National

Steve Bannon, a former Trump adviser, predicted in a new interview with Tucker Carlson Friday night that Attorney General Merrick Garland and FBI Director Christopher Wray won't hold their positions by next year.

Why it matters: Bannon made the predictions hours after he was sentenced to four months in prison for defying a subpoena from the Jan. 6 select committee.

What he said: Bannon criticized the Department of Justice and FBI  in an interview on "Tucker Carlson Tonight" on Friday, saying leaders of both institutions will lose their positions in 2023.

“The whole Justice Department under Merrick Garland has become radically partisan,” Bannon said. “I strongly believe you’ll see Merrick Garland impeached next year by the new Congress.”

He predicted that Garland and Wray would be impeached and that Republicans would win the House in the upcoming midterm elections.

"What I want Republicans in the new Congress, is to focus on cleaning out the rat’s nest at DOJ and cleaning out the rat’s nest at the FBI," he said.

Context: Bannon in July was found guilty of two counts of contempt of Congress for failing to comply with a subpoena from the Jan. 6 committee, which sought testimony from Bannon on his efforts to overturn the 2020 election results, Axios' Erin Doherty writes.

The DOJ  recommended last week that Bannon receive a six-month jail sentence because he "has pursued a bad-faith strategy of defiance and contempt."

The big picture: Bannon's comments align with Republican outrage over the Department of Justice and FBI in recent months. The DOJ faced heavy criticism in August after the FBI carried out a search warrant at Trump's Mar-a-Lago home.

A number of polls in August showed that the FBI's search on Trump bolstered the former president's standing among voters, despite worries from Republicans it might damage him and them in the upcoming midterms, Axios reports.

Go deeper: Top Republicans press DOJ for answers on Mar-a-Lago search

Bannon predicts Attorney General Garland, FBI Director will be impeached

Bannon made the predictions hours after he was sentenced to four months in prison.

Steve Bannon, former advisor to President Donald Trump, addresses the media.

Steve Bannon, former advisor to President Donald Trump, addresses the media. Photo: Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images

Steve Bannon

Donald Trump

2020 conventions

Midterm Elections 2022

President Biden has made the COVID-19 crisis and a post-Trump return to national unity and traditional democratic ideals his top priorities. From vaccinations to stimulus to schools, Biden is seeking bipartisan compromise while showing a willingness to use executive authority and bare Democratic majorities in the U.S. House and Senate to implement his policies. Republican leaders are navigating deep party divisions over if and how to move beyond former President Trump.

Politics & Policy

Months of 2021 FBI crime data reported in by agency 

Data: FBI, The Marshall Project; Chart: Jared Whalen/Axios Visuals (Note: The chart includes agency participation data compiled by the FBI through Feb. 7, 2022, which was the deadline for local agencies to submit crime data for its Q4 2021 report. Local agencies had until March 7, 2022, to submit data for the FBI's 2021 national crime report, so the final participation status may change.)

Nearly 40% of law enforcement agencies nationwide, including the New York City Police Department and Los Angeles Police Department, failed to report their 2021 crime data to the FBI, according to data provided to Axios Local from a partnership with The Marshall Project.

Why it matters: That will result in a data gap that experts say makes it harder to analyze crime trends and fact check claims politicians make about crime, reports The Marshall Project's Weihua Li.

The FBI's annual data set is the country's foremost way to understand how crime across the U.S. is changing, measuring things like how many murders or rapes took place last year or how many people were arrested.

"It's going to be really hard for policymakers to look at what crime looks like in their own community and compare it to similar communities," Jacob Kaplan, a criminologist at Princeton University, told The Marshall Project.

"The more detailed the data, the more effective our police can be. ... When we look back at 2021 numbers, they're not going to be particularly useful," John Roman, a senior fellow at NORC at the University of Chicago, told Axios. 

The backdrop: Last year, the FBI retired its nearly century-old national crime data collection program and switched to a new system, the National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS), which gathers more specific information on each incident. 

Even though the FBI announced the transition years ago and the federal government spent hundreds of millions of dollars to help local police make the switch, nearly 7,000 of the nation’s 18,000 law enforcement agencies did not send crime data to the voluntary program in 2021.

What they're saying: Axios Local talked to law enforcement agencies around the country. Those that didn't submit any crime data largely blamed their non-compliance on staffing shortages and technical issues.

The Philadelphia Police Department was unable to collect NIBRS data until its new reporting systems went live last April. There was a "significant project delay" to update its legacy systems, which was exacerbated by the pandemic, PPD Sgt. Eric Gripp told Axios.

The Des Moines Police Department moved to a new records management system that was incompatible with the state of Iowa's system, which reports data to the FBI. Transferring over records required a manual fix, but there wasn’t enough staffing to do it in time, according to DMPD Sgt. Paul Parizek.

“We just got certified last week to do submissions,” Peoria (Ill.) Police Department records administrator Shawn Wetzel said. “It has been a big challenge with the vendor trying to figure out how to get the [coding] right to provide that electronically. But it's being worked out and we hope to be uploading the data this month.”

Worth noting: Law enforcement agencies nationwide have received over $160 million in federal funding to help with the transition since the switch to NIBRS was announced in 2015.

The other side: The Tennessee Bureau of Investigation transitioned to the NIBRS system in the 1990s, which accounts for the state’s higher reporting rate, TBI’s Dale King tells Axios.

King, who works with the state data system, helped write an article with the FBI warning states to work ahead of time on the NIBRS transition.

“Agencies that wait until 2021 to begin their transition efforts will likely discover that the process will be much more difficult than if they had begun their transition efforts sooner,” the article states.

The bottom line: Violent crime across America is set to be a top issue in this fall's midterms, and the data that many politicians will use to make their case on the topic will be — at best — incomplete.

Axios' Mike D'Onofrio, Monica Eng, Linh Ta and Adam Tamburin contributed to this report.

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This article was published in partnership with The Marshall Project, a nonprofit news organization covering the U.S. criminal justice system. Sign up for their newsletters, and follow them on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook. 

Sweeping reporting failures may compromise the FBI’s 2021 crime data

That could make it harder to analyze crime trends and fact check claims politicians make about crime.

Law enforcement

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Axios Generate

President Biden isn't just about to lose the window for Democrats to pass legislation to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. He could also lose a president's best backup leverage: the ability to cut them through executive and regulatory actions.

Why it matters: The Biden administration may soon find itself hamstrung by unfavorable court rulings, including West Virginia v. EPA, a Supreme Court case scheduled for oral arguments on Feb. 28 that could curtail the EPA's ability to regulate greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act. 

Environmentalists are watching the case closely, fearing the new conservative majority on the court may be willing to go far toward dismantling the EPA's regulatory authority under the Clean Air Act. 

"How much of the Clean Air Act they decide to gut, or if they decide to do it, is really an open question," said Jamal Raad, the co-founder and executive director of Evergreen Action, an environmental group.

That's on top of the collapse of the Build Back Better act, the best vehicle Democrats had for cutting emissions. 

So unless Build Back Better somehow rises from the dead — or Congress can pass the climate provisions on their own — the White House might not have the option of turning to the executive and regulatory approach that the Obama administration used on climate after it ran into its own congressional roadblocks. 

The big picture: With polling and history strongly suggesting the Democrats will lose control of one or both chambers of Congress in the fall, failing to pass a climate package now could mean the next opportunity will prove elusive for as long as a decade, depending on the effects of redistricting and other structural political factors. 

Simply put, peer reviewed research shows that emissions cuts cannot wait that long, as the world is already on course for at least 3°C (5.4°F) of warming above preindustrial levels. 

This is twice the more stringent temperature target in the Paris Climate Agreement. Cutting emissions of comparatively short-lived methane can buy countries some time to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, but that too depends in part on EPA regulations. 

However, the more time that is spent without a clear government signal to support and incentivize emissions cuts, the harder it will be to further accelerate the pace of electric vehicle and renewable energy deployment. 

The intrigue: As part of the Build Back Better legislation, House and Senate Democrats had put together a package of more than $330 million in tax breaks and other incentives to boost the advancement and deployment of clean energy, manufacturing of electric vehicles and other steps. 

The legislation also contained provisions to make burning fossil fuels for electricity more expensive over time. It's now blocked by Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) as well as the solid opposition of Republicans.

However, multiple lawmakers have said, and activists maintain, that the climate portion of the bill could be cobbled back together and passed relatively easily. 

Raad, for example, told Axios that there is 90 to 95% agreement on the climate portions of the bill. 

"The climate stuff is the most fully baked of all the different proposals. It is now time for that same energy and work to go into making the tough choices necessary to get us over the finish line" on the legislation's social policy provisions, Raad said. 

"Every day that goes by we're risking disaster of not acting. I don't see how we meet our international climate commitments without an investment strategy that invests in clean power, clean buildings and clean cars," he said.

The latest: Activists including the NRDC, League of Conservation Voters, Climate Power and others are pushing for climate legislation in the run-up to President Biden's State of the Union on March 1. Evergreen Action, for example, is running stark TV and digital ads in D.C. and New York City (home of Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer).

"President Biden and Democrats in Congress hold our last, best chance to take on the climate crisis by passing transformational investments. Our time is up. We won’t get another chance," the ads say. 

Yes, but: This urgency does not line up with Manchin's timetable, since he said on CNN's State of the Union on Sunday that any bill has to go through the committee process, rather than being negotiated by groups of senators and brought directly to the floor.  

Biden's climate action window is closing

It's not just Congress. The Biden administration could be stymied elsewhere too.

Illustration of the U.S. flag hanging from a thermometer flagpole 

Climate change

Ominous forecasts about the impact of climate change serve as the backdrop for the world — led by U.S. lawmakers and companies — to debate big action on the problem, which could upend energy systems and our way of life.

Energy & Environment

President Biden's attempt to salvage his faltering clean energy and social spending plan could bring new efforts to revive climate-related measures separately or within a slimmed-down package.

Driving the news: Biden on Wednesday publicly endorsed the prospect of splitting up the $1.75 trillion Build Back Better plan. Biden suggested there's agreement possible on the roughly $550 billion in climate and provisions. 

Some Senate Democrats are urging colleagues to begin paring back the wider package to salvage what they can, Axios' Alayna Treene reports. 

Why it matters: Congressional action is likely needed to keep Biden's climate goals — notably a 50% cut in economy-wide emissions by 2030 — within reach.

Catch up fast: "It’s clear to me that we’re going to have to probably break it up," Biden said at a press conference.

"I think we can break the package up, get as much as we can now, and come back and fight for the rest later," he said, citing barriers to the child tax credit extension and community college aid.

Biden needs support from every Senate Democrat for Build Back Better, but Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) opposes the package. Manchin, however, has suggested a deal on climate provisions is possible.

Reality check: Attempting to split up the plan would bring big political hurdles of its own, and force difficult choices that jettison priorities of the wider liberal coalition.

And even the energy provisions lack consensus, with Manchin — whose state is a major coal and gas producer — cool to ideas like a fee on methane emissions.

What's next: The White House hopes to renew negotiations with Manchin and Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.), Biden's chief of staff Ron Klain told the Wall Street Journal

Go deeper: Highlights from Biden's marathon 2-hour press conference

Splitting up Biden's Build Back Better package could save Dems' climate agenda

Congressional action is likely needed to keep Biden's climate goals within reach.

Photo illustration: Aïda Amer/Axios. Getty Images photo: Win McNamee 

Joe Biden

GLASGOW, Scotland — The U.S., U.K. and other countries are charging into COP26 with bruises from difficult climate and energy negotiations at the G20 meeting in Rome.

Why it matters: That meeting's outcome previews what is to come in Glasgow, where the climate summit is entering its early and frenetic phase today with leader speeches and events.

The severity of global warming and the ability of people and ecosystems to withstand climate shocks depends in part on the outcome of these talks and follow-up actions.

Driving the news: Facing difficulties including an energy supply crunch and a widening gap between the agendas of rich and poor nations, countries are facing a daunting task in Glasgow.

The fact that leaders of the Group of 20 largest economies failed to agree to a sunset timeframe for the use of coal, which is the most carbon-intensive source of electricity, is not a particularly good omen for an ambitious COP26 conclusion, some experts said. 

However, G20 leaders (though not all of them) did agree to "end the provision of international public finance for new unabated coal power abroad by the end of 2021."

Between the lines: That's not the same thing as putting a stop to the building of new coal-fired power plants in China, for example, or putting a sunset date on coal use, which the U.S. and other countries had sought.

But on a call with reporters Sunday, U.S. climate envoy John Kerry defended the coal language, stating: "I don't know what's weak about ending unabated coal power generation and finance by the end of ‘21. Those folks were not supporting that a little while ago."

"Two hundred and thirty million tons of emissions a year will be prevented as a result of that step," Kerry said.

Yes, but: Kerry's message on the G20 statement was somewhat undercut when his boss, President Biden, speaking at a G20 press conference, said he too was disappointed the G20 didn't go further with their climate goals. 

Biden criticized China and Russia, in particular, for being absent from the meeting and not making new climate pledges, he said.

"I think you're gonna see we've made significant progress, and more has to be done. But it's going to require us to continue to focus on what China's not doing, what Russia's not doing," he said.

What we’re hearing: There are many other challenges facing negotiators in Glasgow. The realities of holding COP26 during a pandemic are becoming quickly evident here.

Room capacity limits cut the number of negotiators that countries can have in meetings, making it tougher for some delegations to function and potentially impeding the talks.

Several sources said a key logistical meeting Saturday evening included tense discussion around delegation numbers and access levels. 

“We are trying to find the best possible solution,” Patricia Espinosa, the top UN climate official, said in a Sunday press briefing. She vowed a commitment to inclusiveness and transparency.

Editor's note: Andrew Freedman reported from Washington. 

Coal language in G20 statement hints at difficult COP26

The Rome leaders' statement failed to include a coal phaseout.

Illustration collage of the US flag image amongst geometric shapes and a photo of fog

COP26

Britain's Prime Minister Boris Johnson (R) arrives for the COP26 UN Climate Summit in Glasgow on Nov. 1, 2021.

Sneak Peek

Axios Sneak Peek

John Kerry has made one special ask of world leaders since he became President Biden's climate envoy in January: help me consign coal to history. As the UN climate summit convenes in Glasgow, Scotland, all signs suggest they won't deliver.

Driving the news: The COP26 summit is a proving ground of sorts for Kerry's style of personal diplomacy, which helped him broker the 2015 Paris climate accord. The challenge is having it pay off in a world rife with multilateralism, and with the U.S. leadership role in question.

Kerry has billed Glasgow as the world's "last, best chance" for averting potentially catastrophic effects from global warming.

At the same time, he's been working to lower expectations. As recently as last Thursday, Kerry acknowledged there will be a gap after Glasgow between where the world needs to be on emissions and where it is.

He's also started to look past COP26, emphasizing that this needs to be a "decisive decade" and "decade of action."

The U.S. and other countries secured some commitments on coal use at the G20 summit on Sunday, but this fell short of what Kerry had been fighting for. 

Efforts to curb coal usage in his own country have been hampered by the resistance of Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.), who used to be governor of a coal state.

Between the lines: Any shortfall isn't for lack of effort.

Kerry has mimicked his time as the most-traveled secretary of State in history, maintaining a frenetic schedule.

He's visited at least 15 countries since January, some more than once, with a single-minded focus that other U.S. foreign policy officials can't afford.

Unlike his time heading the State Department, he largely flies commercial, toting his own bag into the passenger cabin.

In every meeting with his foreign counterparts, Kerry has sought five commitments, State Department officials tell Axios:

3. Increase financing to help developing nations adapt to climate change

5. Strengthen emissions targets after COP26

Between the lines: Kerry arrives in Scotland with Biden's domestic climate agenda hanging in the balance — weakening U.S. credibility. 

If Democrats fail to pass a robust climate bill, Kerry told the AP in September, "it would be like President Trump pulling out of the Paris agreement, again." 

America’s domestic political situation, with the likelihood of a Republican takeover of at least one chamber of Congress in 2022, has other countries greeting his big asks with caution.

Meanwhile, the Biden administration has described climate change as an "existential threat," and China as "the biggest geopolitical test of the 21st century."

That dual framework has created massive headaches for Kerry in his push to secure climate commitments from the world's largest carbon emitter.

The big picture: As a 77-year-old former Cabinet officer, senator and presidential candidate, Kerry's familiar with the often frustrating nature of securing multinational agreements.

He helped negotiate the Iran nuclear deal and the Paris Agreement under Barack Obama, only to see Donald Trump pull the U.S. out of both.

He's also had to endure brickbats from his own boss and former Senate colleague.

After Kerry made the comment that Biden arriving in Glasgow without Congress having passed climate legislation would be akin to Trump pulling out of the Paris accord, the president walked him back: "I think Senator Kerry has a little hyperbole there," Biden told reporters.

Kerry's climate diplomacy at stake

He'll play a leading role, and will share the blame if the summit comes up short.

Photo illustration: Aïda Amer/Axios. Photo: Christopher Goodney/Bloomberg via Getty Images

Three astronauts entered China's new space station for the first time after riding into space on the Shenzhou-12 spacecraft launched from the edge of the Gobi Desert on Thursday, according to AP. 

Why it matters: Astronauts Nie Haisheng, Liu Boming and Tang Hongbo are set to occupy the station for a three-month mission, marking the country's longest crewed space mission ever and the first in almost five years.

It also marks another significant step in the Chinese Communist Party's space program, which is seen as a potential rival to the U.S.

Details: The Shenzhou-12 was launched from Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in Jiuquan, Gansu province, China, atop a Long March 2F rocket.

The big picture: This is the third of 11 missions needed to complete the construction of the permanent space station, the first component of which was launched into orbit in April.

China's government is excluded from the International Space Station program — the only other space station in orbit.

What's next: The astronauts' main goal is to bring into service the first component of the station, the Tianhe module, Cmdr. Nie said, per the BBC.

"We need to set up our new home in space and test a series of new technologies," Nie said ahead of the Shenzhou-12 launch.

"I believe with the three of us working closely together, doing thorough and accurate operations, we can overcome our challenges. We have the confidence to complete the mission."

Editor's note: This article has been updated with new details throughout.

Chinese astronauts reach new space station for 3-month mission

It marks China's longest crewed space mission ever and the first in almost five years.

The manned Shenzhou-12 spacecraft from China's Manned Space Agency onboard the Long March-2F rocket launches at the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center on June 17, 2021 in Jiuquan, Gansu province, China. 

The manned Shenzhou-12 spacecraft from China's Manned Space Agency onboard the Long March-2F rocket launches at the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center  in Jiuquan, Gansu province, China, on Thursday morning Beijing time. Photo: Kevin Frayer/Getty Images

International Space Station

China

A look at the scientific breakthroughs changing the world, explorations in space and in worlds beyond our own and the threats posed to us by our own planet, both out of our control and of our own making.

Science

China is becoming the most formidable rival America has faced, and the risk of confrontation with Russia, North Korea or Iran still looms. Authoritarians are rising, the chaotic Afghanistan exit revealed the limits of U.S. power, and the pandemic, climate change and other critical challenges continue to pose grave threats.

World

Media Trends

Axios Media Trends

Axios on HBO: Cameo CEO Steven Galanis on politicians’ use of the platform (Clip) | HBO

Cameo CEO Steven Galanis doesn't want the app he built to be used explicitly for politics, but said he would allow former President Trump on the platform.

"Trump has done nothing on our platform to violate our terms of service," Galanis says in an interview with "Axios on HBO" that aired Sunday. 

Why it matters: Cameo's approach is different than some of its Big Tech peers. 

Trump never joined the platform, so the service wasn't in a position to kick him off following his comments during January's Capitol siege. 

In choosing to allow him on now, Cameo is making a clear decision that the company is a marketplace that's agnostic to politics or previous controversial behaviors that aren't explicitly illegal. 

The issue of de-platforming politicians resurfaced this month when Facebook's independent Oversight Board upheld Facebook decision to suspend Trump, albeit with caveats. 

Catch up quick: Cameo is an app that lets fans pay for personalized videos from celebrities. It was recently valued at over $1 billion, given its unprecedented success during the pandemic, when many Hollywood stars were out of work. 

Between the lines: Cameo has been used for politics, but Galanis says it's not in the company's plans to double down on that function. 

"I think Cameo is a place for laughs. It's a place for fun," he said in the interview.

Last year, for the first time in its four-year history, Cameo enabled political fundraising on its platform in the U.S., so that surrogates could raise money for political candidates. But Galanis says this isn't something he plans to expand. 

"It took us two and a half years to get the compliance set up to actually do this the right way," he said. "I don't think that it's gonna be a priority for us to do political fundraising abroad."

Yes, but: Many tech companies launch with the goal of being agnostic to politics, only to find that it's impossible to maintain that position as they grow. 

TikTok, for example, has discouraged political content for years, and says it doesn't allow political advertising, but its platform is regularly used for elections and advocacy. 

Already, Cameo has seen instances in which its platform has been abused for politics. Last year, New Jersey Governor, Republican Chris Christie, was unknowingly paid to record a cameo video endorsing a Democrat for office. 

"Those incidents are so few and far between," Galanis says. "Right now, there's no active political candidates on the platform."

By the numbers: Galanis said political fundraising videos accounted for less than 1% of its total revenue last year, which was about $100 million. 

There are roughly 10 million creators globally that he could see as one day being a fit to join the platform. Currently, there are 40,000 creators on Cameo, most of which are reality TV stars or athletes. 

The big picture: While politics isn't a core focus for Cameo, Galanis says he can see why political figures are gaining traction as celebrities in the social media age.

"[U]ltimately, politics is entertainment as well, right? So, so many of the politicians that are coming up, especially in this age, like they are just as big — their followings are just as devoted as the biggest rapper, the biggest person on YouTube or the biggest athlete or actor," he said. 

Asked why there are far more Republicans, including former Trump officials, than Democrats, Galanis says "You had a reality TV star as president ... Anyone that was part of it was just one big reality show for the last four years."

The bottom line: "We're in the middle of a big growth spurt," Galanis says. "So all the things that are happening today, we have to create our own policies that work uniquely for Cameo, because the rules of our platform are different than they are for YouTube, Instagram, and for Twitter." 

"And it took those platforms a hell of a long time to figure it out, too."

Cameo CEO says he would let Trump join platform

"Trump has done nothing on our platform to violate our terms of service."

Big Tech

Media

Axios on HBO

From the Valley to D.C., Big Tech players like Facebook, Google and Amazon are under more scrutiny than ever as new technology develops and privacy and antitrust concerns grow in lockstep with companies’ ambitions.

Technology

After a record economic expansion, the coronavirus pandemic sent the U.S. economy into a recession as unemployment soared to staggering heights. The country now faces urgent questions about how much stimulus is needed for reeling consumers and businesses, and what a recovery might look like.

Economy & Business

The Supreme Court on Monday rejected an effort by former President Trump's lawyers to block Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance from enforcing a subpoena for eight years of his personal and financial tax returns.

Why it matters: It was the last legal hurdle in the former president's long-running battle to shield his tax returns from prosecutors — and the second time the Supreme Court has dealt Trump a defeat in the case.

The big picture: Vance first subpoenaed Trump's accounting firm Mazars USA in 2019 as part of a criminal investigation into the Trump Organization, which began as a probe into hush-money payments made by Trump's former fixer Michael Cohen during the 2016 election.

The New York Times reports that the investigation has intensified in recent months and that prosecutors are now examining potential tax and bank-related fraud.

Trump has denied any wrongdoing, attacking the investigation by Vance as a political "witch hunt."

Between the lines: Trump had previously asserted that he had "absolute immunity" from criminal investigation as president and that Vance had no legal authority to subpoena records from his banks and accounting firms.

The Supreme Court rejected that sweeping claim in July 2020, but sent the case back down to lower courts to allow Trump's lawyers to challenge the subpoena for other reasons.

Trump's lawyers then claimed that Vance's subpoena was overbroad and amounted to political harassment — an argument that was rejected by an appeals court in October and brought back to the Supreme Court for the second time.

Supreme Court clears way for Manhattan prosecutors to subpoena Trump's taxes

It's a major defeat for the former president.

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