Welcome to Vox Sentences, our news bulletin breaking down the day's biggest stories.
1. Republican states against Obamacare

(Alex Wong/Getty Images)
-
Arizona passed a bizarre law that effectively bans the state from setting up its own health insurance exchange through Obamacare.
[The Arizona Republic / Ken Alltucker]
-
The law is very clearly aimed as a response to an upcoming Supreme Court decision that could kill the federally run insurance marketplaces Arizona and 33 other states currently use.
[Vox / Sarah Kliff]
-
About 205,000 Arizonans get insurance through the federal marketplace; if the Supreme Court destroys the federal exchange and the state is banned from starting another one, those Arizonans will presumably lose their health insurance.
[US Department of Health and Human Services]
-
The looming Supreme Court decision in King v. Burwell is over whether just a few words in Obamacare allow the federal government to set up health exchanges for states that don't set up their own.
[Vox / Adrianna McIntyre]
-
Ezra Klein's take: "The anti-Obamacare movement is making red states sicker and poorer."
[Vox / Ezra Klein]
2. Gawker wants to unionize

Labor organizers march in New York City. (Spencer Platt/Getty Images)
-
Gawker's writers want to start a union under the auspices of the Writers Guild of America.
[Gawker / Hamilton Nolan]
-
"The online media industry makes real money. It's now possible to find a career in this industry, rather than just a fleeting job. An organized work force is part of growing up."
[Gawker / Hamilton Nolan]
-
This is a big deal: Gawker would be the highest-profile online media venture to unionize.
[Talking Points Memo / Michelle Chen]
-
Gawker CEO Nick Denton said he's "intensely relaxed" about his writers' union drive.
[Capital New York / Petern Sterne]
-
Here's how to start a union.
[Vox / Matthew Yglesias]
3. Slack is taking over the media world

This is Slack. (Chris Welch/The Verge)
-
Slack, the popular enterprise messaging platform, is now valued at $2.8 billion.
[The Verge / Chris Welch]
-
Slack is just a year old — and it already has more than 750,000 daily active users.
[New York Times / Farhad Manjoo]
-
Vox's Timothy Lee argues there's nothing crazy about Slack's $2.8 billion valuation.
[Vox / Timothy Lee]
-
But the popularity has led to some problems: in February, Slack got hacked.
[TechCrunch / Greg Kumparak]
-
Journalists, including those at Vox, have made a lot of use of Slack — in large part to avoid the tedium and clunkiness of email.
[NiemanLab / Joseph Lichterman]
-
Slack users spend nearly 10 hours a day on the app.
[The Verge / Ellis Hamburger]
4. Misc.
-
In a bit of a surprise, Republican presidential contender Jeb Bush called on Republicans in the Senate to confirm Loretta Lynch for attorney general; her nomination has been stalled for months.
[Politico / Nick Gass]
-
A new bill would ban former members of Congress from lobbying for life.
[Vox / Andrew Prokop]
-
The parents of an 8-year-old killed in the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing asked federal prosecutors to stop pursuing the death penalty for convicted bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, if it would bring the trial to a speedier conclusion.
[Vox / German Lopez]
-
Tibetan mastiffs used to be huge in China — but the fad has come and gone.
[New York Times / Andrew Jacobs]
-
The Batman vs. Superman: Dawn of Justice trailer leaked — and it's not very good.
[Vox / Alex Abad-Santos]
5. Verbatim
-
"It's like my child, only it doesn't steal the car at 3 o'clock in the morning and come home stoned."
[Rick Springfield to Vox / Kelsey McKinney]
-
"What has been so deliriously fun about the first two seasons of Orphan Black isn't the fiction of the science; it's the fact of the women. But — spoiler alert — nothing good lasts."
[New Yorker / Jill Lepore]
-
"On one level, the mass attention paid to Clinton's trip to Chipotle is just a huge waste of everyone's time."
[Vox / Matthew Yglesias]
-
"It was a situation that most politicians would find utterly uncomfortable: caught in a freak snowstorm alone on the road with a journalist. But [Sen. Lindsey] Graham seemed to be enjoying himself."
[Yahoo News / Jon Ward]
Get Vox in your inbox!
Add your email to receive a daily newsletter from Vox breaking down the top stories of the day.
By signing up, you agree to our terms.
Will you join us?
Our biggest supporters are our readers — and we’re so grateful to everyone who has made a contribution during our September campaign. We’re less than 1,000 contributions away from reaching our goal for the month, which in turn will allow us to say yes more often when our incredible journalists come to us with questions they want to answer and projects they want to pursue. Will you make a contribution before the month ends and support our policy coverage through 2024 and beyond?
In This Stream
Vox Sentences
- Vox Sentences: On Iran, a resolute House
- Vox Sentences: Arizona made it really hard to fix Obamacare if the Supreme Court breaks it
- Vox Sentences: The coming Democratic war over Obama’s trade deal
Next Up In The Latest
Sign up for the newsletter Future Perfect
Each week, we explore unique solutions to some of the world's biggest problems.