National

Men in Blazers looks to double podcast slate

Media deals

After a record economic expansion, the coronavirus pandemic sent the U.S. economy into a recession as unemployment soared to staggering heights. The country now faces urgent questions about how much stimulus is needed for reeling consumers and businesses, and what a recovery might look like.

Economy & Business

9 killed after 2 Army helicopters crash near Fort Campbell, Kentucky

Military

President Biden has made the COVID-19 crisis and a post-Trump return to national unity and traditional democratic ideals his top priorities. From vaccinations to stimulus to schools, Biden is seeking bipartisan compromise while showing a willingness to use executive authority and bare Democratic majorities in the U.S. House and Senate to implement his policies. Republican leaders are navigating deep party divisions over if and how to move beyond former President Trump.

Politics & Policy

Russia detains WSJ reporter in first spy charges against U.S. journalist since Cold War

Russia

China is becoming the most formidable rival America has faced, and the risk of confrontation with Russia, North Korea or Iran still looms. Authoritarians are rising, the chaotic Afghanistan exit revealed the limits of U.S. power, and the pandemic, climate change and other critical challenges continue to pose grave threats.

World

Americans aren't taking all of their paid time off from work

Employment

Bolsonaro returns to Brazil after self-imposed exile in Florida

Jair Bolsonaro

Venture capital fund formed to focus on dementia treatment startups

Venture capital

The U.S. faces a range of health care flashpoints — unaffordable drugs, opioids, vaping — as we debate whether to adopt universal care. For now, the Affordable Care Act is the law of the land, but Republicans want to issue it a final death blow.

Health

Michelin backs big tire recycling venture in Europe

Private equity

Ominous forecasts about the impact of climate change serve as the backdrop for the world — led by U.S. lawmakers and companies — to debate big action on the problem, which could upend energy systems and our way of life.

Energy & Environment

What to know about Narcan after FDA approved over-the-counter sale

Opioid addiction

At least nine soldiers were killed after two Army helicopters flying out of Fort Campbell crashed on Wednesday night in Trigg County, Kentucky, officials said Thursday. 

Details: Those killed were crewmembers of two HH60 Blackhawk helicopters who were flying for a routine training exercise before the crash around 10pm ET Wednesday.

Photo: Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear/Twitter

U.S. Army Fort Campbell said in a statement earlier Thursday the incident was being investigated and further information would be released when available.

A military official said Thursday the helicopters were medical evac variants of the Blackhawk.

What they're saying: "Today is a tough and tragic day for Kentucky, for Fort Campbell and the 101st," Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear, a Democrat, said Thursday.

Context: Fort Campbell, located on the Kentucky–Tennessee border, is home to the 101st Airborne Division, the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment, the 5th Special Forces Group and several other units.

The 101st Airborne Division is the only air assault division of the U.S. Army and has engaged in combat and contingency missions around the world, according to a statement on the Army's website.

Editor's note: This story has been updated with additional details throughout.

Those killed were crewmembers of two HH60 Blackhawk helicopters.

Andy Beshear, governor of Kentucky, speaks during a news conference in Frankfort, Kentucky, U.S., on Thursday, Jan. 27, 2022. 

Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear. Photo: Jon Cherry/Bloomberg via Getty Images

Denver

Denver Members

Axios Denver Deep Dive

Denver Alerts

Picture of the Denver skyline with DEN written across it.

Get smarter, faster about what’s happening in your backyard with local reporters John Frank and Alayna Alvarez.

Axios Denver Thought Bubble

Axios Denver

A guide to fun things to do in Denver this weekend.

Axios Denver Weekender

Tampa Bay

Tampa Members

Axios Tampa Bay Deep Dive

Axios Tampa Bay Thought Bubble

Picture of the Tampa Bay skyline with TPA written across it.

Get smarter, faster about what’s happening in your backyard with local reporter Selene San Felice.

Axios Tampa Bay

Opening Day sets off baseball's season of change

To decrease the length of games and increase the action, MLB made four major rule changes.

Sports

Shifts in technology and media are changing the way we play, watch and understand sports. Business models are adapting and social change is forcing those in charge of teams and leagues to reconsider decades-old practices.

Axios AM

Texas was home to six of the top 10 largest-growing counties in 2022, according to Census Bureau data out this morning.

Why it matters: America's shift in money, people and power to the Sun Belt — propelled by COVID — is continuing even as the pandemic eases.

Driving the news: The largest gainer was Maricopa County, Ariz. (Phoenix). The other three entries on the top 10 growth counties list (numerically, as opposed to percentage growth) were in Florida — Polk, Lee and Hillsborough counties.

After the Phoenix area, the second-biggest gainer was Harris County, Texas — home of Houston.

Collin County, Texas, a northern suburb of Dallas, ranked third in numeric population rise between July 2021 and July 2022. 

The two largest counties in numeric decline were L.A. County and Cook County, Ill., where the county seat is Chicago. 

But those also remain the most populous U.S. counties, followed by Harris County, Texas (Houston).

Two megatrends, from a Wall Street Journal analysis of the data:

"Big cities lost fewer residents last year as more immigrants moved in." (This was evident in Manhattan, Seattle, Dallas and two South Florida counties, Miami-Dade and Broward.)

"The suburbs of big cities and small and medium-size metropolitan areas continued to claim most of the country’s growth."

Fun fact: Manhattan, which had a population decline of 98,505 in 2021, rebounded by 17,472 in the year ending July 2021.

Go deeper: See a U.S. map: Percentage change in county population, '21 to '22

New data: America's Sun Belt shift continues as COVID eases

Texas was home to six of the top 10 largest-growing counties in 2022.

A new interchange is being built on the site of the former Dallas Cowboys stadium in Irving, Texas. Photo: John Moore/Getty Images

Census

An open letter calling for a six-month "pause" in work on advanced artificial intelligence is dividing the tech industry — not just between AI boosters and skeptics, but also between different factions of AI's critics.

Driving the news: The letter — initially signed by Elon Musk, Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak and other industry luminaries — urged "a stepping back from the dangerous race to ever-larger unpredictable black-box models with emergent capabilities."

Specifically, it said that AI labs should "immediately pause for at least 6 months the training of AI systems more powerful than GPT-4," the latest version of OpenAI's large language model, which it released two weeks ago.

What they're saying: The tech world was abuzz over the letter Wednesday, but not many expected to see either a voluntary industry slowdown or a government-mandated "pause" any time soon.

"There are no literal proposals in the actual moratorium," Box CEO Aaron Levie told Axios' Ina Fried on stage at the Axios What's Next Summit Wednesday. "It was just, 'Let's now spend the time to get together and work on this issue.' But it was signed by people that have been working on this issue for the past decade."

"There's a lot of conversation about, 'Let's pull the plug,' but I'm not sure there is a single plug," Arati Prabhakar, director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, said in another interview by Ina at What's Next. Last fall OSTP unveiled its "Blueprint for an AI Bill of Rights."

Between the lines: The letter was organized by the Future of Life Institute, a nonprofit dedicated to "steering transformative technology...away from extreme large-scale risks."

The letter's argument roughly represents the position of "longtermist" AI critics, like Musk, who have been sounding alarms for more than a decade.

This view, initially laid out by philosopher Nick Bostrom and later embraced by many tech insiders, warns that an AI might end up — either through human malice or engineering error — with both the goal of destroying humanity and the power to achieve its aim.

Another camp of AI critics maintains that the letter and its advocates are inflating the power of large language models like OpenAI's.

ChatGPT is nowhere close to being the kind of "artificial general intelligence" (AGI) that might threaten humanity, they say — it's just auto-complete on steroids.

Worrying about some distant apocalypse draws our attention away from more immediate harms — including biased recommendations and misinformation — that are already occurring from AI systems now in use by government and private companies.

Emily Bender, a linguistics professor at the University of Washington who has been at the forefront of AI criticism in recent years, tweeted that the open letter was "dripping with #AIHype."

Of note: OpenAI itself has warned of the need to hedge against AI's dangers.

In a February blog post, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman wrote, "Some people in the AI field think the risks of AGI (and successor systems) are fictitious; we would be delighted if they turn out to be right, but we are going to operate as if these risks are existential."

Yes, but: Another vocal contingent in tech views the whole case for an AI pause as fundamentally at odds with the tech industry's entrepreneurial spirit and drive to innovate. 

"The sky is not falling, and Skynet is not on the horizon," Daniel Castro, director of the Center for Data Innovation at the industry-funded Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, said in a statement. 

"However, AI advances have the potential to create enormous social and economic benefits across the economy and society," Castro argues. "Rather than hitting pause on the technology, and allowing China to gain an advantage, the United States and its allies should continue to pursue advances in all branches of AI research."

Computer scientist Andrew Ng, an AI veteran, tweeted, "There is no realistic way to implement a moratorium and stop all teams from scaling up LLMs, unless governments step in. Having governments pause emerging technologies they don’t understand is anti-competitive, sets a terrible precedent, and is awful innovation policy." 

Our thought bubble: The dynamics of startup capitalism and tech investment make the kind of coordination and restraint an AI "pause" would require extremely unlikely. Washington's political gridlock and slow learning curve make government action equally unlikely, and global geopolitics are pushing the U.S. toward accelerating AI instead. 

AI's great "pause" debate

There's little agreement on whether, or how, companies might slow their race to develop the technology.

Illustration of binary numbers inside of speech bubbles.

Artificial intelligence

From the Valley to D.C., Big Tech players like Facebook, Google and Amazon are under more scrutiny than ever as new technology develops and privacy and antitrust concerns grow in lockstep with companies’ ambitions.

Technology

A life-saving opioid overdose treatment could soon be as common as Tylenol on retail store shelves. The question is whether making it more accessible will get it to the people who need it the most.

Why it matters: Wednesday's FDA approval of Narcan for over-the-counter  use has a financial cost. And if insurers or governments don't step up, addiction experts fear it could widen health disparities and undercut the FDA’s goals of addressing a "dire public health need."

The big picture: Health plans generally don't cover over-the-counter medications. And 1 in 5 people with opioid use disorder are uninsured anyhow, meaning they might have to pony up for a two-pack of Narcan that's ranged in price from about $50 to $100 in recent years.

Without outreach, people in need may not even know Narcan no longer requires a prescription, said Sarah Scarborough, director of Real Life in Richmond, Virginia, which serves individuals with substance use disorders.

Driving the news: The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, the American Medical Association and some lawmakers are already calling on payers to prioritize making the spray affordable.

A Portland, Oregon, nonprofit this week noted that Narcan can cost $90 per dose and that three to four doses may be required to revive a person because the strength of the fentanyl on the streets now, KGW8 reported.

Nabarun Dasgupta, a researcher at the University of North Carolina's Injury Prevention Research Center, said he estimates a two-pack of Narcan's nasal spray could go for roughly $40 when it hits the shelves this summer.

But the manufacturer, Emergent BioSolutions, hasn't disclosed a list price for the OTC version, though it's vowed to make Narcan accessible.

What they're saying: "If the antidote is four times more expensive than a $10 bag of fentanyl, then the ability for people who actually need naloxone to get it is diminished," Dasgupta told Axios.

"What would've made better sense is to have a comprehensive national policy on this that covers the insurance uncertainty," Dasgupta said, similar to how the federal government managed the coverage of rapid tests.

States could use their opioid response dollars to subsidize the cost, to ensure those at highest risk can get it, said Sarah Wakeman, Mass General's medical director for substance use disorder.

They are also able to take up legislation to limit Narcan's pricing, similar to how some are working to cap the cost of EpiPens, said John Cawley, a health economist at Cornell University.

Zoom in: There's a likelihood that Narcan's price comes down without the need for a prescription, said Cato Institute senior fellow Jeffrey Singer.

"Once it goes over-the-counter, the profit margins are going to drop," Singer told Axios. "It'll get even better when generic over-the-counter becomes available because people can comparison shop."

The bottom line: The reality is there may be people who aren't going to pick it up "unless it's free and easy," said Bonnie Milas, a cardiac anesthesiologist at University of Pennsylvania who has championed widened naloxone access for years.

But, Milas told Axios: "Anyone who suffers an overdose should have an equal chance of survival."

Axios health editor Tina Reed contributed to this report.

Go Deeper: Listen to the Axios Today podcast, where host Niala Boodhoo dives into the FDA's approval of Narcan.

Why over-the-counter Narcan may not reach those most in need

If insurers or governments don't step up, addiction experts fear it could widen health disparities and undercut the FDA's goals of addressing a "dire public health need."

Photo illustration collage of a Narcan package falling out of a plastic shopping bag in front of a background showing a gas station

Photo illustration: Annelise Capossela/Axios. Photos: Scott Olson, Spencer Platt/Getty Images

Opioid epidemic

A map of the contiguous U.S. showing winter 2022-23 precipitation anomalies from the 1991-2020 average. Data: NOAA; Map: Axios Visuals 

Much of California and the midwestern United States just had some of the wettest winter weather on record, per data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. 

The opposite was true in the Pacific Northwest and in parts of Texas and Florida, which were significantly drier than average.

Why it matters: Wintertime precipitation can cause hazardous conditions from blizzards and ice storms, which prevent travel and knock out power — but it can also alleviate drought, especially in mountainous areas that rely on melting snowpack each spring to replenish groundwater supplies.

Driving the news: It's no surprise that several California towns set or came close to setting new wintertime precipitation records considering the frequent strong storms affecting the Golden State in recent months.

Much of California's precipitation lately has been driven by atmospheric rivers — "long, narrow highways of moisture, typically located at about 10,000 to 15,000 feet above the surface," as Axios' Andrew Freedman writes in this helpful explainer.

That California is getting so much precipitation is easing concerns about drought there somewhat.

Still, what's fallen so far is nowhere near enough to fully resolve the water crisis that continues to plague the American West.

Zoom in: Minneapolis had its second-wettest winter on record, with about 6.4 inches of precipitation — around 3.5 inches more than normal (this includes the water contained in snowfall).

San Francisco had its third-wettest, with a whopping 22.4 inches — nearly 10.4 inches more than usual.

Naples, Florida, meanwhile, had its driest winter on record, with just 0.95 inches of precipitation — about 3.5 inches below average. 

Of note: For this analysis, "winter" is defined as Dec. 1, 2022 – Feb. 28, 2023.

The bottom line: Climate change is raising the odds and severity of precipitation extremes — both heavy rain and snow as well as prolonged and severe dry spells.

However, it doesn't mean every season, or even every year, will set a new all-time record.

This winter was wetter than usual from California to Minnesota

Parts of California and the midwestern U.S. just got some of their wettest winters on record.

Weather

President Biden's plans to sign a resolution ending the COVID national emergency has some House Democrats once again simmering over the White House's communications.

Why it matters: The latest flare-up of tensions threatens to reopen wounds created earlier this month over D.C. crime and immigration.

"It's, like, kindergarten-level cooperation," Rep. Abigail Spanberger (D-Va.) told Axios.

Yes, but: The White House and some in Congress argue the administration has been doing a better job looping in House Democrats recently.

Rep. Dean Phillips (D-Minn.) said he “probably wouldn’t have” changed his vote, telling Axios, “The issue wasn’t the specific date, the issue was giving enough time to make this transition.”

Driving the news: The Senate voted 68-23 on Wednesday to pass the GOP-led resolution, with dozens of Democrats backing the measure after being told Biden wouldn't veto it.

A White House official confirmed Biden's plans, telling Axios that while he still "strongly opposes" the resolution, "If this bill comes to his desk ... he will sign it."

The backdrop: The White House Office of Management and Budget said in an official statement of administration policy in January, shortly before the House voted on the resolution, that the administration planned to end the national emergency on May 11.

The statement argued the resolution is a "grave disservice to the American people" but didn't explicitly threaten a veto.

The House voted days later to pass the resolution, with 11 Democrats voting for it and 197 Democrats voting against it.

What they’re saying: "It's an unacceptable lack of clarity, at best," Rep. Dan Kildee (D-Mich.), a member of Democratic leadership, told Axios. 

"I never have any concern about being on the opposite side of the White House on a policy question," he said. "But the lack of clear information, the lack of clarity in messaging, it's not productive. It's very unhelpful."

The other side: White House and House Democratic aides say the White House's dialogue has improved since Biden announced plans to sign a resolution overturning a D.C. crime law after the House voted on it.

A leadership aide cited the White House’s clear and timely telegraphing of their position on a GOP energy bill this week as an example of progress.

The White House official also argued the COVID vote is far more symbolic than the crime vote, noting that it would lift the less impactful of the two COVID emergencies just a few weeks earlier than planned.

The big picture: "How are you supposed to develop some sort of level of trust when ... they say one thing and do another?" said Spanberger, who felt burned on D.C. crime.

"I know my House colleagues would really appreciate getting a heads up from the White House," Rep. Angie Craig (D-Minn.), who backed both measures, told Axios,  "I think it would be really helpful to have as clear information from the White House as possible."

Biden leaves House Dems fuming again over COVID emergency

"It's, like, Kindergarten-level cooperation."

Latest stories

All top stories

9 killed after 2 Army helicopters crash near Fort Campbell, Kentucky

Russia detains WSJ reporter in first spy charges against U.S. journalist since Cold War

Opening Day sets off baseball's season of change

New data: America's Sun Belt shift continues as COVID eases

AI's great "pause" debate

Why over-the-counter Narcan may not reach those most in need

This winter was wetter than usual from California to Minnesota

Biden leaves House Dems fuming again over COVID emergency

Chinatowns nationwide resist gentrification

First look: White House seizes on McCarthy's budget comments

7 California Highway Patrol officers and nurse charged in custody death

Kentucky, West Virginia latest states to step up anti-trans push