighting, and Winning with Less Expensive, Safer Tankers

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The Withdrawal from Afghanistan was the Biggest Foreign Policy Blunder in American History

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Is Biden’s Incompetence Sowing the Seeds of Military Unrest in America?

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$80 Billion in New IRS Funding Will Open Taxpayers Up to Harassment and Abuse

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Government Intervention in Drug Pricing Is Bad News for Healthcare

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Alcohol Prohibitionists Never Went Away, They Now Advise the WHO

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Who Are the Afghan Refugees Biden Has Allowed Into America?

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Despite Raisi’s Suppression, Iran’s Opposition Is on the Rise

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Uh, Did We Just Send a Ransom Payment to the Taliban?

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DeSantis Promises Fines for Local Governments Implementing Vaccine Mandates

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Amy Coney Barrett Says the Supreme Court Is 'Not Comprised of a Bunch of Partisan Hacks'

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