Axios

Nike shares fell more than 3% on Tuesday after the company announced a new ad campaign featuring Colin Kaepernick — the first NFL player to kneel during the national anthem.

Why it matters: It's the type of news that analysts would typically write research reports on, especially given the stock reaction, but Axios could find only one major investment firm that issued a client note specifically on this topic.

Labor Day has traditionally marked the official start of midterm Congressional campaigning as voters settle into their fall routines and start watching more TV (where they could see a deluge of campaign ads). Not anymore.

The bottom line: Democrats have been protesting since President Trump's election. The Democratic Party jumped in early this cycle to harness that energy into voting, but Republicans were watching that too — forcing both parties to start their midterm campaigning earlier than ever before.

U.S. entitlement spending is increasingly going to the middle class, according to newly released data by the Congressional Budget Office.

Why it matters: As wages have remained stagnant, more people can't afford middle-class basics, and income inequality grows, the middle class is increasingly relying on the federal safety net, according to the new report by Brookings Institutions' Future of the Middle Class Initiative. "It is a mistake, now, to think of welfare as something just for the poor," Richard Reeves, the report's author tells Axios.

In an internal memo sent Monday, NBC News chairman Andy Lack defended the organization's decision not to publish Ronan Farrow's reporting on Harvey Weinstein.

Key quote: "Farrow’s award-winning New Yorker article about Weinstein – published nearly two months after he left NBC News and five days after The New York Times piece – bore little resemblance to the draft script he produced at NBC News."

New Yorker editor David Remnick issued a statement Monday disinviting former White House adviser Steve Bannon from its annual festival, following intense backlash on social media from members of the public and some of the event's other speakers.

The details: John Mulaney, Judd Apatow and Jim Carrey are among those who tweeted they would withdraw from the event after learning that Bannon was a headliner. In his statement, Remnick said that while he believes hearing from Bannon could be valuable because of the influence he has exerted on President Trump's rhetoric and way of thinking, he now understands that the festival may not be the best setting for such an interview.

Amid gridlock in boardrooms and Congress on proposals to improve worker pay and employment conditions, state governments have taken the lead, forcing companies to raise minimums and add benefits.

The big picture: Most states have enacted minimum wages exceeding the federal $7.25-an-hour rate that's been in place for nine years. But there is a wide range of hourly rates and working conditions, and none of the state minimums provides a living wage for a family, says Oxfam in a new national study.

Citing violations of the Official Secrets Act, a court in Myanmar has sentenced two Reuters journalists to seven years in prison. They were arrested last December while investigating the deaths of 10 Rohingya Muslims.

Why it matters: A UN report last week accused Myanmar's military of "killing indiscriminately, gang raping women, assaulting children, and burning entire villages." It called for genocide charges. An estimated 700,000 Rohingya have fled Myanmar to seek refuge in Bangladesh. The global attention on the crisis is due largely to investigative journalism by reporters like Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo — now facing long jail terms for doing their jobs.

Television executives seeking talents to diversify their writing staffs in Hollywood are having difficulty finding experienced people of color and women, writes the New York Times' Cara Buckley, who concluded that it’s a “problem of the industry’s own making."

By the numbers: Network executives and others acknowledged to Buckley that scrutiny such as #OscarsSoWhite is largely responsible for the current push for more diverse candidates. But in the 2016-17 season, with more than 200 series, only 13.7% of television writers were people of color, reports Buckley. More than nine of 10 with creative and management control were white, and 80% were male.