Doctors safely use CRISPR on cancer patients

Three cancer patients in the U.S. were the first to be safely injected with the gene editing tool CRISPR as a form of immunotherapy to fight their illness, AP reports.

Reality check: It's too soon to know whether the treatment will help, doctors say. The patients, who all failed multiple standard treatments, had varying results after two to three months.

Elizabeth Warren, who rose to the top with big liberal bets, is banking a big slice of her presidential run on full-throated support for Medicare for All. 

Why it matters: Warren is taking a beating on social media after claiming middle class Americans won’t pay higher taxes to fund health care coverage fully paid for by taxpayers, according to data from NewsWhip provided exclusively to Axios. At the same time, her poll numbers nationally are slipping. 

Taking part in a storied tradition for the first-in-the-nation primary, Vice President Mike Pence is flying to New Hampshire today to formally file the Trump-Pence 2020 ticket for the ballot.

Why it matters: Flipping New Hampshire has been on President Trump's wish list since he lost there in 2016 by a margin of less than a half a percentage point. But the veep's trip is also part of a deliberately amped-up travel schedule as the White House tries to show it isn't buckling under the strain of impeachment.

Smartphones are chock-full of apps that can hail anything from rides to meals to toiletries — and this digital revolution comes with a physical footprint that is changing the way cities look and function.

Why it matters: To support the new consumer lifestyle, companies are choking cities with cars, bikes and warehouses. The technology that makes it possible for urban dwellers to summon everything in an instant clearly comes with still-unknown costs.

President Donald Trump has lost 41% of the Cabinet secretaries, deputy secretaries and under secretaries he appointed in his first year in office, new data from the Partnership for Public Service‘s Center for Presidential Transition shows.

Why it matters: This far outpaces the turnover rate for recent predecessors at the same stage of their presidencies — and underscores the challenges Trump may face in recruiting and retaining a new stable of top officials if he wins re-election.

Girls who play soccer are at risk from concussion at nearly the same rate as boys who play football, a new study finds.

By the numbers: Boys who played football had the most concussions — 10 per every 10,000 practices or games — according to the study of 20 sports, published in the journal Pediatrics. Girls who played soccer were next, with concussions occurring in eight per 10,000 instances.

Attorney General Bill Barr declined President Trump's request to declare via a news conference that the president "had broken no laws" during his July 25 phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, the Washington Post and ABC News reported Wednesday. Trump denied the report in a late-night tweet.

The big picture: The president's reported request, made "sometime around Sept. 25," coincides with the day the administration's released its memorandum of the Trump-Ukraine call, which helped launch an impeachment inquiry into the president.

Republican Gov. Matt Bevin formally requested a recanvass of votes for the state's gubernatorial race on Wednesday, after tailing behind Democratic opponent Andy Beshear by just above 5,000 votes, AP reports.

The big picture: A Democratic win from Beshear would suggest that the impeachment inquiry into Trump is not the useful 2020 strategy Republicans assumed it would be, even in Trump-friendly states.

Netflix CEO Reed Hastings gave a full-throated defense of the company’s decision to remove an episode of the show "Patriot Act With Hasan Minhaj" from its platform in Saudi Arabia after a complaint from the Saudi government about Minhaj's criticisms of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.

"We're not in the news business. We're not trying to do 'truth to power.' We're trying to entertain."

Three years since the White House first publicly considered the U.S. government's role as a shepherd of artificial intelligence research, pivotal unanswered questions are still holding back a coherent strategy for boosting the critical technology at home.

Why it matters: China's authoritarian system, largely untroubled by deliberative holdups, has been pouring money into its AI sector.

Former Attorney General Jeff Sessions is expected to announce on Thursday that he will challenge Alabama Sen. Doug Jones in 2020 for Sessions' previously held Senate seat, the AP reports.

The big picture: Sessions' announcement would come exactly one year to the day after he submitted his resignation at the request of President Trump. Sessions, who held the Senate seat from 1997-2017, will be entering a crowded primary, as several Republican candidates vie to turn the Alabama seat red again. Despite his resignation last year, Sessions is expected to run as a supporter of Trump and of his administration's policies.

The House Intelligence Committee on Wednesday released the transcript of its closed door interview with Bill Taylor, the top U.S. diplomat in Ukraine.

Why it matters: In his opening statement, Taylor told House investigators that he understood President Trump to be conditioning the release of military aid on the Ukrainian president's willingness to announce investigations into Trump's political rivals, including Joe Biden and the Democratic National Committee.

Four of the world's richest companies are pouring a collective $5 billion into housing on the West Coast, raising an expectation that companies will serve as part financier, part philanthropist as tech hubs try to add more supply to tight housing markets.

Driving the news: Apple this week pledged $2.5 billion to housing initiatives in Silicon Valley, where even high-paid tech workers — let alone teachers, nurses and police officers — are struggling to find houses they can afford.

The House committees conducting the impeachment inquiry into President Trump have withdrawn their subpoena for former deputy national security adviser Charles Kupperman, who had requested that a judge determine whether he should comply with the subpoena or a White House order blocking him from testifying.

Why it matters: A House Intelligence Committee official tells Axios' Alayna Treene that even if Kupperman's lawsuit is dismissed, the decision would be delayed by a prolonged court process. With House Intelligence Chairman Adam Schiff's announcement Wednesday that the committee will begin public impeachment hearings next week, it's likely that Democrats believe they already have enough evidence to proceed without the testimony of White House officials fighting subpoenas.

President Trump tweeted on Wednesday that Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erodğan has accepted his invitation to visit the White House on Nov. 13.

"Just had a very good call with President Erdogan of Turkey. He informed me that they have captured numerous ISIS fighters that were reported to have escaped during the conflict – including a wife and sister of terrorist killer al Baghdadi. Also talked about their Border with Syria, the eradication of terrorism, the ending of hostilities with the Kurds, and many other topics. Look forward to seeing President Erdogan next Wednesday, November 13th at the White House!"

Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.) announced Wednesday that she is endorsing Sen. Elizabeth Warren for president, breaking ranks with other members of "the Squad," a group of four progressive first-term Democratic congresswomen.

Why it matters: The backing marks one of Warren's highest-profile endorsements, though it's not a huge surprise as the two previously campaigned together while running for Senate and the House in Massachusetts last year. The other members of the Squad — Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) and Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) — endorsed Sen. Bernie Sanders last month.

Boeing CEO Dennis Muilenburg said Wednesday that he plans to contribute a substantial amount of the "tens of millions of dollars" he's forgoing in pay to funds the company has set up for the families of the 346 victims of the two 737 MAX crashes.

Background: Speaking at the New York Times' DealBook conference, Muilenburg said the decision to forgo his bonuses came after he met last week with the families of the people killed in the crashes caused by faulty technology in Boeing's signature plane.

Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) continued his controversial threats to name the Ukraine whistleblower on Tuesday, telling Fox News' Bret Baier that he "probably will" do so — days after calling on the media to print his name at a rally alongside President Trump.

The state of play: Paul's comments ignited a split within the Republican Party. Some Senate Republicans rebuked his comments, while some Trump allies — including the president's own son, Donald Trump Jr. — have publicly stated the whistleblower's alleged identity, which has been promoted among right-wing media.

House Intelligence Chairman Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) announced on Twitter Wednesday that his committee will hold its first public impeachment hearings next week.

Driving the news: On Wednesday, Nov. 13, the committee will interview top U.S. diplomat in Ukraine Bill Taylor and State Department official George Kent. On Friday, Nov. 15, the committee will interview former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch.

SoftBank’s second Vision Fund “is going to be launched as scheduled” and be roughly the same size as the first, chairman Masayoshi Son said on Wednesday during the Japanese conglomerate’s quarterly earnings, although he declined to share more details.

Why it matters: That’s in spite of the storm of challenges it’s currently weathering, including rumored fundraising woes and its biggest problem child, WeWork.

As TikTok's popularity surges, the Chinese-owned karaoke app is facing rapidly rising headwinds from critics who paint it as a threat to individual users' privacy as well as a geopolitical stalking horse for Chinese interests.

The big picture: As my Axios colleague Sara Fischer reports, TikTok has now hit a milestone — among 13–16 year olds, it's more popular than Facebook.