Vox Sentences: South Carolina waves the white flag

Getty / Marianne Todd

• On Thursday, South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley signed a bill allowing the Confederate battle flag to be taken down from the statehouse.

  [Vox / German Lopez]

• During a debate that stretched into the wee hours of Thursday morning, State Rep. Rick Quinn proposed an amendment calling for the flag to be placed in a relic room — but the final bill is sending the flag to a museum, where it can more appropriately be placed in context.

  [Politico / Ben Schreckinger]

• By "context" we mean "150 years of white supremacy."

  [Vox / Libby Nelson]

• Meanwhile, in Congress — in an appropriate move for a flag that associates itself with "the Lost Cause" — congressional Republicans tried a rearguard action to take out a provision in an Interior Department funding bill that would ban the flag from national cemeteries.

  [NYT / Jennifer Steinhauer and Jonathan Weisman]

• They withdrew the amendment under a firestorm of public shaming.

  [Vox / German Lopez]

• This almost certainly isn't the last we'll hear of the flag. Republicans are actually more supportive of it than they were in 2000.

  [Vox / Matt Yglesias]

• But Southern whites who actually know basic facts about the Civil War don't tend to be such big fans.

  [Washington Post / Spencer Piston and Logan Strother]

• PS: Please don't call it the "Stars and Bars" or the "Confederate flag." You will look like you don't know what you're talking about.

  [CNN / Ben Blumfield]

Flickr / dusk-photography

Crash in a China market

• First off: If you're behind on the news, check out this explanation of China's margin-trading crash in fewer than 500 words.

  [Vox / Timothy B. Lee]

• Or you can have it explained to you with sheep GIFs.

  [R Street Institute / R. J. Lehmann]

• And here is a short explanation of why you should worry.

  [WSJ / Alen Mattich]

• On the other hand, here is a (less short) explanation of why you shouldn't.

  [Vox / Matt Yglesias ]

• How the people of China — including one stock-trading teenager — are dealing with the crash.

  [CNN / Steven Jiang]

• Satisfaction with the Chinese government is beginning to drop along with stocks.

  [NYT / Edward Wong and Chris Buckley]

• Vox's Max Fisher argues that's the right response — because the government's authoritarianism is dooming its economy.

  [Vox / Max Fisher]

• One expert's take on where the Chinese economy might be headed.

  [Vox / Zack Beauchamp]

Getty / Ian MacNicol

Donald Trump is tearing the GOP apart

• Donald Trump is in first place in a national poll of Republican primary voters.

  [YouGov / Kathy Frankovic]

• That must be tremendously awkward for Republican National Committee Chair Reince Priebus. Yesterday, Priebus called Trump and asked him to cool it with the Mexican-hating.

  [Washington Post / Karen Tumulty, Philip Rucker and Robert Costa]

• Unfortunately for Priebus, the first debate, on August 6, is poised to take the 10 best-polling candidates — a standard statisticians hate but Trump surely loves.

  [Bloomberg / Steven Yaccino]

• But Fox News might have found a brilliant strategy to keep Trump out of the debate: It's making candidates file financial disclosures with the FEC first.

  [Slate / Josh Voorhees]

• A financial disclosure doesn't tell the public a ton, but it's still enough to make life awkward for rich candidates.

  [Bloomberg / Richard Rubin]

• Trump might have a particularly hard time, since he's been inflating his net worth by 100 percent on the campaign trail.

  [Forbes / Erin Carlyle]

• It could also be an awkward reminder of the tens of millions he's lost in corporate partnerships, since corporate America is more interested in the Latino market than in the anti-political-correctness market.

  [Vox / Dara Lind]

• And some believe Trump's using the hotel development he's currently building in DC as a way to promote his campaign.

  [Mother Jones / Miles E. Johnson]

• In other news, Trump has totally lost the Miss USA contestant vote.

  [Vanity Fair / Katie Calautti]

• Finally: This is how Donald Trump (probably) sees the world.

  [Vox / Margarita Noriega]

Misc.

• Some hospitals treat patient harm as inevitable, while others treat it as a chance to improve — and it makes a world of difference.

  [Vox / Sarah Kliff]

• For a (somewhat) lighter take on hospital mixups: A Colombian hospital swapped one infant from a pair of identical twins with one infant from another pair — then the two sets found each other as adults.

  [New York Times / Susan Dominus]

• The alleged Chinese hack on Office of Personnel Management files might be more serious than previously thought — sources now say hackers have access to 19.7 million clearance forms.

  [WSJ / Damian Paletta and Danny Yadron]

• Anatoly Liberman explores the etymology of the word "bad" — which some have proposed came from the Cornish word for "lunatic" or the Old English word for "hermaphrodite."

  [OUP Blog / Anatoly Liberman]

• You can also find the first part of Liberman's exploration here.

  [OUP Blog / Anatoly Liberman]

• This anthropological abstract on kissing has your next pickup line to use on an obviously consenting and interested individual.

  [American Anthropologist / William R. Jankowiak, Shelly L. Volsche and Justin R. Garcia]

Verbatim

• "Sartre once wrote of the Jews, 'It is the anti-Semite who creates the Jew.' The same can be said about Muslims, as the documentary filmmaker and novelist Karim Miské — who was born in Ivory Coast and was not brought up Muslim — wrote in Le Monde: 'It is the Islamophobe who makes the Muslim.'"

  [Vanity Fair / Marie Brenner]

• "When critics compare John Kerry to Neville Chamberlain, they act as if 1938 is the only year in history with useful lessons. The seven decades of the nuclear era also offer lessons, the most salient of which reinforces Nietzsche: Remember what America is trying to do."

  [The Atlantic / Graham Allison]

• "Charly 'Africa' Keunang read plays because when he was younger he'd dreamed of becoming an actor, had immigrated to the US to be in the movies. That didn't happen until the day he died."

  [GQ / Jeff Sharlet]

• "I have tried many things, but never yoga, but it cannot fail to attract."

  [Vladimir Putin via New York Times / Neil MacFarquhar]

Image of the day

Twitter / UChicago Press

• Le Corbusier. Giant of architecture; despicable politics; and, in the words of the UChicago Press Twitter account, an "OK butt."

Will you support Vox’s explanatory journalism?

Most news outlets make their money through advertising or subscriptions. But when it comes to what we’re trying to do at Vox, there are a couple of big issues with relying on ads and subscriptions to keep the lights on:

First, advertising dollars go up and down with the economy. We often only know a few months out what our advertising revenue will be, which makes it hard to plan ahead.

Second, we’re not in the subscriptions business. Vox is here to help everyone understand the complex issues shaping the world — not just the people who can afford to pay for a subscription. We believe that’s an important part of building a more equal society. And we can’t do that if we have a paywall.

So even though advertising is still our biggest source of revenue, we also seek grants and reader support. (And no matter how our work is funded, we have strict guidelines on editorial independence.)

If you also believe that everyone deserves access to trusted high-quality information, will you make a gift to Vox today? 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