August 21, 2020

📬 Happy Friday! Situational awareness: Postmaster General Louis DeJoy, who testifies on the Senate side today, "has mapped out far more sweeping changes to the U.S. Postal Service than previously disclosed, considering [post-election] actions that could lead to slower mail delivery in parts of the country and higher prices," the WashPost reports.

🇷🇺 "Russian doctors say leading opposition figure Alexei Navalny remains too ill to be transferred to Germany for treatment after a possible poisoning." BBC

1 big thing: Biden offers himself as "ally of the light"

Supporters cheer from their cars as fireworks light up the parking lot of the Chase Center in Wilmington, Del., after Joe Biden's acceptance speech. Photo: Carolyn Kaster/AP

In last night's acceptance speech, Joe Biden never said President Trump's name. The former vice president used the biggest stage of his 50 years in politics to humanize himself, with the intended subtext: "I am you. You are me."

  • If you didn’t know anything about Biden before last night, you’d remember four things: He conquered a childhood stutter, he lost his wife and daughter [Corrected], found redemption and joy in Jill, then encountered grief again when Beau died.

Why it matters: A country burying its dead is being offered a chance to hire someone who knows how to grieve, Axios' Hans Nichols points out.

  • The Biden campaign thinks the election will hinge on the coronavirus response.

Biden set his priorities — as well as expectations — by saying he would do on the coronavirus "what we should have done from the very beginning."

  • "We'll put the politics aside and take the muzzle off our experts so the public gets the information they need and deserve. The honest, unvarnished truth. They can deal with that."
  • "We'll have a national mandate to wear a mask — not as a burden, but to protect each other. It's a patriotic duty."

Between the lines: From the perspective of Trump aides, Biden did everything they wish he wouldn't, Axios' Alayna Treene reports.

  • He didn’t stumble or jumble, making it more difficult for Republicans to attack him as unfit.
  • "Morning" Joe Scarborough called Biden's tone "Reaganesque."

Biden said he "will be an ally of the light":

The current president has cloaked America in darkness for much too long. Too much anger. Too much fear. Too much division. ...
May history be able to say that the end of this chapter of American darkness began here tonight as love and hope and light joined in the battle for the soul of the nation.

Grace note ... Axios' Margaret Talev texts: "Setting the fireworks after the speech to a song by Beau's favorite band, Coldplay, was a way for Biden to share the milestone with a child he had hoped might ascend to the presidency himself."

  • Axios' David Nather and Alexi McCammond contributed reporting.

See video from the speech.

🗞️ How it’s playing … 


2. Teen says Biden helped him overcome stutter

Photo: Democratic National Convention via AP

Brayden Harrington, 13, of Concord, N.H., spoke into a cellphone camera as he read, carefully, from a sheet of paper, AP's Will Weissert writes.

  • "We stutter," Brayden said in the video that aired shortly before Joe Biden's acceptance speech.
  • The teen got stuck briefly on the "s" sound, and bravely worked his way through the word. His face showed strain but determination.
  • "It's really amazing to hear that someone became vice president" despite stuttering, Brayden said. "He told me about a book of poems by Yeats that he would read out loud to practice."

Brayden and Biden met in February at a CNN town hall in Concord, where Biden spoke about overcoming a severe childhood stutter.

  • After the event, Biden invited Brayden backstage to talk more about learning to control a stutter. Biden noted that he'd practiced by speaking as he looked at himself in the mirror.
  • He also gave the boy a speech he'd prepared for delivery, complete with markings he'd made on its pages that showed where he had time to take breaks and pauses so that the words would come out more smoothly.

Brayden held up that speech for convention viewers.

  • "I'm just trying to be a kid," Brayden said. "And in a short amount of time, Joe Biden made me feel more confident about something that's bothered me my whole life. Joe Biden cared. Imagine what he could do for all of us."

See the video.

3. How Biden would change the game for CEOs

Nick Merrill and Dan Schwerin, co-founders of Evergreen Strategy Group, write in Fast Company that if Joe Biden wins, "expectations for what it takes to be a values-driven company will increase."

  • "Without the foil of President Trump, ... CEOs will have to back specific policy proposals, build coalitions, and put real political muscle behind their principles."

Merrill and Schwerin, who were top Hillary Clinton aides, have these lessons for the next phase of "stakeholder capitalism":

  1. "If Biden replaces Trump, there will be fewer easy chances to express outrage and more hard choices to make about specific policies and legislation that could become law."
  2. "CEOs who want to be seen as leaders will have to use their market power — not just their voice — to drive systemic change."
  3. "There’s going to be more scrutiny of companies when their campaign contributions and lobbying budgets contradict their stated values."

The bottom line: "Companies doubling down on their values right now are proving more resilient in the current crisis, just as they did in the last recession."

4. ⏰ Tale of the tape: The brevity convention

5. Hospitals suing patients in virus hotspots

Illustration: Annelise Capossela/Axios

Almost all of the roughly two dozen Community Health Systems hospitals in Florida, Texas and Arizona have sued patients since the pandemic began, Axios' Caitlin Owens reports.

  • Many paused or slowed down in the spring, but then resumed business as usual over the summer — when these states were being hit hardest.

Why it matters: The Americans least likely to be able to pay their medical bills are the same people who are vulnerable to the virus and its economic fallout.

  • Hospitals' aggressive legal actions against former patients were already deeply controversial before the pandemic — before millions of people lost their jobs, and in many cases their health insurance at the same time, or had their wages cut.

Go deeper.

6. Newsrooms address diversity failures

Illustration: Rebecca Zisser/Axios

Newsrooms around the U.S. are adding dozens of positions that involve covering race and social justice, as well as publishing statistics about their own staffs for the first time, reports Axios' Sara Fischer.

  • Why it matters: News organizations are realizing that they can't adequately cover the current state of affairs if their editorial teams don't reflect the changing dynamics of their readership and the nation.

The big picture: Some of the nation's biggest newspapers are getting on board, like the New York Times, The Washington Post and Gannett, which is  USA Today's parent company.

  • Broadcast isn't getting left behind either, as both CBS News and CNN launched initiatives to deepen their race and culture coverage this summer.

Share this story.

7. Where immigrants have voting power

Data: New American Economy; Chart: Axios Visuals

Immigrant voters could be pivotal this fall to election outcomes in some battleground suburbs, according to a new analysis of county-level Census data, writes Axios' Stef Kight.

  • Races to watch: Texas' 22nd district, Georgia's 7th and California's 39th, 45th, and 48th — all reach into counties where immigrants comprise around one in five eligible voters.

Why it matters: Foreign-born voters will make up nearly one-tenth of the electorate in 2020 — a record percentage.

8. Bannon in cuffs

Steve Bannon speaks with reporters outside court in New York yesterday. Photo: Eduardo Munoz Alvarez/AP

After his arrest on a 150-foot yacht, a handcuffed Steve Bannon wore a mask and two open-collared shirts in federal court in Manhattan as he pleaded not guilty to defrauding donors in a crowdfunding scheme, per Reuters.

  • Leaving the courthouse on $5 million bond, Bannon took off his mask and briefly addressed reporters before getting in a black SUV: "This entire fiasco is to stop people who want to build the wall."
Graphic: AP

Read the 24-page indictment.

9. Sneak peek: NRA insider recounts "shambles"

Cover: Twelve

Josh Powell, former chief of staff to longtime NRA leader Wayne LaPierre, writes in "Inside the NRA" — out Sept. 8 from Twelve — that the pro-gun group botched its response to the Parkland shooting of 2018, when "for the first time, parents and politicians began to fight back in a bigger, more organized way":

Wayne went on the attack, blaming Democrats, the FBI, and socialism for the tragic shootings. ... Six years after Sandy Hook, it felt like we had done nothing to stop the violence and prevent shootings like Parkland from happening. And now the frustration boiled over, as the survivors of Parkland took to the airwaves to plead for an end to the violence, to plead on behalf of their slain classmates. ... [T]he NRA offered its standard playbook and the party line.

Powell says he realized he had "become the cover‑up, or at least an accomplice":

[T]he waste and dysfunction at the NRA was staggering, costing the organization and its members hundreds of millions of dollars over the years. ... [T]here are so many ways that membership money went up in smoke. ... I’d come to believe I’d failed the team. ... I’d lost the larger plot and was overtaken with just winning the fight at all costs. ... To me, the NRA has completely shirked its obligations to gun owners, citizens, and the children of our country.

Go deeper: N.Y. Times (subscription), "Insider’s Book Calls N.R.A. 'Rife With Fraud.'"

10. Food trucks move to the burbs

Julie and Greg Schwab order from the Dreamy Drinks boba tea truck near the suburb of Lynnwood, Wash., north of Seattle. Photo: Ted S. Warren/AP

Long seen as an urban treasure, food trucks are now being saved by the suburbs now that they can't depend on bustling city centers, AP's Sally Ho writes.

  • They're finding a captive audience thrilled to skip cooking dinner, sample new kinds of cuisines and mingle with neighbors.

Weekday lunchtime business is the bulk of the revenue for an average food truck, which may make $800 to $1,200 a day, said Matt Geller, president of the National Food Truck Association.

  • In the suburbs, the trucks focus on dinner and add kid-friendly options.

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