Vox Sentences: Paul Ryan's reverse ransom note

Paul Ryan to GOP: if you want to take me from my family, here's what you have to do; Israel's PM says a Palestinian gave Hitler the idea for the Holocaust.

Vox Sentences is written by Dylan Matthews and Dara Lind.

TOP NEWS

Ryan's demands

(Win McNamee/Getty Images)

• After weeks of pleading from colleagues, Paul Ryan is willing to run for speaker — but only if House Republicans agree to his terms.

  [Vox / Andrew Prokop]

• Ryan's willing to compromise on policy. He allegedly promised conservatives he wouldn't bring a comprehensive immigration reform bill to the floor, for example.

  [National Review / Alexis Levinson, Eliana Johnson, and Elaina Plott]

• But he's not willing to compromise on process. He won't make any specific commitments to changing House rules until he's elected. And he wants to make it harder for one faction of Republicans — say, the House Freedom Caucus — to undermine leadership and set the agenda.

  [Vox / Andrew Prokop]

• That is literally the opposite of the demands the Freedom Caucus has been making: They care most about decentralizing power within the Republican caucus.

  [Washington Post / Mike DeBonis]

• Decentralization might not be such a terrible idea for the House. But Ryan will have none of it.

  [Polyarchy / Lee Drutman]

• In essence, Ryan's either going to get the job as he wants it — or make it clear that no sane person would want it.

  [Vox / Ezra Klein]

• The other demand Ryan's making? He wants to keep spending time with his family, instead of giving up his weekends to stumping and fundraising.

  [Huffington Post / Sam Stein]

• It's an admirable demand, but neither side likes it. Liberals are calling him a hypocrite because he won't support federally mandated paid family leave for all workers. And one member of the House Freedom Caucus compared him to "a maid who won't clean."

  [Talking Points Memo / Catherine Thompson]

New frontiers in Holocaust denialism

(Carsten Koall/Getty Images)

• So ... today the prime minister of Israel basically blamed Palestinians for coming up with the Holocaust. Vox's Zack Beauchamp explains.

  [Vox / Zack Beauchamp]

• Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's quote: "Hitler didn’t want to exterminate the Jews at the time, he wanted to expel the Jews. And (Palestinian mufti) Haj Amin al-Husseini went to Hitler and said, 'if you expel them, they'll all come here.' 'So what should I do with them?' he asked. He said, 'Burn them.'"

  [Prime Minister's Office (Israel)]

• This is utter malarkey. Hitler did meet with al-Husseini in late 1941, but Holocaust scholars agree that the Nazis had been discussing the "Final Solution" long before that.

  [Vox / Zack Beauchamp]

• Netanyahu probably got the idea from a pair of revisionist Israeli historians who wrote a book blaming al-Husseini for Jewish extermination last year. As historian David Mikics wrote for Tablet, their aim was to prove that Middle Eastern Arabs would rather murder the Jews than live alongside them.

  [Tablet / David Mikics]

• The German government was so embarrassed by Netanyahu's remarks that it issued a statement claiming full responsibility for the Holocaust.

  [I24 News]

• In the eyes of the German government, this is something to be ashamed of. In the eyes of Germany's resurgent far right, it's a matter of pride.

  [Vox / Zack Beauchamp]

• But Netanyahu — who is, awkwardly, meeting with German Chancellor Angela Merkel this week — isn't backing down. A follow-up statement from his office called al-Husseini "instrumental in the decision to exterminate the Jews of Europe."

  [Prime Minister's Office (Israel)]

He's never gonna be president now

(Win McNamee/Getty Images)

• Joe Biden is not running for president in 2016.

  [Vox / Andrew Prokop]

• Thus ends a protracted period of speculation in which Biden was something like Schrödinger's candidate: simultaneously running and not running.

  [Washington Post / Philip Bump]

• Biden's not-running speech sounded suspiciously like a speech declaring he was running, complete with implicit jabs at Hillary Clinton.

  [New York Daily News / Cameron Joseph]

• With this decision, it looks likely that Biden's real political legacy will be as Obama's VP. He's had a basically blemishless run — the Atlantic asserted (barely into Obama's second term!) that he's been the best ever.

  [The Atlantic / Michael Hirsh]

• But what Biden really wants to do as VP, he says, is cure cancer — presumably by increasing federal research funding.

  [The Atlantic / David A. Graham]

• This is even harder than it sounds. Cancer isn't just one disease. It's a group of diseases, each of which affects different bodies in different ways.

  [Vox / Julia Belluz]

• Cancer research funding tends to get decent return on investment in terms of lives saved — but not nearly as much as funding to prevent, say, malaria.

  [GiveWell / Holden Karnofsky]

MISCELLANEOUS

Important: Joanna Newsom's new album is streaming at NPR, but the stream comes down as soon as the record's officially released Friday. Hurry. [NPR / Joanna Newsom]

• Where did "Great Scott!", Doc Brown's favorite expression, come from? Winfield Scott, probably.

  [Slate / Forrest Wickman]

• A man in India is illegally supplying US states with execution drugs that reputable manufacturers refuse to provide.

  [BuzzFeed / Chris McDaniel and Tasneem Nashrulla]

• The design of Imperial TIE fighters in Star Wars makes no sense whatsoever.

  [Jalopnik / Jason Torchinsky]

• "2010s in Fashion" is an intensely disturbing Wikipedia article.

  [Slate / Jacob Brogan]

VERBATIM

"Once home to a secret poison gas factory meant to create deadly and illegal weapons for WWII, this island is now home to thousands upon thousands of rabbits." [Slate / Dylan Thuras]

• "When [Larry Summers] applied to the graduate program in economics at Harvard, where he studied from 1975 to 1979, the beginning of his essay read, 'Many children are taught to believe in God. I came to believe in the power of systems analysis.'"

  [New Yorker / Ryan Lizza]

• "Catania proved this by providing captive eels with lobotomized and anesthetized fish, whose movements he could control."

  [The Atlantic / Ed Yong]

• "I’ve examined this scene from every possible angle and the conclusion is inescapable: Purity 'Pip' Tyler, a character whom readers are apparently supposed to like, and even admire, believes that the abominable Train hit 'Hey, Soul Sister' is a 'great song.'"

  [Slate / Ruth Graham]

• "Spencer has that same tired sarcasm and resignation as he shows me his bigger crystal pieces. 'This is supposed to be bringing in money, but I can tell you it doesn’t work. Citrine is supposed to bring wealth. I’m just waiting.'"

  [Spencer Pratt to Complex / Andrew Gruttadaro]

WATCH THIS

You should go to Cuba. Here's why. [YouTube / Johnny Harris]

(Vox/Johnny Harris)

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