In 2000, it was Florida, Florida, Florida. In 2024, it's Pennsylvania, Pennsylvania, Pennsylvania.

• Why it matters: Both presidential campaigns are treating Pennsylvania like the Ohios or Floridas of old — states where the winner is also the likely winner of the White House, Axios' Alex Thompson reports.

🔔 The Trump and Harris campaigns are set to spend more than twice as much on ads in Pennsylvania as in any of the six other swing states, according to an Axios analysis of AdImpact data.

• The focus on the Keystone State could help persuade Vice President Harris to pick Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro as her running-mate. She'll appear with her pick in Philadelphia on Tuesday.

💰 By the numbers: The Harris and Trump forces are pouring $210.9 million and counting into TV, digital, and radio ads in Pennsylvania in the eight months between the end of the Republican primary and Election Day, according to past spending and future bookings.

Zoom in: Michigan has the second most total expected spending at $98.6 million — $80.9 million for the Harris side and $17.7 million for Trump.

• After Pennsylvania, Trump's team has invested the most in Georgia, with $28.6 million set to be spent.

👀 What we're watching: When President Biden was at the top of the ticket, the Trump team saw Pennsylvania as a prime opportunity to break through the "Blue Wall" states in the Midwest, including Michigan and Wisconsin. Biden was increasingly dependent on those for victory as other swing states trended toward Trump.

• This past week, the Trump team for the first time began spending significant money on ads in North Carolina and Nevada, where polls previously showed comfortable leads.

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This time two years ago, seemingly every economist worth their salt was predicting a recession was imminent.

• They were wrong then. But that doesn't mean we're out of the woods now, Axios' Neil Irwin writes.

👀 Between the lines: There's a bit of a "boy who cried recession" phenomenon now. The fact that many forecasters made incorrect recession predictions two years ago is fueling complacency about the possibility that a serious downturn will arrive soon.

🥊 Reality check: Subtle but worrying signs in economic data over the past several weeks have shown cracks in what has been a robust post-pandemic expansion.

• The July jobs numbers, out yesterday, were the least subtle and most worrisome of them all.

What we're watching: Whether interest-rate cuts that the Fed is nearly certain to commence at its mid-September policy meeting will be enough to arrest the emerging economic weakening before it goes too far.

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Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin last night overrode a plea agreement reached earlier this week for the accused mastermind of the 9/11 terror attacks and two other defendants, reinstating them as death-penalty cases.

Catch up quick: Alleged plot leader Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and two accomplices were facing a death penalty trial at the U.S. military prison in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, over the attacks that killed 2,977 people.

• On Wednesday, they reached a pretrial agreement to plead guilty in exchange for life sentences at most.

But Austin wrote in an order released last night that "in light of the significance of the decision," he had decided that the authority to make a decision on accepting the plea agreements was his and nullified that deal, AP reports.

• Read the order.

Former President Trump's false new attack against Vice President Harris, questioning whether she can identify with more than one race, arrives at a time when the number of multiracial people in the U.S. is surging, Axios' Astrid Galván and Russell Contreras write.

• Why it matters: Trump's comments illuminate how some Americans consistently misunderstand the complexities of people from multiple racial and ethnic backgrounds, and how those identities shape their lives.

State of play: People who identify as multiracial, or more than one race, are among the fastest-growing segments of the U.S. population, according to the Census Bureau.

• The 2020 census found that those who identify as multiracial grew from 9 million in 2010 to 33.8 million a decade later — a 276% jump.

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The market's fading love affair with Big Tech has suddenly collided with a steady stream of worrying macro data, Axios' Pete Gannon writes.

• State of play: The tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite shed 2.4% yesterday, ending the day in correction territory from its recent high on July 10.

Intel, the chipmaker, jolted markets as well, falling hard after Thursday's massive earnings miss. Yesterday was the company's worst day on Wall Street in 50 years.

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A massive wildfire in northern California is a symptom of the American West's suffering from climate whiplash — oscillating between periods of extremely wet and dry conditions, Axios' Alison Snyder writes.

• Zoom in: The Park Fire that began in Butte County in northern California has burned more than 397,000 acres, making it the fourth-largest fire in California's history.

🔎 How it happened: Most of California wasn't in a drought at the start of the fire season.

• The majority of its reservoirs were above their average level from a wet winter punctuating back-to-back years with significant rainfall that broke 25-year records in some places.
• The wet winter spurred the growth of fast-growing shrubs and grasses.

🌡️ Then one of the hottest springs in recent history turned into one of the hottest summers on record.

• An extreme, long-lasting heat wave that stretched from June into July extracted "a tremendous amount of water" out of the soil and plants, especially those at lower elevations, "drying it out to the point of it being a kiln," says Daniel Swain, a climate scientist at UCLA.
• All that new — and now bone dry — vegetation fueled the colossal fire.

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Chevron is relocating to Houston from its headquarters in San Ramon, Calif., the company announced yesterday.

• Why it matters: The move by the second-largest U.S. oil company marks another major California corporation relocating to Texas and further cements Houston's energy dominance, Axios Houston's Shafiq Patel writes.

Chevron chairman and CEO Mike Wirth says the move is to be "closer to the core" and epicenter of the industry.

• California's regulations are a key reason for the relocation from the company's home base of over 140 years, Wirth said.

Read the announcement.

Olympic athletes compete for glory, their country ... and maybe, at times, a tidy sum of money.

• Hong Kong and Singapore pay the highest cash bonuses to winners, Axios' Hope King writes from a CNBC analysis.

Countries with some of the largest teams — including the U.S., which has the most (592) — have smaller purses.

📺 What to watch today: U.S. women's soccer faces Japan in the quarterfinal at 9 a.m. ET ... Simone Biles competes in the vault at 10:20 a.m. ET ... Katie Ledecky goes for record gold in the 800m freestyle at 2:30 p.m. ET ... Sha'Carri Richardson in the 100m final at 3:20 p.m. ET.