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National

Temperature anomalies just about the Earth's surface showing the Arctic outbreak.

Temperature anomalies at about 5,000 feet, showing the Arctic outbreak (purple and blue). Graphic via Weathermodels.com

If you're 25 or younger and live within a large swath of the Midwest — from Minneapolis to Chicago — this week will feature the coldest temperatures of your life as a lobe of the polar vortex plunges south out of the Arctic.

Why it matters: The frigid outbreak, which has already begun in parts of Minnesota and Wisconsin, will be life-threatening and disruptive for tens of millions of people this week. Wind chills on Wednesday morning in parts of Illinois, Wisconsin and Minnesota are likely to approach the minus 50s°F to minus 60s°F. Such conditions can cause frostbite in just minutes and will likely force the cancellation of schools across the region. 

Details: Weather forecasters across the Midwest have begun using words and phrases like "historic" and "all-time coldest" in association with the Arctic outbreak heading for the region. From Tuesday to Thursday, temperatures about 5,000 feet above the surface, which forecasters look to as an indicator of potential surface temperatures, may reach the coldest values ever observed in the lower 48 states. 

In Minneapolis, Milwaukee, Madison, Des Moines, Green Bay, Chicago, Indianapolis, Detroit and Chicago, the cold will peak between Tuesday and Thursday, but it will remain extremely cold throughout the week. 

In a harbinger of things to come, International Falls, Minn., known as the nation's "icebox," saw its temperature plummet to minus 46°F on Sunday, the fifth-lowest temperature it has ever recorded.

A fresh snowpack, courtesy of a storm moving through the region earlier in the week, will enhance the potential for record cold readings, as snow-covered ground is more efficient at reflecting solar radiation back into the atmosphere during the day and keeping it colder at night. 

By the numbers: The National Weather Service is warning that wind chills will plunge to the lowest readings since the mid-1990s across the Upper Midwest. 

The NWS is forecasting a low temperature in Chicago of minus 20°F on Wednesday morning. This would set a daily record low and be one of the coldest temperatures ever recorded in the city. The last time it was this cold in Chicago was Jan. 18–20, 1994, the Weather Service said.

A low of minus 20°F would be within 7°F of the city's all-time coldest temperature, which was set in January 1985.  

If Chicago’s high temperature remains below minus 11°F on Wednesday, it would be the city's coldest afternoon high temperature on record. In fact, the city could see temperatures remain below 0°F for 60 hours or so, a rarity even for such a cold location.

About 200 million people in the U.S. will see temperatures dip below freezing during the coming week, based on model projections.

The bottom line: The NWS forecast office in Des Moines put it starkly: "This may be the coldest air in a generation."

The Arctic outbreak is associated with a piece of the tropospheric polar vortex, which has broken off and spun south out of the Arctic. The stratospheric polar vortex — which is a whirl of low pressure at upper levels of the atmosphere over the pole — was knocked off-kilter in early January, increasing the odds of cold outbreaks in the U.S. and Europe.

The globe as a whole, however, is still much warmer than normal, and scientists say the cold snap in parts of the U.S. in no way invalidates the overwhelming scientific evidence showing the planet is warming over the longer term due to the burning of fossil fuels for energy.  

Polar vortex splits, sending frigid air howling into the U.S., Europe

The polar vortex is about to split into 3 pieces 

Blistering Australian heat is shattering records and killing wildlife

Thanks to polar vortex, "life-threatening" cold plunges into Midwest

All-time cold temperature records could be toppled.

Science

extreme weather

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

Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.) officially launched her 2020 presidential bid Sunday in her hometown of Oakland, California, delivering a stern repudiation of President Trump's policies and a vow to fight for the most vulnerable Americans.

What she said: "My whole life I have only one client: the people. And fight for the people means fighting for a more fair criminal justice system. … For the people, meant fighting for middle-class families who had been defrauded by banks and lost their homes in the Great Recession." 

Harris, who began her career as a prosecutor in Oakland and later became the state’s attorney general, used her speech to portray herself as a lifelong champion for marginalized people and someone who can unify the deeply divided country. 

"These are not ordinary times or an ordinary election. But this is our America. ... We can restore America’s moral leadership on this planet," Harris said. 

Harris, whose mother is Indian and father is Jamaican, would be the first woman and the first person of Asian descent to serve as president.

Politicsnation-5 06 49 Pm - 5 08 19 Pm-2019-01-27

2020 Democrats are ready to talk about racial inequality 

Kamala Harris' 2020 campaign raised $1.5 million in its first day

Kamala Harris officially launches 2020 bid

"These are not ordinary times or an ordinary election."

Kamala Harris speaks at Howard University in Washington, D.C., earlier this week. Photo: Eva Hambach/AFP/Getty Images

Politics

Kamala Harris

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

The Treasury Department announced Sunday that it had lifted sanctions on three companies linked to Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska, including the world's second-largest aluminum producer Rusal.

The state of play: Last month, the companies reduced their relationship with Deripaska, complying with U.S. requirements. After a push from Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, the Senate then voted to uphold Treasury's ruling lifting the sanctions, despite a wave of defections from 11 Republicans.

U.S. lifts sanctions on 3 Deripaska-linked companies

They include the world's second-largest aluminum producer Rusal.

Oleg Deripaska. Photo: Sergei Savostyanov/TASS/Getty Images

World

Russia economy

Business

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

Macro

Axios Macro

In the wake of George Soros' broadside against China in Davos, expect to hear much more about China this week.

What to watch: The U.S. and China will hold another round of trade talks on Wednesday — this time in Washington. Vice Premier Liu He "may be bringing an offer of more significant structural concessions," says Bill Bishop of Sinocism, but don’t expect major breakthroughs.

Caterpillar said last quarter that it was reeling from tariffs, so a lot of China watchers will be looking to its earnings tomorrow.

Apple is out with earnings on Tuesday. We already know the company had a rough quarter. Expect CEO Tim Cook to field a lot of questions from analysts about China, and none about his lunch with Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro in Davos.

Microsoft and Amazon report earnings on Wednesday and Thursday, respectively. Also watch for reports from Facebook and Tesla, which is expected to be profitable for a second consecutive quarter.

The government is back open, but we may not get the final 2018 GDP report on Wednesday. The release may be postponed if there’s a big backlog of prep work for the Bureau of Economic Analysis employees who were furloughed.

The Fed concludes its two-day policy meeting on Wednesday. No rate hike is expected.

One report that’s coming for sure is the first jobs report of 2019, which will be released on Friday at 8:30 am. Economists estimate that 160,000 jobs were added in January. The unemployment rate is less predictable, as a lot of government workers will have been counted as unemployed for the reference week of Jan. 6–12.

Brexit is still an omnishambles. Reuters has an excellent guide to the various amendments you can expect this week, and which ones have a chance of passing.

TL;DR: Don't be surprised if the government loses control of parliament, allowing MPs to draft and vote on their own Brexit policies.

Go deeper: Chinese vice premier heads to D.C. for next round of trade talks

U.S.-China trade talks to heat back up this week

We'll also see earnings reports and big Brexit movements.

Chinese and American flags in Beijing. Photo: Fred Dufour/AFP/Getty Images

U.S. China trade war

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

Capital

Axios Capital

The United States officially recognized Juan Guaidó as the rightful (if interim) president of Venezuela; it has also pledged a paltry $20 million of humanitarian assistance to the country. 

The state of play: A top sovereign-debt lawyer has proposed one huge next step the White House (and only the White House) could take. It would be much more effective than $20 million in cash — and it would cost nothing at all.

If Guaidó does take power, he will immediately be faced with more than $90 billion in outstanding debt, the vast majority of which is in default.

Creditors have already begun the rush to the courthouse, trying to turn those debts into judgments that can in turn be used to seize Venezuela's assets around the world. (Among those assets: Citgo, the giant oil refiner.)

Venezuela has an enormous and fractious range of creditors, including not only bondholders but also sovereigns (Russia and China are the two big ones), as well as corporations that have won international arbitration proceedings against the country.

All of those creditors have been waiting for the Nicolás Maduro regime to come to an end. At that point they will start laying claim to Venezuela's assets, which ultimately include some 300 billion barrels in oil reserves. That's the largest store of oil in the world.

If the fight over Venezuela's debts were to be halted for a few years, that would give the Guaidó regime, working with the IMF, time to get the domestic economy back on its feet. The debts racked up by the Hugo Chávez and Maduro administrations will have to be dealt with at some point, but given the scale of Venezuela's humanitarian disaster, court fights in New York should not dominate Guaidó's priorities.

The solution to the debt problem is presented in an important paper by Lee Buchheit and Mitu Gulati. Buchheit, the doyen of sovereign debt restructurings, explains that the U.S. government can unilaterally call an effective standstill to court proceedings by declaring Venezuelan assets temporarily immune from attachment by U.S. courts.

The Obama administration did exactly that for Iraq in 2011, 2012 and 2013. All it took was an executive order from President Obama.

Obama's executive order was a matter of national security. Today, the U.S. foreign-policy and national-security apparatus is focused on the Americas. Trump says that he "will continue to use the full weight of United States economic and diplomatic power" in Venezuela.

The bottom line: It is extremely rare for the U.S. government to prevent established legal mechanisms from running their natural course. But it can be done and has been done in the past. If Trump were to sign an executive order preventing creditors from attaching Venezuela's assets, that would be by far the greatest gift he could bequeath a fledgling Guaidó administration.

Venezuela will allow U.S. diplomats to stay

A multilateral approach could smooth transition in Venezuela

How Trump can help with Venezuela's debt

Venezuela

Donald Trump

The largest gathering of billionaires in the world took place last week in the not-particularly-luxurious Alpine resort of Davos, Switzerland.

What happened: Axios' Steve LeVine reports the plutocrats were told by their host, World Economic Forum chief Klaus Schwab, that they must make dramatic changes to the very system that made them dynastically wealthy. Turkeys don't generally vote for Thanksgiving, and, in Davos, billionaires like Michael Dell laughed at the idea that they should pay significantly higher taxes.

Elizabeth Warren isn't joking, however, about implementing a 3% wealth tax on billionaires. Combined with a 2% tax on wealth over $50 million, such a levy could raise $2.75 trillion over 10 years.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez wasn't joking when she said on Monday that “a system that allows billionaires to exist” is immoral.

Stephanie Kelton isn't joking either when she says that no one makes a billion dollars. Rather, she says, they plunder it, taking that wealth from their workers or from the public at large. The former chief economist for the Democrats on the Senate Budget Committee, Kelton is going to see very high demand for her services from various Democratic presidential hopefuls.

The very existence of the World Economic Forum is predicated on the assumption that the people who have won the capitalism lottery are best positioned to improve the state of the planet.

In other words: Billionaires are, and should be, a force for good in the world, as well as being a natural outgrowth of wealth creation and global prosperity.

They're also the natural endpoint of hustle culture: They're winners of the prize that incentivizes hard work and productivity on the part of millions of ambitious non-billionaire workers.

That narrative, however, seems to be losing its allure.

"Your plutocrat religion, win-win-ism, teaches that what’s best for the winners of our age is best for all. We don’t believe you anymore. You enabled the nationalism that threatens our societies. You stiffed so many of us. You fought for rules that let you steal the future from our children. The hunt for answers to the present mess is not yours to lead. Your task is simple: stay out of the way."

An edited-down version of Anand Giridharadas's letter to Davos delegates in Time Magazine. It's pretty short, so read the whole thing.

My thought bubble: Billionaires have historically been alluring, magical figures. The U.S. even elected one of them to the presidency. But he isn't doing so well. Increasingly, billionaires are seen as avatars of inequality and greed. When they gather in Davos, the world increasingly assumes that their prescriptions are entirely self-serving.

2 stark stats as the global elite descend on Davos

West Coast billionaires buy dying legacy media companies

2018's biggest billionaire winner and loser

Billionaires start to lose their luster

The world increasingly assumes that their prescriptions are entirely self-serving.

Economic inequality

Venezuela suspended its demand for all for U.S. diplomatic personnel to leave the country this weekend amid continued efforts by Washington and its allies to oust embattled President Nicolás Maduro, AP reports. 

It reduces the most immediate risk of a confrontation between the two nations.

Axios

Sunday's top stories

Thanks to polar vortex, "life-threatening" cold plunges into Midwest

Kamala Harris officially launches 2020 bid

U.S. lifts sanctions on 3 Deripaska-linked companies

U.S.-China trade talks to heat back up this week

How Trump can help with Venezuela's debt

Billionaires start to lose their luster

Venezuela will allow U.S. diplomats to stay

1 week in America: A slew of gun violence goes under the radar

Mulvaney won't say if Trump will take less than $5.7 billion for wall

Trump cites misleading Texas statistics in voter fraud claim

The Koch network says it wants to pivot to bipartisanship

2020 Democrats are ready to talk about racial inequality