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My colleague Mike Allen, who's covered a few midterm elections in his time, says it's rare to see so much evidence of a trend accumulate so many months out, only for all the signals to be proven wrong.

Data: Cook Political Report, Real Clear Politics, Politico, The Washington Post, CNN, 538; Table: Lazaro Gamio/Axios

The big picture: Yes, the punditocracy is being cautious about 2018 because it has fresh memories of how humiliating it felt to wake up on Nov. 9, 2016, with Donald Trump as president. But the graphic above tells a stark story and shows the pundit class may be underestimating the odds of a devastating election season for Republicans.

The bottom line: The signals look every bit as bad for Republicans as they did for House Democrats when they got wiped out in the 2010 Tea Party wave.

"Every metric leads you to one conclusion: The likelihood of significant Republican losses in the House and state/local level is increasing by the week," said the Republican operative who did this statistical comparison to 2010.

"The depth of losses could be much greater than anticipated and the Senate majority might be in greater peril than anticipated."

Go deeper: Read the Washington Post's Dan Balz on the under-covered battle for the Senate.

Scary signs for Republicans

The pundit class may be underestimating the odds of a devastating election season for Republicans.

Politics

2018 midterm elections

Politics & Policy

President Trump is expected to declassify, as early as this week, documents covering the U.S. government's surveillance of Trump campaign adviser Carter Page and the investigative activities of senior Justice Department lawyer Bruce Ohr, according to allies of the president.

The big picture: Republicans on the House Intelligence and Judiciary committees believe the declassification will permanently taint the Trump-Russia investigation by showing the investigation was illegitimate to begin with. Trump has been hammering the same theme for months.

They allege that Bruce Ohr played an improper intermediary role between the Justice Department, British spy Christopher Steele and Fusion GPS — the opposition research firm that produced the Trump-Russia dossier, funded by Democrats. (Ohr's wife, Nellie, worked for Fusion GPS on Russia-related matters during the presidential election — a fact that Ohr did not disclose on federal forms.)

And they further allege that the Obama administration improperly spied on Carter Page — all to take down Trump.

House Freedom Caucus chairman Mark Meadows, who is close to Trump, told Axios earlier today: "After two years of investigations and accusations from both sides of the aisle about what documents indicate, it is past time for documents to be declassified and let the American people decide for themselves if DoJ and FBI acted properly."

The bottom line: President Trump has been hyping, and congressional Republicans have been calling for, the declassification of these documents. It's now put up or shut up time. We should find out very soon whether these documents are as explosive as advertised.

Trump expected to declassify Carter Page and Bruce Ohr documents

Republicans believe the move will permanently taint the Trump-Russia investigation.

Carter Page. Photo: Drew Angerer/Getty Images

Carter Page

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

President Trump was bluffing when he tweeted that he knows the successor to White House counsel Don McGahn, and instead he is vacillating about new legal leaders as he girds for open warfare with Democrats and Robert Mueller. The newest name on the president's mind: Fannie Mae general counsel Brian Brooks, two sources with direct knowledge tell me. 

Why it matters: This is, by far, Trump's most important current staffing decision. The climax of Mueller's probe lies ahead. And the White House faces the possibility of impeachment proceedings — and certainty of endless subpoenas and investigations — if Democrats win the House in November.

In search of: Trump wants somebody who'll be unquestioningly loyal — who'll be "his guy" and defend him on TV, said a source familiar with his thinking. (McGahn fulfills neither criteria: He's independent-minded, TV-shy and makes no effort to disguise his contempt for Jared and Ivanka.)

Emmet Flood, the White House attorney dealing with Mueller's investigation, looked set to take the job.

But Axios has learned that Trump is now seriously considering Brooks, a low-profile member of Washington's high-powered legal community.

Brooks has been recommended by Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, a friend from working together at OneWest, a California bank. Brooks was considered for deputy at Treasury, but withdrew from consideration for reasons that are still unclear.

Flood is still very much in contention, along with Washington litigator Pat Cipollone, according to sources involved in the process.

No decision is likely for a few weeks, one of those sources said.

Trump tweeted on Aug. 30: "I am very excited about the person who will be taking the place of Don McGahn as White House Councel [sic]!" 

But Trump privately is still going back and forth, and he is even open to new names.

Meanwhile, the White House Counsel's office is down to bare bones. McGahn is leaving soon, almost all of his deputies have departed and the office is nowhere near equipped for the storm that's likely coming.

Another name that has been mentioned inside the White House as a possible McGahn replacement is Matt Whitaker. He's a former U.S. attorney for Iowa and has the disadvantage of being Jeff Sessions' chief of staff, but he's managed to maintain a good standing inside the White House despite Trump's hatred of Sessions.

The president's insistence on a loyalist could pose problems for Flood, who's by far the most qualified to handle a season of investigations:

Flood is independent-minded. According to friends, he agreed to take his current job because he thought the special counsel and "culture of investigations" was out of control. He wanted to protect the presidency as an institution, as he'd done for Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush.

Trump and Flood have spoken about the job more than once, but Trump has never formally asked.

Flood is telling Trump he would need to be able to hire the right people to run day-to-day business so he can continue to focus on Mueller.

Be smart ... A top Washington lawyer summed up the stakes: "If they lose [Flood] they are f---ed. Because they are never going to find a decent white-collar type to fill Emmet's shoes."

Scoop: Inside Trump's biggest hire

He was bluffing when he said he knew Don McGahn's successor.

Inside the White House

It's hard to overstate the extremity and variety of pressures bearing down on President Trump and his understaffed White House.

The bottom line: Taken together, it's a jaw-dropping list of problems, and Trump's "fine-tuned machine" is creaking under this stress. We're at a hinge point in the Trump presidency, and staff sound as unsettled as I've heard them in the 19 months since he took office.

Midterm elections that, according to polls, will likely flip the House into Democratic control. Here's a long list of likely investigations awaiting Trump.

Trump's former personal lawyer Michael Cohen and campaign chairman Paul Manafort are going to prison.

Federal prosecutors in the Southern District of New York have granted immunity to Allen Weisselberg, the Trump Organization's chief financial officer and the man who knows more than anyone about Trump's business dealings. We don't yet know exactly what Weisselberg has offered the prosecutors in return for their kindness.

Trump has grown to resent and distrust his White House Counsel, Don McGahn, who has spent hours cooperating with Robert Mueller's team.

McGahn leaves this fall and he leaves behind an office unprepared to deal with the blizzard of subpoenas, investigations and possible impeachment proceedings that likely await it next year. Almost all of McGahn's deputies have already gone.

Bob Woodward's book hits the stands on Tuesday. Trump's advisers have spent the past few days reading a PDF of the book, and the president now knows that some of his previously trusted White House aides play starring roles in Woodward's narrative. Trump is privately furious at Gary Cohn and Rob Porter, and sources with direct knowledge of Trump's thinking tell me it's possible he publicly attacks Porter and Cohn this week.

The New York Times published an op-ed from an anonymous "senior administration official" who claims to be part of a wide-reaching resistance to Trump's presidency from inside his own administration. That op-ed, coupled with the Woodward book, inflamed Trump's paranoia about a "Deep State" working to undermine him.

The White House press and communications teams are very thin, after a handful of staff resigned or were forced out. They are wrestling with a firehose of bad news.

The stress on Trump's machine

Taken together, it's a jaw-dropping list of problems.

Hurricane Florence has the potential to be a devastating storm for tens of millions along the East Coast later this week, when it is forecast to come close to or cross over the coastline of the Carolinas or mid-Atlantic region. It can possibly come to a complete stall as a major hurricane of Category 3 intensity or greater, which would be a potential nightmare scenario if it plays out. 

The big picture: Computer model projections are unanimous in showing the storm will be unusually intense and slow-moving — two attributes that indicate its destructive potential. While Florence was a Category 1 storm Sunday afternoon, it's forecast to take advantage of warm sea surface temperatures, the absence of wind shear and other inhibiting factors to rapidly intensify to a Category 4 or possibly even Category 5 hurricane as it moves toward the East Coast. 

The threat: Hurricane Florence appears likely to bring a combination of high-impact —  and potentially deadly — threats to the U.S. by late in the week. While wind speeds get most of the attention, water kills the most people in hurricanes, both in the form of storm surge flooding at the coast and inland flooding from heavy rainfall. 

On the inland flooding side, the scenario portrayed by many computer models best resembles an East Coast version of Hurricane Harvey, which dumped more than 60 inches of rain on Houston last year. 

Yes, but: No two storms are ever exactly alike, and the threats posed by a landfalling, Category 4 or 5 storm that crosses the coast and comes to a dead stop, spinning over land for days while dumping several feet of rain far inland, cannot be overstated.

Driving the storm: Hurricane Florence will take an unusual path toward the U.S., with its escape route out to sea blocked by a building area of high pressure to its north. By the end of the week, that high pressure area, known as a "blocking high," is forecast to halt the storm's northward progress almost completely. The big question facing forecasters — and those in the storm's path — is where Hurricane Florence will be at that point. 

The impact: This storm will bring a wide array of hazards to the East Coast, and residents of the Carolinas and mid-Atlantic region, including the Washington, D.C., area, are being urged to prepare for a potentially life-threatening event featuring damaging winds that could last for a long duration along with coastal and inland flooding. Florence has the potential to be a large hurricane, with impacts felt hundreds of miles from the landfall location. 

The bottom line: Hurricane Florence is the real deal of storm threats to the East Coast. Anyone with interests from Washington, D.C., south to Charleston, South Carolina, should be paying close attention to the latest guidance from emergency managers and relying most closely on the official forecasts from the National Hurricane Center. 

Hurricane Florence poses extreme risks for East Coast

This is the real deal of storm threats to the East Coast.

Satellite image of Hurricane Florence as a Category 1 storm.

A satellite image of Hurricane Florence as a Category 1 storm on Sept. 9, 2018. Photo: NOAA via CIRA/RAMMB

Science

hurricanes

U.S. News

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

Highlights from last Friday's Axios Gear Up event in Boston, featuring Dan's interviews with General Motors CEO Mary Barra, Tusk Ventures founder Bradley Tusk and 11-time NBA All-Star Chris Bosh.

Podcast: Mary Barra, Chris Bosh & Bradley Tusk

Talking everything from self-driving to Mike Bloomberg's presidential plans.

Business

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Axios Re:Cap

Podcasts

Media Trends

Axios Media Trends

Six more women have levied accusations of sexual misconduct against CBS CEO Les Moonves, prompting reports that Moonves, who has been with the company for over 20 years, will be out of a job very soon. The new allegations were first reported by Ronan Farrow in The New Yorker.

Why it matters: When the first round of misconduct allegations against Moonves were published last month by Farrow, CBS' board stood by his side, letting the veteran television executive continue to run the company and be its public face for weeks. Now, reports suggest that the board will move quickly to remove Moonves from power.

Moonves will be gone within 24 hours, according to multiple reports.

"Leslie Moonves’ tenure at CBS Corp. is expected to end within the next 24 hours as new allegations of sexual assault and harassment surface in an investigative report by Ronan Farrow," Variety's managing editor for television Cynthia Littleton writes. 

"Moonves ... will step down soon as part of a wide-ranging corporate settlement of a separate fight for control of CBS. ... The CBS board of directors is likely to announce the deal by Monday morning, according to two executives with direct knowledge of the matter," CNN's Brian Stelter reports. 

"The revelations add pressure to exit talks that were already underway at the most watched U.S. broadcast network. The announcement of his exit is now expected this week, and could come in the next 24 hours," per Bloomberg's Lucas Shaw and Chris Dolmetsch.

CBS' board has been negotiating an exit agreement with Moonves for weeks, the New York Times reported Thursday. 

The board reportedly wanted to cut Moonves' severance package down from $180 million to $100 million, mostly in stock, and maintain the right to reduce that package, depending on the outcome of investigations into Moonves' behavior, per CNBC.

CNBC also reported — to no surprise of industry insiders — that CBS would appoint COO Joe Ianniello as Moonves' interim replacement.

The new allegations come amid growing frustration by shareholders, industry professionals and advocacy groups that CBS' board has been complicit in failing to take action against Moonves when the allegations first surfaced. 

"And the reason ... that these women are coming out now is that they have been extraordinarily frustrated by what they perceive to be inaction on the part of CBS and its board. And that really is integral to what prompted this follow-up story," Farrow told Stelter on CNN. 

CBS' board hired two law firms to investigate the allegations against Moonves last month and said it created a special committee to oversee the probe.

CBS told Axios that the investigation will continue: "CBS takes these allegations very seriously. Our board of directors is conducting a thorough investigation of these matters, which is ongoing."

Separately, CBS was supposed to conclude an internal investigation into CBS News that began in March after Charlie Rose's departure last month, but the timeframe was extended to an unknown deadline after the company said it would roll that investigation into a broader investigation into workplace culture at CBS Corporation.

The bigger picture: The drama surrounding Moonves comes amid a legal battle between CBS, led by Moonves, against its majority shareholder, Shari Redstone and her holding group National Amusements Inc.

New Moonves accusations prompt reports of his imminent departure

CNN and Variety are both reporting that Moonves will be gone from CBS within 24 hours.

Media

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

Macro

Axios Macro

Data: Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis; Note: Seasonally adjusted; Chart: Chris Canipe/Axios

Wage growth, up 2.9% in August from the year before, was the standout figure in Friday's jobs report. 

Why it matters: For almost a decade, weak wage growth has defied the economic recovery and has bedeviled workers. Perhaps no longer, according to Joseph Song, an economist at Bank of America Merrill Lynch. Song predicts this is just the beginning of "better wage dynamics," and it could continue in coming months.

Stagnant wages had become a bit of a paradox: With falling unemployment, companies should have been trying to bid wages higher to retain talent and compete for workers. Now we're close to a wage growth rate we haven't seen in almost a decade, as 2009 was the last time paychecks grew 3% year-over-year.  

This is another signal that the Fed — which called the lack of wage growth a "puzzle" earlier this year — will stay on track to raise rates at least once more in 2018. Maybe twice more, depending on whom you ask. 

Wage growth was not isolated to just a few industries: Most sectors showed wages were up from prior months.

Workers should feel confident that if they switch jobs, they might find another gig that will pay them even more.

But, Song cautions, we have been "head faked" with strong wages before. Some of the uptick in wages could be revised away in coming months.

Wage growth takes center stage

We're getting closer to a wage growth rate not seen in almost a decade.

Employment

The fallout from last week's anonymous New York Times op-ed continued Sunday with administration officials and lawmakers taking to the morning news shows to offer their reactions.

The big picture: Among loyal members of the Trump administration, the message was clear: The author of the op-ed is a coward who could pose a threat to national security and should resign. Trump critics, meanwhile, are largely of the opinion that the op-ed shines a truthful light on the dysfunction of the White House — and that the idea that top officials would even consider invoking the 25th Amendment is extremely troubling.

FOX News Sunday With Chris Wallace-9_04_09 AM - 9_05_21 AM-2018-09-09

On "Fox News Sunday," Pence suggested that there could be criminal activity involved in the writing of the op-ed, and that the individual should resign. He also said that he'd be willing to take a lie detector test if ordered by Trump.

In a separate appearance on CBS' "Face the Nation" with Margaret Brennan, Pence dismissed that there had been any discussion of the 25th Amendment: "No. Never. Why would we be, Margaret?"

State of the Union With Jake Tapper-9_05_04 AM - 9_05_29 AM-2018-09-09

On CNN's "State of the Union," counselor to the president Kellyanne Conway called the op-ed "ridiculous" and speculated that the writer's motivation was to sow discord in the administration.

Meet The Press-10 48 10 Am - 10 49 04 Am-2018-09-09

On NBC's "Meet the Press," Sen. Dick Durbin asked what kind of White House environment could give rise to such an astonishing revolt. He compared the dysfunction to President Obama's term in office — which he claimed was without an indictment or major scandal.

Meet The Press-11 06 42 Am - 11 08 05 Am-2018-09-09

Sen. Ben Sasse, a frequent Republican critic of President Trump, questioned the decision to write the op-ed, saying it wouldn't "do anything but other than drive more paranoia."

What we're watching: Pence, Conway react to NYT op-ed on Sunday shows

Pence called it "an assault on our democracy."

President Trump has a sudden competitor for airtime: CNN and MSNBC covered President Obama's first 2018 campaign rally Saturday as if he were in a general-election race with his successor.

Be smart, from N.Y. Times' Adam Nagourney: "Obama’s decision to enter the fray ... could very well, as some Democrats acknowledge, energize Republican ... voters ... But he made clear his main goal [yesterday] was getting Democrats and independents, who are a big bloc of voters [in Orange County], to turn out."

What's happening: CNN ("ANY MOMENT") and MSNBC ("HAPPENING NOW") both went with empty-podium teases ahead of Obama's appearance in Anaheim, Calif., and then both used "BREAKING NEWS" tabs during his live remarks. Fox News was airing a taped show, but used soundbites later.

After calling out Trump and the Kochs in a speech the day before, Obama went with generic descriptions yesterday, but said, "[W]hen you look at the arc of American history, there’s always been a push and pull ... between those who promote the politics of hope and those who exploit the politics of fear."

Obama and Trump compete for airtime ahead of midterms

CNN and MSNBC both treated Obama's speech Saturday as breaking news.

Axios AM

The whodunit over the Trump administration's "anonymous" hinges on the word "senior." The New York Times describes its mysterious Op-Ed contributor as "a senior official in the Trump administration."

The big question: But how senior is "senior"? Does the author meet what the "Morning Joe" hosts called the "household name" test? Or is this actually a swampier, murkier version of "senior"? 

The guessing game raced across Washington and Wall Street: 

"I Am Part of the Resistance Inside the Trump Administration" had been viewed more than 13 million times through Friday, and remained atop the paper's "Most Popular" list into this morning. 

In playing the game myself, I may have been wrong about one of the most essential assumptions: 

I wrote in Axios AM, and speculated on the air, that based purely on what Times editors must have been thinking (or should have been thinking), the masked dissident probably is authentically "senior."

My logic: The paper has to assume the writer will be unmasked. And if the official turned out to be relatively obscure, The Times would have credibility issues. And normal readers don't understand the wall between the paper's newsroom and opinion section.

But in the few clues the paper has given, there are real questions about whether the "household name" test will be met:

Hmmm 1: Answering reader questions in a piece posted yesterday ("How the Anonymous Op-Ed Came to Be"), deputy editorial page editor (and Op-Ed Editor) Jim Dao said vetting included "direct communication with the author, some background checking and the testimony of [a] trusted intermediary." If the official were famous, how much testimony would you need?

Hmmm 2, pointed out by Jonathan Swan: The Op-Ed author writes that "a top official" had "complained to me recently, exasperated by an Oval Office meeting at which the president flip-flopped on a major policy decision he’d made only a week earlier." Would an actual top official describe a peer as a "top official"? 

Hmmm 3, and this is the biggest one of all: Dao told Michael Barbaro on The Times' podcast, "The Daily" that on the "senior administration official" terminology, "All I can say is I feel that we followed a definition that has been used by our newsroom in the past." Whoa! A former (actual) senior administration official instantly phoned me to say what a red flag that is: Journalists are notoriously liberal in their definition of who constitutes a "senior administration official." 

Have fun with your guessing. And please gamble responsibly.

How "senior" is Anonymous?

Does the author meet the "household name" test?

5G technologies are expected to put mobile broadband on par with fiber networks — and they're rolling out on a city-by-city basis similar to how Google Fiber deployed networks between 2010 and 2016.

Why it matters:  Google has stopped expanding its expensive fiber build-outs and, as a result, is seen as a failed experiment. Google Fiber's legacy isn't necessarily how far its networks reached, but more that it pioneered a new way of working with local authorities to get them built in the first place, Blair Levin and Larry Downes write in Harvard Business Review.

The backstory: For decades, local governments tended to treat broadband providers as quasi-governmental public utilities, and they regulated construction and access to public infrastructure with a lot of red tape. In the 2008-2009 period, phone and cable companies were the only broadband games in town, and they didn't have much incentive to invest the money necessary to beef up their networks. 

When Google announced it would build a small number of experimental networks, more than 1,000 cities pitched the company to be a "test bed," providing a new incentive to streamline and accelerate the permitting and building process — and injecting a new competitor into the market. 

It changed the relationships between infrastructure providers and local authorities, forcing them to negotiate in ways that worked for both sides' business models when negotiating prices, permitting and fees.

It spurred competition and investment in broadband infrastructure, accelerating fiber deployments by as much as two years and triggering incumbent providers to commit $7-$10 billion in new capital spending.

Investors became more supportive of capital expenditures for fiber networks in order to respond to the new market player. 

Why it failed: Putting fiber-optic cable underground is an expensive undertaking — even for a highly profitable company like Google — and it didn't get enough of a return on the investment to keep expanding to new cities. 

The bottom line: "Authorities are finding, as with Google Fiber, that they must offer competitive rates or risk delaying private investment in new networks, a critical source of local development and competitiveness," Levin and Downes write. "The winners once again will be those communities that appreciate the importance of forming early and comprehensive private-public partnerships with network operators and their investors."

The 5G lessons from Google Fiber's failure

Coils of fiber-optic cable being pushed into ground by a site worker. Photo: Adrian Greeman/Construction Photography/Avalon/Getty Images.

In 2017, Hong Kong became the city with the highest number of residents with a net worth of $30m or more — surpassing New York City, according to a new report by Wealth-X.

The big picture: China has outlined strategies for 2018, 2025 and 2050 to displace the United States. Over the past 5 years, China and Hong Kong saw the largest gains in their ultra wealthy population, according to the report. 86% of the 30 fastest growing cities were in China, but the U.S. still remains firmly in first place as host to the most tens-of-millionaire and billionaires with China in third. 

Hong Kong surpasses NYC as global hotspot for ultra-rich

China and Hong Kong saw the largest gains in their ultra wealthy population

Hong Kong skyline in the dark with all the lights on. Everything has a neon blue hue in the darkness.

China

World

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