🙏 Axios AM: No-faith campaign

☕ Hello, Monday! Smart Brevity™ count: 1,731 words ... 6½ mins. Thanks to Noah Bressner for orchestrating. Copy edited by Bryan McBournie.

👀 Situational awareness: Former President Trump said he doesn't think he'd run again in 2028 if he loses in November — "that will be it." Go deeper.

The race between Vice President Harris and former President Trump is the first presidential election in half a century in which neither candidate is openly telling voters much about their religion or faith, Axios' Russell Contreras writes.

• Why it matters: The percentage of Americans identifying as "religiously unaffiliated" has skyrocketed to 27% — a larger share of the population than mainline Protestants and evangelical white voters combined.

The big picture: For decades, speaking about their religious faith has been a virtual prerequisite for those seeking the nation's highest office.

• In 1976, Jimmy Carter — a devout Southern Baptist running for president in the first election since Watergate — explained his religious faith in an interview with Playboy magazine. He promised never to lie.
• Ronald Reagan prayed during his 1980 acceptance speech at the Republican convention. In 1992, Bill Clinton spoke of learning about Jesus in a preschool program. And before the 2000 election, George W. Bush professed that Jesus Christ "changed my heart."

🔎 Zoom in: Trump is supported strongly by white evangelicals but rarely mentions any religious experiences or beliefs — beyond suggesting that God may have saved him from an assassin's bullet.

• He often bungles or misidentifies passages from the Bible, though he does sell Bibles. He's also said he doesn't think he's ever asked God for forgiveness.

Harris told the L.A. Times in 2015 that she grew up attending a Black Baptist church and a Hindu temple. But in public appearances, she rarely shares any details about her religious beliefs.

• In her speech at the Democratic convention, Harris said her family and Northern California community taught her about "faith." She's mentioned admiring the Black Christian leaders behind the Civil Rights Movement.

Share this story.

In an aggressive overture to business and young men, Vice President Harris used a packed fundraiser on Wall Street yesterday to declare her friendliness to cryptocurrency — and promise to work with major companies.

• Why it matters: Harris is trying to convince businesspeople she'd be better than former President Trump, despite his promised tax cuts — and would work with them more than President Biden, who rankled many CEOs.

💰 The fundraiser at Cipriani Wall Street raised $27 million — the biggest single-day haul of Harris' presidential campaign.

• "I will bring together labor, small business founders and innovators, and major companies," she said.

Going the farthest she has on crypto, Harris said: "We will encourage innovative technologies like AI and digital assets, while protecting investors and consumers."

🔎 Between the lines: Harris is reaching out to young men, who are more likely than any other voter group to own cryptocurrencies. Males ages 18 to 24 are identifying as Republican at higher rates than usual, alarming Democratic strategists.

• She's targeting a rich niche: Trump's sudden embrace of digital currencies has brought him "fervent support from a growing subset of single-issue voters — and wealthy donors," The Wall Street Journal reports.

🎤 What we're watching: On Tuesday in Savannah, Ga., Trump will discuss "his plan to lower taxes for American business owners and highlight the importance of buying American-made goods," his campaign announced.

• On Wednesday in Pennsylvania, Harris will outline her economic vision. She told the Wall Street crowd there's "more we can do to invest in the aspirations and ambitions of the American people."

The backstory: Harris' comments about crypto mirror what aides had signaled.

• Brian Nelson, a powerful, longtime Harris aide who is the campaign's senior adviser for policy, said when asked about the crypto community during a Bloomberg News roundtable at the Democratic convention last month: "She's going to support policies that ensure that emerging technologies and that sort of industry can continue to grow."

🐘 The other side: Trump has made a show of promoting crypto, including an interview on X last week in conjunction with the launch of a Trump family crypto venture, World Liberty Financial.

• Trump, once a Bitcoin skeptic, said in an X video promoting the new venture that he wants to "ensure that the United States will be the crypto capital of the planet."

🌵🎲 Down the road: Harris will campaign in Arizona on Friday and Nevada on Sunday. "The campaign believes that this travel reflects the many paths to 270 electoral votes that Vice President Harris has available — hitting both Blue Wall and Sun Belt states," a Harris campaign official told reporters.

Keep reading.

Vice President Harris is backing away from her past promise to use presidential power to unilaterally give a path to citizenship to 2 million "Dreamers" — undocumented immigrants brought to the U.S. as children, Axios' Alex Thompson writes.

• Why it matters: It's part of a pattern in which Harris and her team have changed positions or declined to say whether she still supports some of the progressive policies she ran on during her presidential campaign in 2019.

Harris has moved to the center on immigration in recent months and embraced a get-tough stance on border security while casting herself as a former "border state prosecutor."

• She also has said she no longer supports other policies including a ban on fracking, which she backed as a California senator and 2020 presidential candidate.

👓 Zoom in: Harris pledged in 2019 to take four executive actions as president that would give 2 million Dreamers a path to citizenship and shield more than 6 million undocumented immigrants from deportation.

• Asked this week whether she'd take those same executive actions, her campaign declined to answer.

Share this story.

This week, over 600 local businesses will pitch their products to Walmart at its 11th annual Open Call event — where companies like Athletic Brewing can get a spot on Walmart's shelves.

The idea: Open Call is part of Walmart's commitment to source products from U.S. manufacturers.

Learn more.

A Qualcomm-Intel merger — still a longshot — could become the next president's first major antitrust case, Axios' Dan Primack writes.

• Why it matters: A deal would reshape the tech industry — and reflects the rapid fall from grace for Intel, once the world's largest chipmaker.

Qualcomm informally approached Intel about a takeover, which would be the largest tech merger of all time.

• Bloomberg reported yesterday that Apollo Global Management, a private equity firm, offered Intel an investment of as much as $5 billion — a vote of confidence in the chipmaker's turnaround strategy.

🎨 The big picture: Intel's troubles began before the rise of generative AI, but it didn't recognize how the market was about to change — namely in favor of the types of chips made by rival Nvidia.

• Share this story.

The next challenge for an embattled Secret Service: This week's UN General Assembly (UNGA), an annual diplomatic pilgrimage that brings more than 140 world leaders to Manhattan.

• Why it matters: The agency — under a cloud after a July assassination attempt on former President Trump — is confident in its multi-layer, multi-agency plan to protect UNGA, which is deemed a Super Bowl-level National Special Security Event, AP reports.

Beyond motorcades and protective details, the plan includes NYPD helicopters and patrol boats, a dozen UN security K-9 teams sweeping for explosives, road closures and traffic diversions.

• The Secret Service is bringing in agents from posts around the world.

📉 Above: The Secret Service's approval rating plummeted 23 points in a new Gallup poll largely conducted before the second Trump assassination attempt just over a week ago.

🎧 Tune into Axios House at Climate Week and UNGA: We're hosting Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm, Al Gore, John Kerry, NASA administrator Bill Nelson & more. Watch here, starting at 9 a.m. ET.

Anxious to show he's sprinting to the tape, President Biden this week will announce new policy to combat gun violence, and give a speech on the Biden-Harris administration's efforts to tackle the climate crisis.

• Why it matters: Biden wants to use his final four months to notch some final actions — in addition to a president's traditional final-stretch rituals of tying a bow around his accomplishments, and teeing up his legacy.

"Every day the President meets with his team, he is pushing to lay it all out on the field for the remainder of the term," Ben LaBolt, White House senior adviser and communications director, writes in a new memo framing Biden's strategy for the next 119½ days.

• Biden plans to make the case for Biden-Harris policies, travel to swing states and wrap up his foreign-policy agenda.

LaBolt writes that at a Cabinet meeting on Friday, Biden gave three directives:

1. Get as much work done as possible.
2. Bring to him directly any hurdles or obstacles they are facing to get things done.
3. Ramp up efforts to communicate to the American people what we are getting done.

Go deeper: Full text of LaBolt's memo.

FTC chair Lina Khan defended her agency's historically aggressive antitrust run in an interview on "60 Minutes" last night — and said she'd be honored to work in a Harris administration, Axios Pro Tech Policy's Ashley Gold writes.

• Why it matters: Khan has every incentive to keep being ambitious until her time runs out — either if former President Trump wins or Vice President Harris appoints another Democrat to head the agency.

A future chair could choose to drop or scale down her Amazon case and others.

• Khan brushed off the idea that her agency and the DOJ are out of control when it comes to antitrust action: "It's important to step back and keep all of this in context. Of all the thousands of deals that are proposed every year, the FTC and DOJ collectively investigate maybe 2% or 3%."

Watch the segment ... Share this story ... Get Axios Pro for more in-depth reporting on tech policy.

If you're in Manhattan this week, four words of advice: Don't use a car.

• This week will see the worst days of the year for traffic, thanks to the UN General Assembly and the countless heads of state in town, Axios' Felix Salmon writes.

Why it matters: Traffic in midtown Manhattan has literally never been worse, according to a state report.

• The average traffic speed in midtown Manhattan was just 4.8 mph in the year that ended June 30 — the lowest on record going back to 1971.
• Last year during UNGA, average midtown traffic speeds fell as low as 3.2 mph. This year will probably be worse.

Athletic Brewing landed a deal with Walmart at Open Call in 2020. Since then, they've hired 200+ employees and built a 150,000-square-foot brewery in Milford, Connecticut.

Why it's important: Walmart is helping create 750,000 manufacturing jobs at local businesses like Athletic Brewing.

Learn more.

📬 Please invite your friends to join AM.