Book publishers are getting caught in the free-speech war engulfing social media, Axios' Sara Fischer and Orion Rummler write.

Employees are pressuring some publishers to walk away from controversial authors:

• Simon & Schuster faced a petition opposing authors associated with the Trump administration, including Mike Pence, The Wall Street Journal reports. The petition garnered 216 internal signatures and 3,500 from outside, including well-known Black writers.
• Hundreds of publishing executives signed an open letter saying: "[N]o one who incited, suborned, instigated, or otherwise supported the January 6, 2021 coup attempt should have their philosophies remunerated and disseminated through our beloved publishing houses."

Between the lines: Publishers have no obligation to host anyone's speech. So this issue differs from the open platforms of social media.

What's next: Self-publishing is an increasingly viable option for controversial figures who can promote their books without a publisher.

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Americans continue marching South and West, the 2020 census shows:

• North Carolina and Texas are positioned to become the intellectual powerhouses of the new economy, William Fulton, director of the Kinder Institute for Urban Research at Rice University in Houston, told AP.

The South has snatched away Rust Belt manufacturing, including autos.

• "We are 10-20 years away from the South and the West being truly dominant in American culture and American society,” Fulton said.

• Go deeper: Axios map of states that won, lost congressional districts.

Algorithms determine what we see on social media ... who gets a loan or parole, or a spot at a college ... and what posts go viral.

• After years of secrecy by the tech platforms, lawmakers and regulators want to know what's inside those black boxes, Axios' Ashley Gold and Ina Fried write.

Executives from YouTube, Twitter and Facebook will testify today at a hearing on "Algorithms and Amplification," before the Senate Judiciary Committee's privacy, technology and law subcommittee.

• Keep reading.

That's a paraglider in front of last night's pink supermoon over Glastonbury Tor in England.

Europe is poised to set the global standard for vaccine passports, now that European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen signaled that vaccinated Americans will be allowed to travel to the continent this summer, Axios' Felix Salmon reports.

• Why it matters: Opening travel to vaccinated Americans will bring new urgency to creating some kind of trusted means for people to prove they've been vaccinated.

Keep reading.

A big majority of seniors embrace the COVID vaccine, but there's still a partisan divide that mirrors the nation's, Axios Vitals author Caitlin Owens writes from Axios/Ipsos polling:

• 95% of Democratic seniors said they have gotten vaccinated or are likely to — compared to 84% of independents and 78% of Republicans.

Keep reading.

Companies and governments around the world are racing to figure out how to clean up human-made junk that's cluttering space, Axios Space author Miriam Kramer writes.

• Why it matters: Trackers are seeing more and more close calls between satellites, as companies work to deploy constellations of hundreds to thousands of small spacecraft, adding to fears that those small satellites could become junk themselves.

NASA estimates there are hundreds of thousands of untrackable pieces of junk in orbit around the Earth that threaten operational satellites and even people in space.

• Keep reading.

N.Y. Times Opinion editor Kathleen Kingsbury writes that as part of a redesign, she's replacing the print-relic term "Op-Ed" — outside contributions that ran "opposite" the editorial page, a fusty concept in the digital world — with "Guest Essay":

Readers immediately grasped this term during research sessions ... Terms like "Op-Ed" are ... clubby newspaper jargon; we are striving to be far more inclusive in explaining how and why we do our work.

Keep reading (subscription).

A week from today, Sen. Elizabeth Warren will be out with a book, "Persist," that says: "As a candidate, Joe Biden may not have looked like a progressive firebrand, but he and Kamala Harris ran a campaign promising the most aggressive economic, social, and racial changes in U.S. history. ... Measure their victory however you like, but there’s no question that it was a mandate for change.

• "In 2012, I was new to politics. In 2020, I was new to losing," Warren writes, describing what it was like to drop out of the race on March 5:

I noticed a message on the sidewalk in front of our house [in Cambridge]. In bright pink chalk, someone had written, “Thank you!” ...

[L]ater that morning someone left a box of chalk outside, and more messages appeared ... The next morning, I opened our kitchen door, which leads to a small porch on the side of our house. Out on the sidewalk next to the driveway was the biggest message yet. In two-foot-high letters, each letter heavily chalked in, was a single word: PERSIST.

Another passage goes inside the famous plans from her campaign — over 14 months, "eighty-one glorious, juicy, interesting, hard, important, imperfect plans":

We had fun putting out T-shirts and coffee mugs that touted the plans, but the real power in these plans was that they showed exactly how we could dismantle an economic and political system that was working great for those at the top but leaving everyone else behind.

On election night 2020, with Biden headed to victory and Senate control uncertain, Warren writes: "I couldn’t sleep. Change was coming — and I was making a plan."

• The senator gives a glimpse of the future, writing that her signature plans are "now on the shelf for future campaigns and future policy makers. Plans that gave us a vital framework within which to dream big and fight hard. I lost, but I’m still smiling."

📚 Read a 2,400-word excerpt. ... Get the book. ... Share this story.

Just 9.85 million people watched the Academy Awards — down 58% from last year's 23.6 million, and a new low for the show, Sara Fischer writes from preliminary Nielsen ratings.

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