President Obama has scrapped the long-standing "wet foot/dry foot" policy for Cubans effective immediately, according to the AP.
Why this matters: It's one of Obama's last major moves as president, and it's a massive step for the normalization process with Cuba that he began two years ago. Cubans will now be treated like immigrants from any other nation — there's no fast track to U.S. residency just by reaching American soil.
Illustration: Annelise Capossela/Axios
The prime example of something highly improbable that became conventional wisdom: The idea that both interest rates and inflation will remain near zero for well over a decade.
Why it matters: As Axios' Dan Primack writes, private equity firms (the polite rebranding of "leveraged buyouts") have historically bought companies and loaded them up with debt.
Illustration: Aïda Amer/Axios
Our febrile world is not normal.
The big picture: The precautions that we're taking against the spread of COVD-19; the way in which the president of the U.S. delights in violating political norms; the fires, hurricanes and other signs that catastrophic global warming has arrived; the virulent spread of the QAnon conspiracy theory — all of these things, and many more, represent a stunning break with the world as we knew it.
Illustration: Eniola Odetunde/Axios
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