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National

In his second speech in two days and first on the campaign trail, former President Barack Obama told voters they have a chance to "restore sanity" to America by voting in midterm elections. 

When we're not stepping up, other voices fill the void. The good news is in two months, we have a chance to restore sanity in our politics. 

Obama california

Go deeper: Former First Lady Michelle Obama has launched a campaign designed to get Americans to the polls for November's midterm elections.

Obama: Voters have a chance to "restore sanity" in midterms

Politics

Barack Obama

Prosecutors now say Russian national Maria Butina did not offer sex for political access

Prosecutors say they misunderstood texts that made them think she had.

Maria Butina. Photo: STR/AFP/Getty Images

Russia

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

World

Three technology privacy cases coming before the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court this month will begin to clarify how a landmark U.S. Supreme Court ruling affects law enforcement access to cellphone records and wireless data.  

Why it matters: These are the first tests of how the Supreme Court's ruling in Carpenter v. United States — which decided that law enforcement must obtain a search warrant before getting cellphone location data — will be applied in cases around the country. The verdicts will set the tone for how cases like these are handled around the country.

The Carpenter case, decided in June 2018, stemmed from police seizures of thousands of cellphone location records from Timothy Carpenter, who was convicted of robberies between 2010 and 2011. 

The conviction he received was handed over "partly on data from Carpenter's cell phone providers," Axios' Sam Baker reported. 

The bottom line: Kade Crockford, director at the Technology of Liberty Program at the ACLU's Massachusetts branch, told Axios the core problem in the 21st century is "technology changes so fast, and the law doesn't." 

"People have been using cellphones in this country for over 20 years, and only [in June 2018] did we finally get a decision at the Supreme Court...That is a very slow development of privacy law." 

The three cases on the docket in Massachuseetts are Commonwealth v. Almonor, v. Johnson, and v. Feliz. 

Commonwealth v. Almonor deals with "law enforcement's ability to acquire precise, real-time location information from a cell phone," the ACLU's Massachusetts chapter explains.

Commonwealth v. Johnson asks whether law enforcement should be allowed to obtain GPS location data from a tracking monitor required during a probational period, after the person who had worn it is no longer on probation.

Commonwealth v. Feliz, according to the ACLU, "asks whether the government can mandate the ankle shackling of all 'non-contact' sex offenders...even if there is no individualized reason to justify the tracking." 

Nathan Freed Wessler, ACLU staff attorney with the Speech, Privacy and Technology project, told Axios that these cases represent "a pretty ground-shaking clarification of how the Fourth Amendment protects our privacy in the digital age." 

"These cases are providing an opportunity for appellate courts to start applying the lessons from U.S. v Carpenter. The court in Carpenter could not have been more clear that our interpretation of the Fourth Amendment...need to take into account of changes of technology and the radical new powers that technological advances give the government to invade people's privacy."

The other side: Jake Wark, spokesman for the Suffolk County District Attorney's Office,  which is handling Feliz, told Axios that when someone is convicted of a crime, that person's expectation of privacy has "been reasonably diminished." 

"It's not that the expectation of privacy has been entirely wiped out, it's that it's been reasonably diminished. ... As you're charged with a crime, you have a somewhat diminished expectation of privacy. If you're convicted of a crime, the expectation of privacy is diminished even further." 

Three state-level cases will shape cellphone privacy law

Three cases in Massachusetts could set the tone for how SCOTUS technology privacy rulings are applied.

Technology

Personal data

Privacy

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.

Finish Line

Axios Finish Line

Data: Brookings Institution, U.S. Census Bureau; Map: Harry Stevens/Axios

Just as entire communities revolved around the automobile, steel and other industries in the last century, many places in America now depend almost entirely on e-commerce giants like Amazon.

Why it matters: E-commerce has created the new factory town. "The pendulum is swinging back, bringing jobs to places that had been left behind" as manufacturing plants closed down, says Michael Mandel, chief economic strategist at the Democratic-leaning Progressive Policy Institute. "I see e-commerce as a really good corrective to the concentration of jobs in cities and coasts."

Campbellsville, Kentucky has about 26,000 residents — and 20% of its working population works in e-commerce. That's largely due to two Amazon fulfillment centers.

Ottawa, Kansas, also a town of about 26,000 people, has 15% of its working population in e-commerce jobs thanks to a pair of big Walmart and American Eagle distribution centers in town.

Mount Vernon, Illinois, which has long been home to a Walgreens distribution center, has 9.5% of its working population in warehousing jobs.

And the list goes on with small towns from Texas to Florida to Pennsylvania.

The other side: The scores of warehousing jobs supporting many rural American towns are also among the most vulnerable to automation. As e-commerce and retail companies continue to invest technologies to replace people in warehouses, thousands of workers in some of the country's poorest towns could eventually be out of work.

"Automation is here ... [and] there is absolutely a portion of this workforce that at some point over time is not going to be needed," says David Egan, global head of industrial & logistics research at CBRE, an investment and market research firm.

The big picture: While several small towns have high concentrations of warehouse workers, the e-commerce jobs boom seems to be mainly concentrated in big, wealthy cities, says Joe Kane of the Brookings Institution. 

The biggest jumps in absolute numbers of jobs since 2010 have occurred in New York City, Seattle, Los Angeles and Dallas — partly due to Amazon's hiring spree at its corporate hubs and partly due to the rise of last-mile distribution centers, which are smaller warehouses located closer to cities.

Don't expect the big rural warehouses to disappear anytime soon, Egan says. "Those are indispensable ... that's where a lot of the inventory sits, that's where fulfillment begins."

But CBRE predicts warehouses and distribution centers will add 452,000 workers by next year — and much of that growth will be closer to big cities, as companies invest more and more money in fast delivery.

E-commerce thriving in America’s shuttered factory towns

Many towns in America rely on vulnerable warehouse jobs.

Future

Jobs

Business

Axios Pro: Deals

With an escalation in President Trump's trade war possible as early as Thursday, retaliatory tariffs threaten U.S. companies employing some 11 million workers, according to an Axios analysis.

Why it matters: Industries affected by the brinksmanship are mostly concentrated in rural, deeply red, already-struggling parts of the country, with political consequences for Trump and Republicans in 2018 and beyond.

Data: Brookings Institution, U.S. Chamber of Commerce, U.S. Census Bureau, Bureau of Labor Statistics; Get the data; Map: Lazaro Gamio/Axios

Explanation of the map: The map tracks the geographical impact of both current and threatened retaliation. The darker a county, the higher the concentration of affected industries there.

Driving the news: On Thursday, a public comment period ends on Trump's threat to quadruple tariffs on China, slapping them on $200 billion in Chinese goods, up from $50 billion in force today. If Trump proceeds this week or later, as experts expect him to, China has said it will retaliate with tariffs on $60 billion in U.S. exports.

That's on top of 25% and 10% tariffs enacted, respectively, on steel and aluminum imports from Canada, China, Mexico and the European Union, and by those countries against the U.S.

Employment in rural and low-population counties can be exceptionally vulnerable to gyrations in the global economy, said Mark Muro, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. "In a small county, a single meat packing establishment can provide hundreds of jobs and make up a large share of that county's total employment," he told Axios. A prior report by Muro and others at Brookings inspired this analysis.

Against these impacts, the Trump administration has provided a $4.7 billion bailout to soybean farmers, hit with retaliatory tariffs by China, their biggest customer. Republicans have criticized the compensation. 

Methodology: We calculated the concentration of industries in each county compared with the national average. To get there, we gathered lists of goods facing tariffs from Canada, China, Mexico, and the European Union. The data is from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the Bureau of Labor Statistics' Quarterly Census of Employment Wages.

The coming yearlong U.S. trade war with China

Trump sees China trade as a war he can win

11 million U.S. workers are in the trade war's crosshairs

The most affected industries are in Trump counties

Trump trade war

U.S. News

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

 The NHC is projecting that Hurricane Florence will be a Category 4 storm with 145 mph sustained winds 5 days from now. 

Why it matters: That’s the strongest five-day intensity forecast for an Atlantic hurricane they’ve issued in the past two decades. Keep in mind though, intensity forecasts are much more uncertain than track forecasts.

The big picture: A highly unusual and complex chessboard of weather systems across the North Atlantic are conspiring to push now-Tropical Storm Florence to the west-northwest, rather than out to sea as every other storm in its current position has done.

Particularly crucial in the storm track forecast is a potentially record-breaking area of high pressure that is forecast to build to the storm's northeast next week. This will act as an atmospheric stop sign, pinning what could then be a powerful hurricane close to or over the East Coast. 

One reason why forecasts are anticipating that Florence will rapidly intensify is the ocean temperatures. Sea surface temperatures are at least 3 degrees Fahrenheit warmer than average off the East Coast, giving the storm plenty of fuel. This should allow the storm to intensify.

The details: Depending on the storm's intensity and exact path, both of which are considerably uncertain, the storm could pose a devastating threat to areas that have not seen a major hurricane make landfall in decades. 

The timing of a possible landfall is late next week, between Thursday and Saturday. 

Assuming it makes landfall, Florence could pose a devastating threat to areas that have not seen a major hurricane strike in decades.

Charleston, South Carolina, for example, last saw a Category 4 storm make a direct hit in 1989, when Hurricane Hugo struck.

Since Hugo, the area has expanded in population, and sea level rise from climate change and land subsidence has led to increasingly common "sunny day flooding," making any storm surge threat from a hurricane particularly serious. 

Yes, but: There is lots of time for the forecast to change. There are still scenarios in play where Florence comes close to the East Coast, but does not make landfall. 

For now, meteorologists and government officials are urging East Coast residents to pay close attention to official forecasts and take actions to prepare for a possible storm. This includes buying particular supplies and familiarizing yourself with evacuation routes, should that become necessary next week. 

Increasing odds that Tropical Storm Florence will threaten East Coast

Sea level rise already causing billions in home value to disappear

Florence to hit East Coast as a major hurricane next week

The storm is projected to take an unprecedented path.

Computer model simulation of Hurricane Florence's satellite signature as it nears land.

Computer model simulation of Hurricane Florence's satellite signature as it nears land on Sept. 13, 2018. This is not a forecast. Photo: Weatherbell.com

Science

hurricanes

Extreme weather

News and analysis of the scientific advances fueling AI and quantum computing, revolutionizing biology and medicine, and tackling climate change. Science is changing the world and colliding with the global politics that shape it.

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

Federal prosecutors in Manhattan are looking into whether anyone in the Trump Organization violated campaign-finance laws in an effort to follow up on the conviction of Michael Cohen, Bloomberg reports. 

Why it matters: The inquiry into the Trump Organization shows that the U.S. attorney's office is not satisfied with Cohen's guilty plea and believe there may be others complicit in Cohen's violations, including President Trump himself. 

Federal prosecutors are investigating the Trump organization

Investigators are following up after Cohen's conviction

Michael Cohen. Photo: Yana Paskova/Getty Images

Michael Cohen

2024 will be an election year like no other, as President Biden seeks re-election amid economic uncertainty, two wars and questions about his age. His likely foe, former President Trump, faces felony charges and vows revenge on his political enemies. Meanwhile, Americans generally are dissatisfied with those choices and are divided over immigration, race, education and more.

Politics & Policy

It’s been a short week thanks to Labor Day, but the tech industry has been busy making tons of news. 

Catch up quick: Instagram is reportedly developing a shopping app; Lyft launches scooters in Denver; Snap releases new models of Spectacles; Microsoft (Oct. 2) and Google (Oct. 9) announced hardware events.

Tech news you may have missed this week

Catch up on some of this week's technology news.

Axios

Saturday's top stories