Axios

Federal authorities this week announced they successfully traced and recovered most of the bitcoin that had been paid by Colonial Pipeline to a ransomware gang called DarkSide, following the May hack that shut off gas supplies to much of the East Coast.

Axios Re:Cap digs into the battle between law enforcement and crypto hackers, including how ransomware has become a global industry of its own, with Gurvais Grigg, a 23-year FBI veteran who now serves as public sector CTO at crypto firm Chainalysis.

During the pandemic, ridership of mass transit pretty much collapsed. Now, as the country reopens, transportation experts are hoping that commuters will come back. But what if they don’t?

• Plus, the uptick in trans murders in the U.S.
• And, President Biden reverses the Trump administration's attempted ban on TikTok.

Most small business stories from the pandemic are about about pivoting or perishing, but there's also been an unexpected surge in new small business creation. One example is Agua Bonita, a canned beverage company that launched last year after both of its co-founders were laid off.

• Dan talks with Agua Bonita co-founder Kayla Castañeda and Techstars founder David Cohen about what it was like for startups over the past 14 months and what recovery means for businesses that didn't even exist before COVID-19.
• Plus, a conversation with Wall Drug proprietor Rick Hustead.

Buford Highway is a 10-mile stretch near Atlanta that's home to over 1,000 immigrant-owned small businesses. It's a constellation of home-away-from-homes, particularly for Asian and Latino communities.

• Dan speaks with Lily Pabian, executive director of the We Love Buford Highway nonprofit, about how the pandemic, the rise in anti-Asian hate crimes and the nearby spa murders impacted Buford Highway's small business community.
• Plus, Dan is joined by Ryan Reese, a fishmonger at Pike Place Market in Seattle.

As the U.S. economy was staring into the pandemic abyss in March 2020, Congress passed a $2.2 trillion stimulus package that included the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) to quickly get forgivable loans to small businesses, so they could keep workers on payrolls.

• We dig into the creation and roll out of the PPP, from the multi-day negotiations and late night phone calls to estimations of how many businesses it helped, with former U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin.
• Plus, a conversation with Dayna Frank, CEO of Minneapolis music club First Ave.

This Saturday, Democrats in America’s largest city will be asked to begin early voting for their nominee for mayor, a person whose influence is certain to extend beyond the five boroughs. But the ranked choice voting system is different than anything New York City has used before, and there still isn’t a frontrunner.

Axios Re:Cap digs in with Dana Rubinstein, a metro desk reporter with the New York Times, to learn more about the candidates, why crime and policing have become the top issue and what to watch heading into Saturday.

Note: An earlier version of this episode didn't make clear that what begins this Saturday is early voting.

You’ve probably heard the term critical race theory recently. Republican lawmakers in at least nine states have come out strongly against it, claiming the theory is divisive, and are trying to ban its teaching in schools. Most Democrats strongly disagree. What is this decades-old academic concept that’s become a key fight in America’s culture wars?

• Plus, new intelligence on the Capitol insurrection.
• And, a record number of American job openings.