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National

Attorney General Bill Barr was "surprised and angry" to find that President Trump had grouped him together with his personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani during a controversial July 25 phone call with the president of Ukraine, a source "familiar with Barr's thinking" tells the AP.

Between the lines: The anonymous leak to the AP suggests a possible effort by Barr to distance himself from the Ukraine scandal that ignited a formal impeachment inquiry into Trump last week. The whistleblower complaint at the heart of the scandal alleges that Trump solicited foreign interference in the 2020 election by asking Ukrainian President Volodymr Zelensky to investigate Joe Biden, and that both Giuliani and Barr appeared to be involved.

"I will have Mr. Giuliani give you a call and I am also going to have Attorney General Barr call and we will get to the bottom of it," Trump told Zelensky, according to a summary of the call released by the White House.

Justice Department officials say Barr was not aware of the phone call until mid-August. The acting director of national intelligence referred the whistleblower complaint as a possible violation of campaign finance law, but the Justice Department declined to open an investigation.

What to watch: Democrats have called on Barr to recuse himself from all matters related to the Ukraine investigation, since he is named in the whistleblower complaint and may have been involved in the administration's efforts to stop it from being turned over to Congress.

Giuliani and Barr are likely to face scrutiny from the House Intelligence Committee, which has already subpoenaed Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and scheduled a series of depositions and hearings next week as its impeachment investigation moves full steam ahead.

Go deeper: Whistleblower alleges Trump abused office to solicit foreign interference

AG Bill Barr reportedly "surprised and angry" at Trump-Ukraine phone call

A leak to the AP suggests Barr may be looking to distance himself from Rudy Giuliani and the Ukraine scandal.

Attorney General Bill Barr. Photo: Drew Angerer/Getty Images

Politics

Bill Barr

Revenge of the deepfake detectives

A new computer program automatically detects AI audio — but it could help make deepfakes even better.

Illustration of a police line-up with binary code over the people's faces

Future

Deepfakes

Technology

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.

To keep up with California's unrelenting wildfire threat, some insurers are now turning to AI to predict fire risk with unprecedented, structure-by-structure detail. 

Why it matters: This will allow them to cover homes in areas that they would otherwise have passed over — but potentially at the cost of hiking rates for those who can least afford it.

The big picture: Spooked by a recent surge in destructive fires that shows no sign of cooling off, insurers have backed away from underwriting in the most flammable parts of the state. They say the risk is sky-high, and there's too much uncertainty about where fire will strike next and what it will consume.

Premiums are ballooning in fire-prone zones, and insurers are dropping thousands of homes in high-risk areas, according to California's Department of Insurance (CDI).

Traditionally, insurers rely on fire maps and proprietary predictions from catastrophe modeling companies. These bring in detailed information about a property's location — but often overlook characteristics of the property itself.

Now, some insurers are getting creative. They are trying to pack in as much data as possible: information from building permits, records and codes — and, increasingly, satellite photos and aerial imagery from drones and aircraft.

Automatically analyzing super-detailed, top-down images helps insurers understand crucial, property-specific risk factors.

Some important ones: how close a house is to vegetation, how flammable that brush is and what the house's roof is made of.

Driving the news: MetLife announced this week that it's working with a Bay Area startup, Zesty.ai, to use this type of data for property-level scoring.

Zesty.ai predicts risk based on building information, aerial imagery, patterns gleaned from examining decades of wildfires and data from fire scientists.

MetLife has been extra conservative in fire areas, VP Carol Anderson tells Axios, in part because it has relied on traditional maps to assess risk.

When MetLife implements the new scoring system early next year, it hopes to bring in new customers and retain old ones, Anderson says.

Several startups have popped up to sell these new models to insurers, and some of the old guard are developing them, too.

About half a dozen companies have already met with CDI about their new models, according to Ken Allen, deputy commissioner for rate regulation.

And insurers, at an inflection point in how they approach fire risk, are increasingly interested, says Janet Ruiz of the Insurance Information Institute, an industry association.

But, but, but: Experts worry that property-level scoring can result in higher premiums for people living in high-risk areas, who are often on low or fixed incomes.

Low-income homeowners may be unable to afford property updates that would drive risk factors down, like replacing roofing or clearing trees. And if rates go up, their property values could go down in response.

New, more granular models could drive a bigger wedge between premiums, says Allen of the Department of Insurance, "so high risk pay more and lower risk pay less."

"We are seeing insurance companies over-rely on technology, and the consumers are paying the price," says Emily Rogan of United Policyholders, a nonprofit that advocates for insurance customers.

What they're saying: "MetLife follows standard actuarial principles for ratemaking to ensure our rates are not excessive, inadequate or unfairly discriminatory," a spokesperson told Axios.

Zesty.ai founder Attila Toth argues that it ultimately falls on regulators, not his company, to make sure that its risk models don't discriminate. But in a report last year, CDI said it "does not have the necessary authority to regulate how insurers underwrite residential property insurance."

After this story was published, Toth shared the summary of an outside auditor's report that analyzed the Zesty.ai fire risk model and concluded that, if applied properly, it would not "result in rates that are unfairly discriminatory."

The bottom line: "Moving to risk-based rates is overall a positive thing to do, but it could have a negative effect on people currently in these high-risk areas," says  Lloyd Dixon, a RAND researcher who last year published a detailed study of wildfire's impact on insurance in California.

Go deeper: Deciding whether to rebuild after fire

Editor's note: This story has been updated with details on the Zesty.ai actuarial report.

Insurers deploy AI against California's wildfire crisis

It could allow them to predict fire risk with unprecedented, structure-by-structure detail.

Photo illustration of a matchbook with umbrellas instead of matches. 

California wildfires

Business

Climate change

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

Axios AM

Finish Line

Axios Finish Line

President Trump is increasingly likely to be impeached by the full House late this year or very early in 2020, on the eve of the first voting in presidential primaries and the official start of his reelection campaign.

Why it matters: This outcome, which seems more certain with each passing hour, means the presidential, Senate and House races will be consumed by impeachment.

The very real possibility that America will face the theater of House hearings, and then a Senate trial, in D.C. while campaigns unfold nationally has both parties scrambling to recalibrate strategies.

Between the lines: The Constitution is not unambiguously clear that the Senate can be forced to hold a trial if Trump is impeached.

But Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who broke tradition and refused to allow a vote on Merrick Garland for the Supreme Court, told NPR months ago that if impeachment "were to happen, the Senate has no choice. If the House were to act, the Senate immediately goes into a trial."

The Senate politics: Ignore the punditry on which party benefits politically from impeachment. That is unknowable. But the impeachment debate definitely puts a number of senators in tough races in an even tougher spot. 

Democratic Sen. Doug Jones is running for reelection in pro-Trump Alabama. 

Swing-state Republican senators like Cory Gardner in Colorado will be in a jam, especially if independent voters favor impeachment. It’s very difficult to grind out general election victories with Trump voters only in swing states. 

The House state of play: A majority of the House's 435 members — as many as 223 House Democrats and one independent — now favor some kind of impeachment inquiry against Trump, according to news organization tallies.

In a dynamic similar to the Senate, impeachment puts swing-district House members in peril. CNN's Chris Cillizza points out that of the 12 holdouts among Democrats, 11 represent districts that Trump carried in 2016.

The bottom line: Parties and candidates at all levels have spent years shaping the 2020 battle space. That's now for naught: Washington, which couldn't getting anything done, is suddenly driving the nation's politics into the unknown. 

The 2020 impeachment campaign

Washington is suddenly driving the nation's politics into the unknown.

Donald Trump impeachment

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

Gun control advocates in Florida are pushing to meet a February deadline for enough signatures to get a proposed constitutional amendment banning assault weapons on the 2020 ballot, the Wall Street Journal reports. 

Why it matters: If successful, the ballot measure would place some of the tightest limits on the weapons most commonly used in mass shootings. It would "outlaw all new semiautomatic rifles and shotguns capable of holding more than 10 rounds of ammunition in either a fixed or detachable magazine," per the WSJ.

The big picture: Semiautomatic rifles like AR-15s and AK-47s have been used in some of the deadliest mass shootings in the U.S., including in Parkland, Orlando and Las Vegas.

As mass shootings in the U.S. persist, background checks have overwhelming support among voters, with nearly 90% saying they want Congress to expand them, per a WSJ/NBC poll conducted between Aug. 10–14.

69% of voters support banning assault-style weapons, according to a Hill-HarrisX survey released Thursday.

Ban Assault Weapons Now, the political action committee promoting the effort, is comprised of survivors and relatives of victims of the 2018 school shooting in Parkland and the 2016 Pulse nightclub shooting in Orlando, which collectively killed 66 people. 

They face a long road ahead, having only reached 106,000 of the 766,000 signatures needed by February. The ballot language for the measure must also be approved by Florida's conservative-leaning state Supreme Court.

59% of Florida voters support a ban on the sale of guns classified as assault weapons, according to a Quinnipiac poll in June. Amendments in Florida need 60% voter support to pass, per WSJ.

Go deeper: The deadliest mass shootings all have assault weapons in common

Florida gun control activists push to get assault weapon ban on 2020 ballot

Survivors and relatives of victims from Parkland and the Pulse nightclub shooting are leading the charge.

 a memorial setup for those killed on February 14, 2019 in Parkland, Florida. 

A memorial setup for those killed at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School. Photo: Joe Raedle/Getty Images

Gun control

Pro Rata

Axios Pro Rata

It's been just a few days since WeWork fired CEO Adam Neumann, but his co-CEO replacements Artie Minson and Sebastian Gunningham have already made a number of significant changes.

Why it matters: The company still needs to raise new capital from somewhere, so turnaround speed is of the essence.

Over 20 senior executives close to Neumann have been fired, including wife Rebekah (chief brand officer), Michael Gross (vice chairman), and Chris Hill (chief product officer and CEO of WeWork Japan).

There also are expectations of widespread layoffs in upcoming weeks.

WeWork will seek to sell 3 non-core businesses that it paid more than $500 million to acquire over the past 2 years: Conductor, Meetup and Managed by Q.

It is unclear if the company's WeGrow elementary school will continue, although the company is committed to finishing out at least this school year.

We(re)Work: One week, many changes

Over 20 senior executives close to Neumann have been fired, including his wife Rebekah.

Axios

Saturday's top stories

AG Bill Barr reportedly "surprised and angry" at Trump-Ukraine phone call

Revenge of the deepfake detectives

Insurers deploy AI against California's wildfire crisis

The 2020 impeachment campaign

Florida gun control activists push to get assault weapon ban on 2020 ballot

We(re)Work: One week, many changes

The process of impeachment

First House Republican backs Trump impeachment inquiry

A streaming month to remember

How the world's cities will drive electric vehicle adoption

Report: White House hid Trump transcripts with Putin, Saudi royals

U.S.-China trade tensions could slow AVs