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Police treating Barcelona van incident as act of terror

Oriol Duran / AP

In what Spanish police have branded an act of terror, a van slammed into a crowd in Barcelona's Las Ramblas district this afternoon, killing at least one person and injuring at least 32 — with the number of dead expected to rise, according to government officials — per the AP.

What we know:

  • Spain's public broadcaster is reporting that a suspect has been arrested, though that has not been confirmed by police.
  • If confirmed as terrorism, it would continue a trend utilizing vehicles in extremist attacks across the West with notable recent instances in London, Nice, Berlin, and Stockholm.
President Trump has responded:

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Featured

Trump's 7 months of self-destruction

Evan Vucci / AP

President Trump, with at least two years of full Republican control of government at the national and state levels, has systematically damaged or destroyed his relationship with — well, almost every group or individual essential to success.

This has left him on an island inhabited by a shrinking band of true-believer voters, who can help win an election, but can do nothing to help him exploit the power he's wasting:

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  • Yesterday's mass exodus of CEOs from his outside business councils was an unusually abrupt sign of the 210 days of rot and erosion in his support.
  • A vivid demonstration of the sudden abandonment of Trump, via CNN's Brian Stelter: Shep Smith said he couldn't get a single Republican to go on Fox News to defend Trump. On MSNBC, Chuck Todd said he "invited every single Republican senator on this program tonight, all 52," plus a dozen House GOPers. None would do it. On CNN, Kate Bolduan said bookers called 55 Republicans, and only one said yes.
  • Why it matters: Trump's undisciplined and incendiary style has left the most powerful man in the world with few friends — not onein the United States Senate, for instance.

Trump started with a pretty clean slate but has methodically alienated:

  • The public: Gallup has his approval at 34%, down from 46% just after the inauguration.
  • Republican congressional leaders — Senate Majority Mitch McConnell in particular.
  • Every Democrat who could help him do a deal.
  • The media.
  • CEOs.
  • World leaders.
  • Europe.
  • Muslims.
  • Hispanics.
  • African Americans.
  • Military leaders.
  • The intelligence community.
  • His own staff.

And who's happy?

  • Steve Bannon.
  • Saudi Arabia.
  • Breitbart.
  • David Duke.

Be smart: The presidency is a lonely job. But Trump is unusually isolated because he thinks he needs no one besides himself. As one of his most ardent defenders told me: "He's just not as good as he thinks he is. And no one can tell him."

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Featured

CMS reaches EpiPen Medicaid agreement

(Andrew Harnik / AP)

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services announced today that it has struck a deal with Mylan to reclassify the EpiPen, which will save the Medicaid program hundreds of millions of dollars.

Context: Part of last year's controversy over the price of EpiPens included the device's classification under the Medicaid program. It was classified as a generic rather than a brand name drug, meaning it paid less in rebates to the program.

The agreement: Mylan will reclassify the EpiPen as a brand name drug, which will recalculate the amount it pays to the program in rebates starting retroactively in April 2017.

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Featured

Facebook updates video ad-buying options

Noah Berger / AP

Facebook will now let advertisers buy in-stream video ads separate from the News Feed, meaning they can buy in-stream video ads (mid-roll and pre-roll) on Facebook's audience network without having to buy them on Facebook itself. Facebook's audience network is basically a huge pool of data across all of Facebook's platforms (Messenger, Facebook, Instagram) that can be overlaid onto ads to target them to specific people.

Why it matters: It gives advertisers a lot more flexibility and control on where they can buy video ads, which makes ad campaigns easier to customize to reach certain marketing objectives. This essentially allows advertisers to tell more complex, customizable messages through video.

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A good thing to know: Facebook only lets mid-roll ads (ads that show up in the middle of a video) on the Facebook News Feed — not pre-roll, because Facebook is built for video discovery, and people are less likely to engage/discover new videos if there's a pre-roll ad (an ad before the video starts). But off-platform, where people are committed to longer videos and would be wiling to watch an ad to get to their content, pre-roll ads make sense. (You can buy pre-roll or mid-roll ads off of Facebook with this new update.)

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Featured

Facebook cracks down on spammy videos

Facebook is cracking down on spammy and misleading videos by down-ranking videos with fake play buttons or ones with static images in the News Feed. The crackdown will officially roll out in the next few weeks.

Why it matters: Those tactics are annoying and misleading for consumers, (you think you're watching a real video but you're not), and they're typically used by scammers trying to game the system by driving traffic to a low-quality, spammy web pages. Facebook product manager Greg Mara says that good publishers won't see any major change, but they may see a small bump as a result of Facebook weeding out spammy content.

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How it works:

  • When Facebook catches a video link with fake play buttons or a long static image instead of an actual video, they'll be pulling them further down in the feed using a technique called "motion scoring."
  • Facebook built a proprietary system using machine learning to identify what these fake/misleading videos look like so they can automatically down-rank them in the feed.
  • According Mara, Facebook won't notify spammy publishers when they're being targeted, so as to avoid giving them information to be able to game the system even further.

Why don't they just remove these posts? The reason Facebook would remove posts is if they violate community standards. These posts don't necessarily violate standards, but they distrust the consumer experience. "We see category of publishers on Facebook not interested in building a category of readers and will do whatever tactic get them to a low-quality web experience," says Mara. Facebook's hoping the new motion scoring technique will solve for that.

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Expert Voices Featured

What we still don't know about the Sun

Rebecca Zisser / Axios

When the Moon dims the Sun for a few minutes next week, scientists will get a rare view of our star. Studying an eclipse seems almost quaint — we have telescopes that continuously observe the Sun and NASA is sending a probe to it next year. What further knowledge can we gain?

We asked four researchers what we still don't know about the Sun and what might be learned from next week's solar eclipse:

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Featured

With strong earnings, Walmart continues its battle with Amazon

Walmart reported earnings and sales that beat expectations for the second quarter this year, with same-store sales growing for U.S. stores 60%, CNBC reports. Revenue was at $123.36 billion compared to an estimated $122.84 billion. Earnings were at $1.08 a share.

Why it matters: Walmart is largely avoiding the struggles hitting the rest of the industry — its size and scale enable it to compete on price with Amazon.

Data: Money.net; Chart: Andrew Witherspoon / Axios
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Context: E-commerce sales were up 63%, compared to 29% growth the previous quarter following Walmart's acquisition of internet retailer Jet. Plus, as CNBC's Lauren Thomas writes, "These days, Walmart and Amazon.com are neck and neck on pricing."

What to watch: Walmart's retail rival, Target, had a report recently that topped expectations in digital sales growth.

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Featured

Trump publicly defends “beautiful” Confederate statues

In a series of three tweets over 14 minutes this morning, President Trump doubled down on his controversial rhetoric from his Tuesday press conference, calling the removal of Confederate statues a contributing factor to "the history and culture of our great country being ripped apart."

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Featured

Lindsey Graham to Trump on white nationalist support: "fix this"

In a string of tweets, Sen. Lindsey Graham told President Trump that he needs to "fix this" because "history is watching us all" after Trump accused him this morning of putting forth a "disgusting lie" regarding Trump's response to the violence in Charlottesville.

Read the rest of Graham's tweetstorm.

Worth checking out: Mike Allen and Jim VandeHei on Trump's 7 months of self-destruction.

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Featured

Most Americans think Trump wasn't strong enough on Charlottesville

Pablo Martinez Monsivais / AP

A majority of Americans (52%) believe that President Trump's response to last weekend's violence in Charlottesville following a white nationalist rally was not strong enough, per an NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist poll.

  • The timing: 80% of the poll was completed after Tuesday's explosive press conference where Trump doubled down on his earlier assertion that "both sides" were responsible for the violence in Charlottesville.
  • Bipartisan consensus: While most questions in the poll predictably broke down along partisan lines, a majority of Democrats and Republicans — even those who identify specifically as Trump voters — branded the car attack that resulted in the death of Heather Heyer an act of domestic terrorism.
  • Another stat: A majority of Americans believe that Confederate statues should remain as a historical symbol, an opinion supported by an overwhelming majority of Republicans (86%-6%) and even a significant minority of Democrats (44%-47%).
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Featured

Trump attacks 2 GOP senators in early-morning tweets

Trump called out two GOP senators this morning on Twitter — first Lindsey Graham for being "Publicity seeking," then Jeff Flake for being "WEAK."

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Featured

Putin more trusted than Trump worldwide

Alexei Nikolsky / Sputnik, Kremlin Pool Photo via AP

The Pew Research Center conducted a poll that shows citizens trust Russian President Vladimir Putin more than Trump to do the right thing for the world. That's a huge international rap on Trump.

Stack it up: Japan, South Korea, Venezuela, Mexico, Germany, France, Greece, and Turkey all have more confidence in Putin.

Keep it in perspective: Putin only got a global median of 26% confidence. And it's not all bad for Trump — Israel, Britain, Canada, Australia, Philippines, and Poland all favored Trump over Putin.

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