With 60 days left in the race, and at the very moment she's presenting a different ideology than four years ago, Vice President Harris isn't getting subjected to the media scrutiny typical for a presidential nominee, Mike and Alex Thompson write.

• Why it matters: Harris is copying President Biden's self-protection media strategy — duck tough interviews and limit improvisational moments.

Her circumstances are different, for sure. She entered the race just seven weeks ago, did dozens of interviews this year before Biden's exit, and plans to have more interactions with reporters.

• But with her debate with former President Trump coming up Tuesday (9 p.m. ET), Harris has big questions to answer in two areas that go to the heart of running America:

1. Why did President Biden's top advisers routinely leak word they found her performance as vice president disappointing or episodically problematic?
2. How did her views change in five years, from liberal to centrist on health care, immigration and energy? Why should voters believe her new views are the ones she'd stick with inside the White House?

The backstory: Biden advisers often were frustrated with Harris' performance as vice president. Their concerns fall into three buckets:

1. They found her public performances uneven and often not reassuring. This improved over time. But even recently, several on Biden's team worried she'd struggle under the glare of national pressure.
2. They found her risk-averse to the point of paralysis. The issue she embraced most — abortion rights — is one with the least risk, as polls show Democrats with a huge advantage on the issue.
3. They worried about the high turnover rate among her staff. Of the 47 Harris staffers publicly disclosed to the Senate in 2021, only five still worked for her as of this spring. (This tally is incomplete because roughly half the staff isn't listed on the Senate disclosures.)

Nine areas in which Harris has shifted views or her current position is unknown:

1. Banning plastic straws for environmental concerns. (She's no longer for it, as Axios reported Thursday.)
2. A mandate for automakers to only make electric and hydrogen vehicles by 2035. (The Harris campaign won't say whether she's still for it.)
3. Banning fracking because of concerns over global warming and potential water contamination. (No longer favors a ban.)
4. A mandatory buyback program for assault weapons as part of her gun safety agenda. (She's dropped this idea.)
5. Decriminalizing crossing the border from a criminal offense to a civil one. (No longer supports.)
6. Reparations for slavery, which many progressives argued for during the 2020 primary. (Position unclear.)
7. Building a wall on the Southwest border, a defining Trump promise that many Democrats have fought. (Accepted it as part of the bipartisan border package that Republicans killed.)
8. A federal jobs guarantee that was part of her Green New Deal proposal. (No longer for it.)
9. Medicare for All, which Harris embraced in her first year as senator. (She's backed off this.)

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A Harris campaign aide explained to Axios that she's no longer pushing Medicare for All because of what she learned during her four years of experience in the White House, and seeing how the Biden administration has expanded coverage through the Affordable Care Act, Mike and Alex write.

• Harris doesn't think the disruptive process of replacing the private health care system is necessary to reach her vision of making health care a right not a privilege, the aide said.

The other side: Over the past seven weeks, Trump has largely stuck to friendly interviewers in the right-wing bubble. This frustrates some Harris allies, who say Trump isn't getting true scrutiny.

• During that same period, he also held two press conferences with mainstream reporters, with a third scheduled Friday.
• His running mate, Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio), routinely sits for tough interviews with mainstream reporters. Harris' running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, hasn't done a solo TV interview.

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Conservative media is facing a rare moment of introspection, rocked by a series of scandals that have drawn new scrutiny to the right's favorite influencers, Axios' Zachary Basu writes.

• Why it matters: The battle for MAGA's future is unfolding not just at the ballot box, but online — where traditionally pro-Trump forces are suddenly feuding over antisemitism, revisionist history and Russian disinformation.

At the center of the firestorm is Tucker Carlson, who has drawn sustained backlash for hosting a guest on his podcast who called Winston Churchill "the chief villain" of World War II.

• Elon Musk promoted the interview with Darryl Cooper, who Carlson suggested was "the best and most honest popular historian" in the U.S. — then backtracked after X users accused Cooper of Nazi apologia.

👓 Zoom in: Carlson's mainstream relevance has waned since he was stripped of the top-rated show in cable news, but his influence on Trump's "America First" movement remains unrivaled.

• In the midst of the Carlson outrage, the Justice Department revealed an indictment accusing Russia of a scheme to pay right-wing influencers to unwittingly spread propaganda ahead of the election.
• Pro-Trump content creators Tim Pool, Benny Johnson and Dave Rubin — staples of X's daily right-wing discourse — were among those who DOJ says were deceived by a Tennessee-based company covertly funded by Moscow.

Keep reading.

The global average temperatures from June through August were the hottest on record, Axios extreme weather expert Andrew Freedman writes from data by the Copernicus Climate Change Service.

• Why it matters: The period brought a spate of extreme heat, wildfires and other extreme events.

Copernicus, an EU science center, now projects that 2024 will surpass 2023 as the globe's hottest year on record.

• Keep reading.

The father of the 14-year-old student arrested in connection with a school shooting that killed four people and injured nine others in Georgia was arrested yesterday, Axios' Rebecca Falconer and Sareen Habeshian write.

• Colin Gray, 54, was charged with second-degree murder and involuntary manslaughter, authorities said.

The charges are "directly connected with the actions of his son and allowing him to possess a weapon," the Georgia Bureau of Investigation director said.

• Get the latest.

A.G. Sulzberger, publisher of The New York Times, penned a rare opinion piece for The Washington Post yesterday, warning that the undermining of press freedoms in democratic nations like Hungary and Brazil serves as an important reminder of what's at stake this election.

• Why it matters: In placing the 4,100-word essay with a historic rival, Sulzberger sent a broader message about the power of news companies in tackling these issues with a united front, Axios Media Trends author Sara Fischer writes.

"I'm grateful to The Post for running it, especially given the length," Sulzberger wrote in a note to staff. "It's just another example of how The Post ... has long been one of our closest partners on matters of press freedom. These challenges cannot be solved by one institution."

• Sulzberger writes in the piece: "To ensure we are prepared for whatever is to come, my colleagues and I have spent months studying how press freedom has been attacked in Hungary — as well as in other democracies such as India and Brazil. The political and media environments in each country are different, and the campaigns have seen varying tactics and levels of success, but the pattern of anti-press action reveals common threads."

Between the lines: For many years following the brutal 2018 murder of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi, The Post served as the face of the U.S. press freedom fight.

• More recently, Wall Street Journal publisher Almar Latour stepped into that role after the arrest of reporter Evan Gershkovich in Russia.

Read Sulzberger's op-ed (gift link — no paywall) ... Share this story.

Highlights from the second annual TIME100 AI, listing the 100 most influential people in AI (via TIME):

• 40 CEOs, founders and co-founders, including Mark Zuckerberg of Meta, Sundar Pichai of Alphabet (Google), Satya Nadella of Microsoft, Daphne Koller of Insitro, Sam Altman of OpenAI, Chris Olah and Dario Amodei of Anthropic, Jensen Huang of Nvidia, Steve Huffman of Reddit, Aravind Srinivas of Perplexity, Victor Riparbelli of Synthesia, Masayoshi Son of Softbank and Dan Neely of Vermillio.

Dozens of women leaders in AI, including: Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo, head of Cohere for AI Sara Hooker, U.S. AI Safety Institute director Elizabeth Kelly, chief learning officer of Khan Academy Kristen DiCerbo, Open Philanthropy president Cari Tuna, METR founder and head of research Beth Barnes and former OpenAI board member Helen Toner.

• Policymakers and government officials include Sen. Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.), European Commissioner for Internal Market Thierry Breton; Arati Prabhakar, director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy; and California state Sen. Scott Wiener.

Youngest on the list: 15-year-old Francesca Mani, a high-schooler who started a campaign against sexualized deepfakes, after she and her friends were victims of fake AI images.

• Oldest on the list: 77-year-old Andrew Yao, a renowned computer scientist who's shaping a new generation of AI minds at colleges across China.

Industry leaders featured for a second time include Yoshua Bengio, founder of Mila-Quebec AI Institute; Google DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis; and Microsoft AI CEO Mustafa Suleyman.

• The list features creatives interrogating the influence of AI on society or experimenting with the technology: Scarlett Johansson, Bollywood actor Anil Kapoor, comedian and AI creator King Willonius, artist Lawrence Lek and YouTuber Marques Brownlee.

Full list ... How the 100 were picked.

The L.A. Chargers — who don't play a game outside the U.S. this season — will log the most miles of any team, Axios' Maxwell Millington writes.

• Four NFL teams are scheduled to travel more miles than the circumference of the Earth.

🧀 🦅 Zoom in: Nine teams are traveling internationally, including the Philadelphia Eagles and Green Bay Packers, for tonight's game in São Paulo, Brazil. Go deeper.

📏 Game of inches: The defending Super Bowl champion Kansas City Chiefs opened the NFL season with a 27-20 win over the Baltimore Ravens, who came thisclose to tying the game on the last play (pictured above).

• Watch the replay: Full-speed ... Slow-mo.