Former President Barack Obama framed a Nov. 2 gubernatorial race as a bellwether for the Democratic Party and the country, telling a crowd at a campaign event for Terry McAuliffe on Saturday that "I believe you, right here in Virginia, are going to show the rest of the country and the world that we're not going to indulge in our worst instincts."
Why it matters: With just over a week to go before Election Day in the Commonwealth, McAuliffe is bringing out the big guns. The 44th president appeared on the campus of Virginia Commonwealth University to urge supporters to get to the polls.
Driving the news: The high-value reward comes after Colombian national Alvaro Pulido Vargas and four others were charged with allegedly bribing Venezuelan government officials to obtain contracts to import and distribute food and medicine through a state-run program, according to the Department of Justice.
Federal gun control proposals have stalled out, but 44 states and the District of Columbia have enacted around 200 gun and community violence-related laws this year, according to data from the gun safety group Giffords Law Center provided to Axios.
Why it matters: Firearm purchases have spiked, with the FBI conducting a record number of firearm background checks last year. President Biden launched efforts to prevent gun violence, but Congress hasn't budged, leaving it to the states to set their own gun laws.
Even as the nation's homicide rate jumped in 2020 amid rising gun violence, the murder rate in 11 of the largest communities along the U.S. border stayed below the national average, an Axios analysis found.
Why it matters: The wide disparity between majority-Mexican American and Mexican immigrant border communities and other similar-size cities further north conflicts with images and myths of the U.S.-Mexico border as a region filled with crime and disarray.
A majority of Americans mistakenly believes that violent crime is worse now than it was 30 years ago,according to an Axios/Ipsos poll.
Why it matters: Polarization and misinformation are driving competing narratives about how much to fear rising crime, what's causing it, what to do about it and how much to prioritize it as an issue in the 2022 midterms.
Homicides rose at the fastest rate in at least six decades last year. This Axios AM Deep Dive, led by Future correspondent Bryan Walsh, looks at the state of gun crime.
Why it matters: Whether by homicide, suicide or accident, each life lost to a gun ripples out into the community, leaving a hole in surviving friends and family members that can never be filled.
2020 saw a historic rise in homicides in the U.S. — the vast majority committed with a gun — and the upwardtrend is continuing in 2021.
Why it matters: The murder surge represents a sharp break from decades of reductions in violent, gun-driven crime in the U.S., and experts are divided on what caused the increase — and therefore, what to do about it.
The White House announced Friday that it would delay releasing additional documents related to the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy, citing the "significant impact" of the pandemic on the agencies staffed with reviewing the release.
Driving the news: As a result of the pandemic-related delays impacting those responsible for reviewing the redacted files, the National Archives recommended temporarily certifying "the continued withholding of all of the information certified in 2018" and directing "two public releases of the information that has" ultimately "been determined to be appropriate for release to the public.'"
A gusher of Facebook stories hit the web Friday night and will cascade into next week, as a consortium of at least 17news organizations unfurl a series branded "The Facebook Papers," based on documents from whistleblower Frances Haugen.
Driving the news: The consortium's plan was for the stories to begin Monday. But one outlet after another jumped the gun last evening.
After failing to get a deal on other planned tax increases, key Senate Democrats are pivoting to a billionaires' income tax to pay for President Biden's social spending.
The big picture: No advanced economy has attempted anything similar on such a scale.
Eleven members of Congress on Wednesday sent a letter urging the Department of Justice to investigate the juvenile justice system in Rutherford County, Tennessee, ProPublica reports.
Driving the news: "Tennessee’s children deserve to enjoy their childhoods without the fear of being unjustly searched, detained, charged, and imprisoned," the lawmakers wrote in the letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland.
This is the moment the conservative legal movement has been building toward for decades: The solidly conservative Supreme Court is about to hear two major abortion cases within a month of each other.
Why it matters: All of this is likely to end with significant new restrictions on abortion and a clear path for Republican-led states to win the next big abortion cases, too — the culmination of a long and bitter fight for control of the judiciary.
