Good morning. Welcome to Axios today. It's Monday, August 3rd. I'm Niala Boodoo. Here's how we're making you

smarter today. How the virtual school year could push retailers even closer to the brink.

Plus, we go behind the scenes of the White House's latest Tik-Tock announcement.

First, though, Joe Biden's Vice Presidential Decision Matrix is today's one big thing.

This week Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden is supposed to decide on his pick

for a running mate. Hans Nichols has been

reporting this out for Axios. So what do we know about the thought process that's

going into this obviously very big decision for the Biden campaign?

We know three decision trees on the decision behind the decision.

And I want to be up front, we do not know who the vice presidential selection is going to be.

But what we do know is that Joe Biden is thinking about this

and he has three main criteria. Number one, can this person do the job? Can she be

a credible vice president? Will Joe Biden get along with that person and

will he be either a liability or an asset to the campaign?

What we do know is that these are the three North Stars that will actually help navigate

this decision.

And what does that tell us about the way that Joe Biden makes decisions?

What kind of clues does this give us as to how he would govern?

Very methodical, right?

And there's this contrast between the method from Biden and the go with

their debt approach from President Donald Trump and frankly we don't know which one's

going to work but we know that they're both sat in their ways.

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