Vox Sentences: Congress is making it harder for Obama to close Guantanamo

Congress bans Gitmo transfers*; an Obama legacy up for Supreme Court review*; and a doping scandal in Russia.* *Again.

Vox Sentences is written by Dylan Matthews and Dara Lind.

TOP NEWS

Congress to Obama: About transferring Gitmo detainees...still nope []

Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

• Congress has passed a defense authorization bill that explicitly prevents the Obama administration from transferring Guantanamo Bay prisoners to any prison in the US.

  [AP]

• The bill would also ban all transfers to Libya, Syria, Somalia, and Yemen. Given that Congress has already limited transfers to the US, that's an even bigger deal.

  [Foreign Policy / David Francis]

• The vote comes the day after rumors that the Pentagon planned to release a plan this week to transfer Guantanamo's remaining prisoners to other nations and shut down the facility.

  [AP / Lolita C. Baldor and Kathleen Hennessey]

• To be clear: there are 112 detainees still at Guantanamo. The Pentagon estimates that only 50-60 of them would need to be held indefinitely (on the logic that they can't be tried in civilan court because evidence against them wasn't collected according to US law, but that they're still "too dangerous" to let go).

  [The Guardian / Dan Roberts]

• Obama vetoed Congress' first attempt to pass a defense authorization bill last month. His reasons included the Gitmo provisions.

  [The White House]

• But he's expected to sign this second try, thus accepting the congressional block of his promise to close the prison.

  [Inside Defense / Tony Bertuca]

• Some commentators — including Greg Craig, Obama's first White House counsel, and Cliff Sloan, his envoy for Guantanamo closure in 2013-2014 — say that the existing Congressoinal ban on transfers is unconstitutional, and Obama could override it without consequence.

  [Washington Post / Gregory Craig and Cliff Sloan]

Start lining up outside the Supreme Court building now

Kevork Djansezian/Getty Images

• Last night, a Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals panel upheld a ruling preventing the Obama administration from implementing its 2014 executive actions to protect millions of immigrants from deportation.

  [Politico / Josh Gerstein and Seung Min Kim]

• The ruling actually goes further than the initial injunction from February — the court says that the Obama administration didn't just fail to follow proper regulatory procedure, but that the immigration actions are actually illegal on the merits (though it doesn't address whether they're constitutional).

  [Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals]

• The Obama administration moved quickly to appeal the case to the Supreme Court.

  [AP / Alicia A. Caldwell]

• If the court agrees to take up the case and hear it soon, they could rule on it next spring, rather than waiting until Obama is out of office (and possibly replaced by a Republican with no interest in putting Obama's proposals into action).

  [Richard Wolf via Twitter]

• But even if the programs do go into practice eventually, the long delay is likely to have an impact on how many people actually apply for them.

  [Vox / Dara Lind]

It turns out some athletes use PEDs

Alexander Hassenstein/Getty Image

• The World Anti-Doping Agency has released a report accusing Russia of widespread doping and fraud during the 2012 Summer Olympics in London, and the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi.

  [Foreign Policy / Siobhan O'Grady]

• The report revolves around a Russian anti-doping testing lab — the same one that officials suspended shortly before the Sochi games for suspected infractions.

  [The Moscow Times / Gabrielle Tetrault-Farber]

• The International Olympic Committee wants disciplinary hearings held against the athletes named in the report, and recommended that 5 athletes and 5 coaches get lifetime bans from Olympic competition.

  [BBC ]

• Olympic doping is associated, most famously, with Soviet bloc countries like East Germany, which ran the most infamous doping regime in Olympic history.

  [PBS]

• Russia is currently the worst offender. And people there don't seem to care much.

  [New York Times / Neil MacFarquhar]

MISCELLANEOUS

Here's what ultramarathons do to your body. It seems very unpleasant! [Washington post / Bonnie Berkowitz]

• It will shock you to learn that Vladimir Putin's daughter Katerina has somehow managed to become a billionaire. What luck!

  [Reuters / Stephen Grey, Andrey Kuzmin, and Elizabeth Piper]

• How well does your taste in art align with that of the plutocratic collecting class? Take this quiz to find out!

  [NYT / Daniel McDermon]

• "Baby boxes" are one of the more adorable aspects of Finland's welfare state, and now they're going international.

  [Washington Post / Rick Noack]

• We know substance abuse deaths are rising. But Medicare won't let researchers study the problem.

  [Vox / Dan Diamond]

VERBATIM

"By sanctioning a 'shoot first, think later' approach to policing, the Court renders the protections of the Fourth Amendment hollow." [Sonia Sotomayor, via Slate / Mark Joseph Stern]

• "Every woman I've ever played is passionate and strong and flawed, except for Tracy Flick. She’s 100% perfect, but she made me say that."

  [Glamour / Reese Witherspoon]

• "When people get upset about it, to me, it's like getting upset about Magneto. He's not a real person, and I don't have the proof yet. But, he's not an actual human being. He's like an insult comic made by the Jim Henson studios."

  [John Mulaney on Donald Trump, to NY Mag / Jesse David Fox]

• "Here’s a game to play: When you look at posters for movies or TV shows, see if it makes sense to switch the title to 'What’s Gonna Happen to This White Guy?' ('Forrest Gump,' 'The Martian,' 'Black Mass') or if there’s a woman in the poster, too, 'Are These White People Gonna Have Sex With Each Other?' ('Casablanca,' 'When Harry Met Sally,'The Notebook')."

  [NYT / Aziz Ansari]

• "The line from my diary that makes me cringe and laugh the most is this: 'It’s over. I found out b/c he took me off his MySpace top friends.'"

  [Medium / Christina Tesoro]

WATCH THIS

The University of Missouri situation, explained [YouTube / Liz Scheltens and Carlos Waters]

Vox / Liz Scheltens and Carlos Waters

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