Vox Sentences: Obama gets one (1) Democrat to back him up on trade

1. Fast track? More like slow track amirite

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) speaks at an anti-TPP rally. (Win McNamee/Getty Images)

• 52 Senators voted to give President Obama "fast track" authority to negotiate the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal — a majority, but not enough to break a filibuster.

  [NYT / Jonathan Weisman]

• Every Senate Democrat save Tom Carper (D-DE) voted against the measure; Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) was the only Republican to vote against, but that was for procedural reasons.

  [Politico / Seung Min Kim]

• Fast track authority would enable the administration to get an up-or-down vote from Congress once a deal is reached; lacking that, it's possible amendments will be introduced that muck up the agreement.

  [Vox / Timothy B. Lee]

• The full gamut of liberal interest groups oppose TPP, from labor (for obvious reasons) to the ACLU (because of its intellectual property provisions) to the Sierra Club (because of its potential environmental impact).

  [Vox / Danielle Kurtzleben]

• The best case for the deal is that it might reduce poverty in Vietnam, which is party to the deal and still much poorer than the other parties.

  [Vox / Ezra Klein]

• But even if it does help Vietnam, that could come at the expense of even poorer countries outside of the deal such as Cambodia or Bangladesh.

  [Vox / Dylan Matthews]

• What comes next: Democrats will probably strike a deal in which they leave out a provision cracking down on currency manipulation. In exchange, they’ll get a vote on that later, separately from the fast track debate.

  [Politico / Burgess Everett and Manu Raju]

2. Dial-up

Pit-Pat, AOL's magical, pansexual, non-threatening spokesthing. (Andrew Burton/Getty Images)

• Verizon is buying AOL for $4.4 billion.

  [NYT / David Gelles and Brian X. Chen]

• That's a big premium over AOL's current pricing.

  [Vox / Matt Yglesias]

• This is a somewhat curious purchase. AOL is only profitable because of revenue from memberships — that is, because millions of people just haven't gotten around to canceling their worthless AOL subscriptions yet.

  [Vox / Matt Yglesias]

• But while that's still very profitable, the company now gets more revenue from its online advertising technology, spearheaded by CEO Tim Armstrong, who previously worked on DoubleClick ads at Google.

  [The Verge / Ben Popper]

• Verizon also picks up a substantial video creation business (itself a lucrative source of ad revenue); AOL is third only to Google/YouTube and Facebook in desktop video visitors.

  [LA Times / Jim Puzzanghera]

• Reportedly, Verizon is planning to spin off the Huffington Post as part of the deal.

  [Re/code / Kara Swisher]

• Now's as good a time as any to get nostalgic about AOL's formerly ubiquitous junk mail CDs, of which it sent out more than 1 billion between 1993 and 2006.

  [Vox / Phil Edwards]

• Of course, the biggest question about the deal is what happens to Shingy, AOL's digital prophet.

  [Vox / Matt Yglesias]

3. No charges

Dane County District Attorney Ismael Ozanne announces that no charges will be filed. (Scott Olson/Getty Images)

• Madison, Wisconsin, police officer Matt Kenny will not be charged for killing Tony Robinson, the unarmed 19-year-old biracial man whom Kenny shot to death on March 6.

  [Wisconsin State Journal / Nico Savidge]

• Police claim that Robinson assaulted Kenny and that the officer acted in self-defense; it's unclear why a gun was necessary for self-defense given that Robinson was unarmed.

  [Vox / German Lopez]

• The family's representatives have disputed that narrative, claiming that Robinson did not present a threat at the time of his death and that Kenny shot him in the back.

  [Wisconsin State Journal / Nico Savidge]

• Generally, police can legally shoot people if it's "objectively reasonable" for them to have felt threatened in the situation in question; it doesn't matter if the threat was actually real.

  [Vox / Dara Lind]

• Under Wisconsin law, all police shootings resulting in death have to be investigated by the state's Department of Justice; since no charges have resulted, the Department is now required to release its report.

  [CNN / Holly Yan and Ashley Fantz]

• Ismael Ozanne, the DA who declined to charge Kenny, is the first black district attorney in Wisconsin, and ran unsuccessfully for the Democratic nomination for Attorney General last year.

  [CNN / Michael Martinez]

• Madison has a record of racial disparities in criminal enforcement; black adults in Dane County, where it's located, are eight time more likely to be arrested than white adults. Nationally, black people are only 2.5 times likelier to be arrested.

  [Race to Equity]

4. Misc.

• Robert Putnam's Our Kids has been getting a lot of praise among political writers, but this Nicholas Lemann review is a pretty devastating debunking of the book's strongest claims.

  [NY Review of Books / Nicholas Lemann]

• The Star Wars prequels are exactly as bad as you remember. This supercut proves it.

  [Slate / Jacob Swinney]

• Richard Thaler's students were averaging 72 points out of 100, and it bummed them out. So he started grading out of 137, where the average is 96, which, while actually lower, made them ridiculously happy.

  [NYT / Richard Thaler]

• The residents of Watertown, South Dakota, aren't generally fans of Barack Obama. But they were still psyched when he came to town.

  [Washington Post / Greg Jaffe]

• As someone who eats a lot of takeout, I found this Upshot guide to healthy restaurant eating quite helpful.

  [NYT / Josh Barro, Claire Cain Miller, Darcy Eveleigh, David Leonhardt, Matt Ruby and Rumsey Taylor]

• Parts of the world that were actually discovered by Europeans in the age of exploration, mapped.

  [Radical Cartography / Bill Rankin]

5. Verbatim

• "The suicide rate among NCAA athletes is lower than the general population (0.93 per 100,000, versus 10.9)."

  [ESPN Magazine / Kate Fagan]

• "In an email, Beyoncé wrote 'at first it’s the little things I noticed: I had more energy' — though, sadly, not enough to deal with a reporter asking about it on the phone, as had been promised for more than a month."

  [NYT / Courtney Rubin]

• "We have done over 800 movies in the last 25 years. But when that movie came out, and years and years afterward, we were known as 'those are the guys who made the dick in Boogie Nights.'"

  [Howard Berger to Grantland / Alex French and Howie Kahn]

• "You know how you get people younger to gamble? Hand them a fucking telephone."

  [Mike Trask to The Verge / Andrew Thompson]

• "A second-hand bargain at $17, Williams noticed that it came with a lace garter, perfect for stashing her snub-nosed Smith and Wesson."

  [The Atlantic / Jeff Maysh]

We're here to shed some clarity

One of our core beliefs here at Vox is that everyone needs and deserves access to the information that helps them understand the world, regardless of whether they can pay for a subscription. With the 2024 election on the horizon, more people are turning to us for clear and balanced explanations of the issues and policies at stake. We’re so grateful that we’re on track to hit 85,000 contributions to the Vox Contributions program before the end of the year, which in turn helps us keep this work free. We need to add 2,500 contributions this month to hit that goal. Will you make a contribution today to help us hit this goal and support our policy coverage? Any amount helps.

One-Time Monthly Annual

$5/month

$10/month

$25/month

$50/month

Other

$

Yes, I'll give $5/month

Yes, I'll give $5/month

We accept credit card, Apple Pay, and Google Pay. You can also contribute via