Starting with our interview last spring with Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, where he foresaw a white-collar bloodbath, we've been warning of a jobs crisis unfolding in plain sight across America, Jim VandeHei writes.

• Last week, Mike and I talked privately with 20 different CEOs of a wide range of companies. Every single one of them said they're reducing their hiring ambitions at the dawn of AI.

Why it matters: Don't trust us. Listen to Amodei, who's building AI technology, and top CEOs as they freeze or reduce hiring because of AI.

Amodei, in two interviews with us — one over the phone and the other this month at our AI+ Summit in D.C. — told us AI could wipe out half of U.S. entry-level white-collar jobs and send unemployment soaring.

• Ford CEO Jim Farley said almost the same thing this summer. "Artificial intelligence is going to replace literally half of all white-collar workers in the U.S.," Farley told author Walter Isaacson at the Aspen Ideas Festival. "AI will leave a lot of white-collar people behind."

More telling, two of America's largest private employers are sounding similar warnings:

• Amazon CEO Andy Jassy said in June that Amazon will reduce headcount "as we get efficiency gains from using AI": "It's hard to know exactly where this nets out over time, but in the next few years, we expect that this will reduce our total corporate workforce as we get efficiency gains from using AI."
• In the story topping The Wall Street Journal this morning, Walmart execs said they, too, expect to freeze hiring and change how every job is done. "It's very clear that AI is going to change literally every job," CEO Doug McMillon said. "Maybe there's a job in the world that AI won't change, but I haven't thought of it." (Gift link)

🔭 The big picture: Maybe all these CEOs are wrong. But what if they're right? The White House and Congress aren't treating this like a brewing crisis, and seem more focused on beating China to advanced AI than bracing workers for a short-term jolt.

• Top officials argue that the race with China is existential and that new technologies, over time, create more and better jobs. They dismiss the warnings of massive job loss as misguided doomerism.

The bottom line: Both could be true. Most new technologies cause short-term pain but later create new jobs. What's different with this one is that we had advanced warning to prepare the population for it.

🧠 Tell Jim about YOUR experience: [email protected] ... Share this column.

• Go deeper: "Wake-up call: Leadership in the AI age" — Jim's advice to companies, based on what we're doing at Axios.

The indictment of former FBI Director James Comey has delivered President Trump and the MAGA movement their first real taste of legal retribution — and likely not their last, Axios' Tal Axelrod and Zachary Basu write.

Why it matters: To Democrats and the legal establishment, the charges against Comey for obstruction of justice and lying to Congress represent a collapse of prosecutorial independence.

• To Trump's base, the indictment is vindication — a long-awaited strike against a "Deep State" villain they've obsessed over for nearly a decade.

As the legal world recoiled, MAGA erupted with glee and hunger for more:

• "We are just getting started today with this indictment," posted The Article III Project's Mike Davis, one of MAGA's enforcers in the legal wars. "It's going to get much worse for the Democrats."
• "Comey is the first domino to fall — others must fall faster now!" added former Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, a senior aide in Trump's first term who was prosecuted during the Russia investigation.

Between the lines: It's hard to overstate how much the Comey indictment means to MAGA, given his role as the face of the Russia probe, and embodiment of the "Deep State" they believe tried to take Trump down.

• But many legal experts, including conservative lawyer Andrew McCarthy, view the charges as flimsy — raising the possibility that the case could collapse at trial.

🔮 What to watch: The Justice Department is investigating John Brennan — who quarterbacked the contested 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment, which stated that Russia had a "clear preference" for Trump in the 2016 election — for allegedly lying to Congress.

• Share this story.

The Justice Department has issued a subpoena for records related to the travel history of Fani Willis, the Atlanta-area district attorney who charged President Trump in a sweeping election interference case in 2023, the N.Y. Times' Richard Fausset and Danny Hakim scoop.

• Why it matters: The federal grand jury subpoena reviewed by The Times "is an indication that the Justice Department under President Trump may be investigating another one of his old foes," The Times notes. "On Thursday, the department indicted James B. Comey, the former FBI director, over the objection of career prosecutors who found insufficient evidence."

It's unknown whether Willis is the target of the probe or whether she'll face charges.

• Last week, the sputtering election interference case "was finally put on ice, officially taken out of Willis' hands by the Georgia Supreme Court and sent to the dustbin of the Georgia Prosecuting Attorneys' Council," The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports.

Go deeper: Comey latest.

Standing on the tee box in white golf shoes and a dark suit, President Trump led spectators in a "U-S-A!" chant at the Ryder Cup at Bethpage Black, a public golf course at "The People's Country Club" in Farmingdale, N.Y., on Long Island.

Trump, who got a warm welcome as he continued his odyssey of sporting events, was joined by his granddaughter Kai Trump — a serious golfer with 1.9 million Instagram followers, who flew with him from the White House.

• Keep reading.

President Trump ordered his administration to "declassify and release all Government Records" related to mysteries about aviation pioneer Amelia Earhart, "her final trip, and everything else about her."

• "I have been asked by many people about the life and times of Amelia Earhart, such an interesting story," Trump wrote on Truth Social. "Thank you for your attention to this matter!"

Why it matters: Trump's order on Earhart, the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean, is the latest in the president's declassification spree, Axios' Jason Lalljee reports.

• Trump has ordered the release of files on the assassinations of John F. Kennedy, Robert F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr.

💡 Context: Earhart's 1937 disappearance over the Pacific Ocean is a cornerstone American mystery, fueling decades of speculation and theories.

• Earhart and her navigator, Fred Noonan, vanished during her attempt to become the first female pilot to fly around the world. She had radioed that she was running low on fuel. She was declared dead in 1939.

🤿 What we're watching: Purdue Research Foundation (PRF) and the Archaeological Legacy Institute (ALI) announced a joint effort earlier this year to recover what they believe is Earhart's plane in the South Pacific.

• The expedition will embark from the Marshall Islands in November.

🥊 Reality check: Ric Gillespie, executive director of the International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery, who has studied Earhart for decades, told AP that "nothing still classified by the U.S. government on Amelia Earhart."

• Go deeper: Tantalizing Earhart theories.

After my tribute in Axios PM to Washington superagent Robert Barnett, who died Thursday at 79, several of you texted me with memories of a decades-long Barnett sideline — debate coach, negotiator and role-player for Democratic presidential and vice-presidential candidates.

Paul Begala recalls how Barnett secured "home stool advantage" for Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton for his 1992 debate at the University of Richmond with President George H.W. Bush (who checked his watch) and Ross Perot:

• "At Bob's suggestion, we borrowed the stools we'd rehearsed on at the Williamsburg Inn and brought them to the studio. Somehow Bob smooth-talked the crew into subbing out the stools so that Gov. Clinton would have a home-stool advantage" — perfect for his height.
• "Bob played George H.W. Bush in our prep ... even wore a preppy wristband on his watch," Begala added. "It was my son John's first road trip. And guess where he went to college 18 years later? Life is wonderful."
• Gail Shea Nardi — my mentor at the Richmond Times-Dispatch, and later a force in Virginia Democratic politics — was backstage and recalled that Begala and James Carville "nearly exploded when GHWB looked at his watch! I sat next to a cool senator named Joe Biden. We kidded each other about being Irish."

Brian Fallon, a senior adviser on last year's Harris for President campaign, told me he called Barnett last year "and he told me about the pitcher's mound they had constructed to mitigate the height difference for [Michael] Dukakis against 41 in 1988. ... It was a ramp built under the carpet so it wasn't discernible to the naked eye on TV."

• "On Labor Day 2024," Fallon added, "while President Biden and VP Harris were onstage addressing a union hall in Pittsburgh, I was in a nearby supply closet with a yellow legal pad, taking notes from Bob about what demands we should be making on the set design. My very next call was to Rick Klein," Washington bureau chief of ABC News, host of the debate with President Trump.

🎤 It turns out Barnett had used the pitcher's mound ploy before. Mandy Grunwald tells me that at the 1984 vice-presidential debate in Philly between her candidate, Geraldine Ferraro, and George H.W. Bush, "we had them build a gradual slope up to her podium and carpet it, so she wouldn't look like a little kid having to step up on a stool. Bush was about a foot taller."

• "I was a kid in my twenties and Bob was really respectful," Grunwald added. "At our first big debate prep in '92, James [Carville] spent our whole lunch break peppering Bob with questions about the speaking circuit."
• "Debate visual for Bob: He always had a big binder with tabs for every topic and the exact language Bush or whoever would use by topic."

Despite his moonlighting, Barnett was bipartisan in his day job. "We are heartbroken," longtime Republican insider Mary Matalin texted me. "Will light so many candles."

• Read the WashPost obit (gift link).