Axios AM

August 05, 2024
๐ฑ ๐ฅ๏ธ ๐บ You're gonna need three screens today! We're waking up to:
- Financial contagion across Asia and Europe.
- Fears of an imminent escalation in the Middle East.
- The final hours of Vice President Harris' running-mate selection.
Well ... Hello, Monday!ย Smart Brevityโข count: 1,497 words ... 5ยฝ mins. Thanks to Noah Bressner for orchestrating. Copy edited by Bryan McBournie.
1 big thing: Sun Belt surprise
Vice President Harris' early-days momentum has opened a new frontier in the presidential race, Axios' Sophia Cai writes.
- Why it matters: Georgia, Arizona and North Carolina โ which had looked to be trending toward former President Trump โ are suddenly crackling battlegrounds online, on the airwaves and on the ground.
๐ผ๏ธ The big picture: Pennsylvania is still the most important state where both campaigns are going all-in.
- But the Harris campaign is fielding an army of enthused volunteers and piles of cash as it eyes a broader field of play.
Zoom in: In the past two weeks, the Harris campaign has added 370,000 new volunteers โ including 15,500 in Georgia, 21,000 in Arizona, and 10,500 in North Carolina โ three states with diverse or changing electorate.
๐ In Georgia, 100,000 votes are up for grabs, former Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan (R) told Axios in an interview.
- "Kamala Harris puts all of those votes back in play," Duncan said. "The Number 1 excuse that I heard [about Biden] was: 'My gosh, he's just so old. I just can't imagine him governing for four years.' She takes that risk of physical and mental failure off the table."
๐ต In Arizona, the campaign has trotted out border mayors who have endorsed Harris. And Republican Mayor John Giles of Mesa has also endorsed her.
๐ In North Carolina, which has voted for a Democratic president just twice in the past 50 years, Harris has an uphill battle.
- But her momentum has forced the Trump campaign to spend on ads in North Carolina for the first time.
- Democrats are counting on turning out voters who have just moved to the state โ and are highlighting extreme comments by GOP gubernatorial candidate Mark Robinson, and tying him to Trump.
๐ฎ NEW THIS MORNING: Tomorrow evening, Vice President Harris and her soon-to-be-announced running mate will launch a five-day, seven-city tour of battleground states, starting in Philadelphia.
- From there, the new ticket heads to Eau Claire, Wis.; Detroit; Durham, N.C.; Savannah, Ga.; Phoenix; and Las Vegas.
A campaign preview says that besides rallies at venues ranging from arenas to college campuses, including Historically Black Colleges and Universities, the pair will meet with voters in smaller settings, including union halls, family-owned restaurants and campaign field offices. They'll be joined by union members, faith leaders, local officials and more.
2. ๐ Global market plunge
Fears of a U.S. recession tanked global markets today, with Japanese stocks suffering their biggest single-day rout since 1987's Black Monday.
- Wall Street's fear gauge, the VIX, is trading at levels not seen since COVID times, in June 2020.
Why it matters: Friday's dismal U.S. jobs report capped a series of worrying signs over the past few weeks, with clear cracks in what had been a robust post-pandemic expansion, Axios Neil Irwin writes.
In Japan, the Nikkei average shed a staggering 12.4% โ the index's worst showing in percentage terms since the October 1987 crash, Reuters reports.
- The Nikkei's 4,451-point loss was the biggest ever โ eclipsing the 3,836 points it lost on Oct. 20, 1987, when the Black Monday crash hit Japan.
3. ๐ฎ๐ฑ Scoop: Blinken's Iran attack timeline

Secretary of State Tony Blinken told his counterparts from G7 countries yesterday that an attack by Iran and Hezbollah against Israel could start as early as today, sources briefed on the call tell Axios' Barak Ravid.
- Why it matters: Blinken convened the conference call to coordinate with close U.S. allies, and try to generate last-minute diplomatic pressure on Iran and Hezbollah to minimize their retaliation as much as possible.
Blinken stressed that limiting the impact of their strikes is the best chance to prevent all-out war.
- Iran and its Lebanese ally Hezbollah have vowed to respond to the Israeli assassinations of Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran and Hezbollah military commander Fuad Shukr in Beirut.
๐ Behind the scenes: The SecState told counterparts the U.S. is making efforts to break the escalatory cycle by trying to limit the attacks by Iran and Hezbollah as much as possible and then restrain the Israeli response.
- One source who was on the call said Blinken sounded frustrated when he briefed the ministers on recent talks with Israel over a Gaza hostage and ceasefire deal.
- Blinken said the administration felt it was "close to a breakthrough" before the assassination in Tehran.
4. ๐บ๐ธ World's fastest man

Team USA's Noah Lyles won the men's 100-meter final yesterday by five-thousandths of a second โ 0.005 of one tick of the clock โ in a race for the ages.
- Why it matters: He's the first American crowned the world's fastest man in 20 years.

๐ญ Zoom out: For perspective, the blink of an eye takes, on average, 0.1 second. That was 20 times longer than the gap between Lyles and Jamaica's Kishane Thompson.
- When the sprinters crossed the finish line, the word "Photo" popped up next to the names of Lyles, Thompson and five others in the eight-man field.
Lyles walked over to the Jamaican and said: "I think you got the Olympics, dog."

โฑ๏ธ Photo-finish tech ... PARIS โ When judges needed to determine who won yesterday's Olympic 100-meter race, they drew on fancy new technology โ a camera from Omega that shoots 40,000 frames per second, Axios' Ina Fried reports.
- Why it matters: Omega, the official Olympics timekeeper for decades, is constantly looking for new ways to help measure athletes' performance.
How it works: For the Paris games, Omega added new tech in a range of sports, including the faster photo finish camera used for track and other races. The new camera takes four times as many pictures per second.
- It also adds higher resolution โ perfect for tough calls such as the one that took place last night.
The camera is focused on 5 mm at the finish. But by taking so many pictures, the system can recreate a full picture of whose body crossed first.
5. ๐ Huge hurricane

A potentially devastating hurricane poses a nightmare scenario for flooding across the Southeast this week, Axios extreme weather expert Andrew Freedman writes.
- Hurricane Debby โ which strengthened into a Category 1 storm late last night in the Gulf of Mexico โ could tie or break state records for rainfall from a single storm in Georgia and South Carolina.
Threat level: The National Weather Service describes the potential rainfall as "historic and potentially catastrophic."
- The hurricane is "expected to move slowly across northern Florida and southern Georgia Monday and Tuesday, and be near the Georgia coast by
Tuesday night."
6. ๐ World's 10 biggest companies
For the first time since 2018, the U.S. has more companies than China on Fortune's Global 500 list, which ranks the world's largest corporations by revenue, Axios Markets co-author Emily Peck writes.
The top 10:
- ๐บ๐ธ Walmart
- ๐บ๐ธ Amazon
- ๐จ๐ณ State Grid
- ๐ธ๐ฆ Saudi Aramco
- ๐จ๐ณ Sinopec
- ๐จ๐ณ China National Petroleum
- ๐บ๐ธ Apple
- ๐บ๐ธ UnitedHealth Group
- ๐บ๐ธ Berkshire Hathaway
- ๐บ๐ธ CVS Health
๐ Between the lines: China's economy, the world's second-largest, has faltered lately, dragged down by a yearslong housing crisis and lackluster consumer demand.
7. ๐ Stunning RFK story

A stunning, worthy-of-your-time New Yorker profile of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. โ out this morning โ tells the full story behind his decision to leave a dead bear cub in New York City's Central Park a decade ago, which he revealed on X yesterday:
"Kennedy, who was then sixty ... got an idea. He drove to Manhattan and, as darkness fell, entered Central Park with the bear and a bicycle. A person with knowledge of the event said that Kennedy thought it would be funny to make it look as if the animal had been killed by an errant cyclist.
"The next day, the bear was discovered by two women walking their dogs, setting off an investigation by the N.Y.P.D. 'This is a highly unusual situation," a spokeswoman for the Central Park Conservancy told the Times. 'It's awful.' In a follow-up piece for the Times, which was coincidentally written by Tatiana Schlossberg, one of J.F.K.'s granddaughters, a retired Bronx homicide commander commented, 'People are crazy.'"
๐ Between the lines: Kennedy posted a video yesterday in an attempt to preempt the New Yorker's article, saying he thought leaving the bear would be amusing after a falconry outing in upstate New York.
- "Looking forward to seeing how you spin this one," he wrote in a post with almost 8 million views.
Read the full story by Clare Malone ... 2014 news clip.
8. ๐ 1 for the road: Dog surfing championship

Above: Cacau, a chocolate Labrador from Brazil, was named the top dog in the Bay Area's annual World Dog Surfing Championship on Saturday.
- Full results ... Highlights.

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Editor's note: Item 1 has been corrected to reflect that while Mayor John Giles of Mesa did endorse Harris, Mesa is not a border city.
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