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National

Lava from an ongoing eruption from Hawaii's Kilauea volcano has now destroyed 21 homes on the Big Island, per the AP.

The details: One day after more than 1,700 people were evacuated from their homes in Leilani Estates after serious earthquakes, the eruption caused lava to shoot more than 200 feet in the air. And with the eruption continuing, there's no indication for when residents may be able to return to their homes.

Volcanic eruption in Hawaii destroys 21 homes

Lava shoots more than 230 feet in the air during the Kilauea eruption. Photo: U.S. Geological Survey via Getty Images

U.S. News

Hawaii

The future of electrics is the pickup truck

By 2020, 90% of Ford's vehicles will be trucks and SUVs.

Future

Electric vehicles

Technology

Business

Energy

Elon Musk

Breaking climate science and policy coverage as extreme weather events reshape communities. Keep tabs on the race to a low carbon economy, which may be bumpy as governments, climate tech startups and major oil and gas companies race to find their niche amid the changing energy landscape.

Energy & Climate

The Korean dynamics are changing at light speed because Kim Jong-un cares far more about economics than his father ever did, per people close to advisers of South Korean President Moon Jae-in.

Under the hood: A source who has spoken recently with top South Korean government advisers — and who spoke anonymously to preserve their confidences — told me Moon "freaked out" last year when Trump was threatening "fire and fury" against Kim.

Moon saw last summer that the White House and Pentagon were working on military options in the event that Kim threatened the U.S.

So he went into diplomatic overdrive, using the military crisis to present Kim with economic development plans he'd long wanted to deliver.

One story that was widely reported in the South Korean press but didn't get much attention in the U.S. is that, at their April summit, Moon gave a USB drive to Kim.

"The USB makes the case to Kim — there really is another path for you," John Delury, an expert in North Korean affairs at Seoul's Yonsei University, told me. He said the USB, which contained a plan for tens of billions worth of economic development in North Korea including railways and energy, sent the message to Kim: "We’re serious about working with you for what we think is your real ambition — to be a wealthy East Asian country."

Delury thinks Trump's abnormalities — his disdain for bureaucratic processes and deliberative decision-making — have helped create abnormal momentum on the Korean Peninsula.

"I do give one-third of the credit to the Trump administration," Delury told me. "They ended Strategic Patience and ramped up sanctions. Then they ramped up the military threat, and because we all thought he was crazy enough to take us to war," that forced everyone to act differently.

"But he also ramped up diplomacy" by immediately agreeing to meet with Kim. "Maybe if [Trump] asked his advisers, they would’ve stopped him."

What to watch ... Here's what North Korea experts tell me they expect will happen next in the nuclear negotiations:

Kim Jong-un is expected to soon release the three American hostages imprisoned in North Korea.

In the coming weeks, Kim is expected to invite international observers and media to watch him dismantle the Punggye-ri nuclear test site near the Chinese border. (Kim has plenty more nuclear facilities around the country.)

Trump is expected to hold his summit with Kim, possibly at the demilitarized zone separating the two Koreas, in either late May or early June. (No media outlet has yet confirmed the details of the summit, which are tightly held. A White House source with knowledge of the arrangements would only tell me that the Trump-Kim meeting will occur after South Korean President Moon Jae-in visits the White House on May 22.)

How a USB drive sparked the push for Korean peace

It contained a plan for tens of billions worth of economic development in North Korea.

Photo: Inter Korean Press Corp/NurPhoto via Getty Images

World

North Korea

Conflicts, policies and powers are intersecting and shaping the world. Breaking news and analysis of national security, foreign policy and global crises.

If you were gobsmacked watching Rudy Giuliani’s media tour this week — which he launched on Fox News' Hannity by announcing that Trump reimbursed lawyer Michael Cohen for a hush-money payment to Stormy Daniels — you weren't alone.

What we're hearing: A White House official told me there were "a couple of Mooch references" in the West Wing last week, as Giuliani’s performance recalled Anthony Scaramucci's frenzied 11-day stint last summer as White House communications director.

If the Giuliani circus continues unabated — with him taking media calls day and night and freelancing on legal and policy matters — White House staff will likely quit, a well-placed source tells me.

When Giuliani began opining about U.S. hostages held in North Korea, senior staff were irritated and perplexed.

And West Wingers raised their eyebrows when he took a gratuitous shot at Jared Kushner, describing the president's son-in-law as "disposable."

Meanwhile: Trump has been growing increasingly frustrated that his legal team wasn’t "fighting back" against Special Counsel Bob Mueller, according to sources familiar with the president's thinking.

Rudy's latest: Giuliani continued his media blitz over the weekend, proclaiming that the president supports regime change in Iran at a Saturday event, telling Fox News' Judge Jeanine Pirro on Saturday evening that Attorney General Jeff Sessions should end the Mueller probe, and telling ABC's George Stephanopoulos on Sunday's "This Week" that he can't be confident Trump will plead the Fifth if subpoenaed by Mueller.

The bottom line: Giuliani's been so sloppy that he's had to revise his statements multiple times. From a PR standpoint, it's been a mess.

Trump's public undermining of Giuliani on Friday — telling reporters his newest lawyer wasn't fully up to speed and would "get his facts straight" — came as a relief to many in the White House.

Behind the Trump n' Rudy show

There were "a couple of Mooch references" in the West Wing last week.

Politics

Rudy Giuliani

Top stories & latest news on the Federal Reserve, real-time data, plus the biggest shifts happening in the U.S. and global economy.

Economy

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

President Trump is unhappy about a report in The Atlantic which says a member of EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt's press team has been shopping negative stories about Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke to multiple outlets. A source who spoke to Trump told me the president raised the issue in conversation and said, "That's not good." Trump has been souring on Pruitt as the negative press about him piles up.

Why this matters: Pruitt — who is under siege from federal investigators, the White House, Capitol Hill, and the media — survives because the one guy who matters in the White House won't fire him. Trump's draining supply of goodwill towards Pruitt is the EPA administrator's lifeline. Most everyone else in the building wants him gone.

Pruitt's spokesman Jahan Wilcox has denied that his team pushed negative stories about Zinke: "This did not happen and it's categorically false."

Behind the scenes: On Friday afternoon, Pruitt had lunch with four members of his team at Ambar restaurant on Capitol Hill. The gathering came as a surprise to just about the entire senior staff of the EPA; they found out about the meeting from a picture a lobbyist tweeted.

Over the last few months, Pruitt has walled himself off from all but five EPA political appointees: ​Millan Hupp, Sarah Greenwalt, Hayley Ford, Lincoln Ferguson, and Wilcox. Of those five, only Wilcox is over 30. Hupp, Greenwalt and Ferguson came with Pruitt from Oklahoma. Wilcox is the only press aide Pruitt appears to trust.

Pruitt’s chief of staff, Ryan Jackson, runs the agency’s operations but rarely knows where his boss is. Pruitt has frozen Jackson out of his inner circle — a disaster for a chief of staff. Pruitt and Jackson don’t trust each other, multiple sources told me.

"All of us have been frozen out over time," one EPA political appointee told me. "It's absolutely unreal working here. Everyone's miserable. Nobody talks. It's a dry wall prison."

Pruitt never trusted the EPA's career staff. But for the first 10 months of his tenure as EPA administrator, he kept most political appointees at least partially in the loop. Now, he's frozen out almost all of them.

In his early days as administrator, Pruitt helmed daily morning meetings with dozens of political appointees. Those larger meetings stopped in the fall, and he reduced the meetings to a group of about 10, including his chief.

Even those smaller meetings grew rare over the winter.

The pushback: Wilcox told me Pruitt ended the all-hands meetings because they had grown unwieldy and unproductive. "There were 98 individuals that were invited to the morning meeting with Administrator Pruitt and it’s been pared down to make it more efficient."

Now, senior political appointees tell me they have no idea where and how Pruitt spends his time. They scan Twitter and the news to try to keep tabs on him.

Pruitt used to share his travel schedule with political appointees. Then, over the winter, he sent out a redacted schedule simply saying "travel." After that, he stopped sharing it altogether. Since his April 26 congressional testimony, senior staff outside his inner circle have had virtually no idea of his whereabouts.

The leadership in Pruitt's congressional affairs shop have complained to associates that they can't do their jobs. They've griped about complaints from members of Congress when the members find out after the fact that Pruitt has visited their state or congressional district. The embarrassing reality for Pruitt's legislative affairs team is they had no idea either. 

Wilcox pushed back on that complaint, noting that Pruitt has appeared with members in their districts at least twice in the last few months.

Two sources told me that Pruitt's hardly been in the office this past week. He's been planning to set up an external legal defense fund — a development first reported by the New York Times.

The bottom line: Pruitt has grown paranoid and isolated, and he only trusts a small handful of people at the agency. Senior White House staff darkly joke among themselves every time a fresh bad story comes out about Pruitt. Numerous senior EPA staff have already resigned or plan to quit.

At the same time: Despite Pruitt's problems, my colleague Amy Harder reports that the EPA's policy trains appear to be running mostly on track, largely due to key leadership positions being filled.

A senior policy staffer told me everything is running smoothly, policy-wise, and this staffer's team has as much access to Pruitt as they need. The policy teams operate mostly separate from the political appointees wrapped up in the Pruitt saga.

And nobody in the White House disputes that Pruitt's EPA has achieved major regulatory rollbacks for the Trump administration.

A senior White House official told me they'd be happy to see Pruitt fired and for Andrew Wheeler — his Senate-confirmed deputy — to step in as acting administrator until they find a replacement. (Nobody thinks it's going to be easy to confirm anyone before November.)

Wheeler is a longtime Washington lobbyist who supports similar policies to Pruitt. 

Inside Scott Pruitt's "miserable" bunker

"It's absolutely unreal working here. Everyone's miserable. Nobody talks. It's a dry wall prison."

Scott Pruitt

Republican leaders are quietly bunkering down for a fight over Russia sanctions. Defense Secretary James Mattis has asked the House Armed Services Committee Chairman Mac Thornberry to put a provision into the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) that would let the administration waive sanctions for U.S. partners, like India and Vietnam, who buy weapons from Russia. And Thornberry has agreed to do so.

Why this matters: In this political environment, anything Russia-related can be explosive. Republicans involved in the conversations tell me they worry that Democrats will use the issue to bash them as appeasing Putin.

A senior Democratic aide emailed me: "Yes, we are concerned that R [Republican] efforts to chip away at the integrity of Russian sanctions that were passed with the overwhelming majority of support from Congress last summer indeed shows that they are more concerned about appeasing Trump and supporting his efforts to appease Putin."

Behind the scenes: The aide told me Democrats are still formulating their strategy on the Russia sanctions. Senate Democrats like Bob Menendez and Republican Russia hawks, particularly in the Senate, may oppose the waiver.

What we're hearing: I spoke to Thornberry this morning. He told me he plans to include in his "chairman's mark" of the NDAA on Wednesday "a very limited waiver for the Secretary of Defense, if he believes that a country that is trying to move in our direction still needs to get some sustainment and logistical support for the Russian equipment that they already have."

Thornberry told me that "part of the problem" with the sanctions bill Congress passed last fall is that "if the Indian military has Russian helicopters and they need to keep them flying they have to do business with the Russian military."

A source with direct knowledge told me the NDAA will include new sanctions targeting Russia’s arms industry.

Mattis' spokeswoman Dana White told me the Secretary appreciates Thornberry’s support and "wants to avoid any legislation that inadvertently punishes nations with which we are working to expand our defense cooperation." (Meaning India.)

What's next: Unless Mattis and Co. sell Democrats and hawkish Republicans on the waiver, you'll see a brawl.

The Hill's next Russia battle

There's set to be another fight over sanctions on Russia.

Photo: Brendan Smialowski/AFP/Getty Images

Russia

Amid the tightest labor market in a generation, long-strapped Americans are seeing only small wage hikes, and economists say companies seem determined to hold onto wide profit margins for as long as they can before forking over more to workers.

Wages rose much more steeply in the late 1990s, the last time unemployment was as low as now. Data: BLS, BEA, Jared Bernstein analysis; Chart: Axios Visuals

Why it matters: Stubbornly flat wages and living standards are one reason for broad political disgruntlement in the U.S. 

Quick take: Economists have struggling to grasp why companies are not feeling forced to pass on bigger wages to attract and keep workers despite two years of steadily dropping joblessness, reaching 3.9% last month, the lowest since 2000. 

But an increasing consensus is this simple conclusion — because they can. 

"As long as firms have the clout to hold back pay increases, they will," Jared Bernstein, chief economic adviser to Vice President Joe Biden during the Obama administration, told Axios today.

The background: In the 2000 plunge of joblessness, wages increased by 4% on average. Today, companies across industries and the country complain of an employee shortage, but on average raised wages by just 2.6% last month, maintaining a long period of relatively flat compensation, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Among reasons that economists cite:

A new underlying structure: Productivity growth is lower, people are more or less permanently out of the work force with drug addiction and criminal records, and unionization numbers are much smaller. 

Profit-laden companies are resisting bigger wage hikes

Stubbornly flat wages and living standards are one reason for broad political disgruntlement in the U.S.

Axios

Sunday's top stories

Volcanic eruption in Hawaii destroys 21 homes

The future of electrics is the pickup truck

How a USB drive sparked the push for Korean peace

Behind the Trump n' Rudy show

Inside Scott Pruitt's "miserable" bunker

The Hill's next Russia battle

Profit-laden companies are resisting bigger wage hikes

Gina Haspel wanted to withdraw nomination to lead CIA

Cambridge Analytica directed to hand over data on U.S. citizen

Report: Trump aides targeted Obama alums over Iran deal

Rudy's return to the television circuit

The risk for Dems' midterm newbies

U.S. efforts are flailing on girls' equality in Afghanistan

The disappearing Chinese student visa