Vox Sentences: Obama intervenes in ancient Ohio-Alaska mountain-based blood feud

President Obama takes a bold cartographical stand against the gold standard; one of the great science popularizers of our time has died; and Donald Trump's just way more left-wing on taxes than most Republicans.

Vox Sentences is written by Dylan Matthews and Dara Lind.

TOP NEWS

You shall not crucify mountainkind on a cross of gold

(Mike Powell/Getty Images)

• President Obama has renamed Mount McKinley, the tallest peak in North America. He restored its Alaska Native name, Denali.

  [NYT / Julie Hirschfeld Davis]

• During the Klondike Gold Rush, prospectors started to call the mountain McKinley in honor of the then-president's support for the gold standard. Woodrow Wilson signed the Mount McKinley National Park Act into law in 1917, making it official.

  [Vox / Matt Yglesias]

• Alaska has pushed for the restoration of the Denali name at least since 1975, when the legislature passed and Republican then-Gov. Jay Hammond signed a resolution calling for the mountain's renaming. Alaska's Republican senators, Dan Sullivan and Lisa Murkowski, both support Obama's move.

  [Alaska Dispatch News / Erica Martinson]

• Lawmakers from Ohio (McKinley's home state) have historically stymied attempts to restore the name. Sen. Rob Portman (R-OH) and House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) both condemned the change to Denali.

  [AP / Josh Lederman and Mark Thiessen]

• McKinley presided over a booming economy mostly because he came into office at the start of a gold rush, which produced needed inflation.

  [Vox / Matt Yglesias]

• He also launched the pointless Spanish-American war and then presided over the US's brutal occupation of the Philippines. He was not a very good president.

  [Johns Hopkins Gazette]

RIP, Oliver Sacks

(Chris McGrath/Getty Images)

• The neurologist and popular science writer Oliver Sacks died Sunday at 82.

  [Vox / Julia Belluz]

• At the beginning of this year, Sacks learned that a tumor in his eye had spread to his liver. He wrote about knowing death was coming soon: "I feel a sudden clear focus and perspective. There is no time for anything inessential. I must focus on myself, my work and my friends."

  [NYT / Oliver Sacks]

• The science writer Steve Silberman explains Sacks's significance to the field: "Since many of the conditions chronicled by him are incurable, the force driving his tales is not the race for a remedy but the patient's striving to maintain his or her identity in a world utterly changed by the disorder."

  [Wired / Steve Silberman]

• My personal favorite piece of Sacks's is, "An Anthropologist on Mars," a profile of animal scientist Temple Grandin, who has autism. It was one of the first popular press pieces on an adult with autism that emphasized we could live happy, productive lives.

  [New Yorker / Oliver Sacks]

• Julia Belluz collects six quotes that highlights some of the many reasons Sacks became such a beloved figure.

  [Vox / Julia Belluz]

• Sacks only came out as gay this year. His mother called him an "abomination" and said she "wished you had never been born" when she discovered his sexual orientation. He was celibate for decades before beginning a relationship with author Bill Hayes six years ago.

  [Washington Post / Justin Moyer]

Trump l'œil

(William Thomas Cain/Newsmakers/Liaison Agency/Getty Images)

• Conservatives are trying to figure out what, exactly, Donald Trump thinks about taxes.

  [NYT / Alan Rappeport]

• He's called for raising taxes on hedge funders, and criticized flat tax plans on the grounds that "rich people are paying the same as people that are making very little money … I think there should be a graduation of some kind."

  [Washington Post / Max Ehrenfreund]

• Even worse from a free market standpoint, he's a very enthusiastic proponent of slapping tariffs on imported goods to discourage manufacturers from moving abroad.

  [Washington Post / Jimy Tankersley]

• Some of his remarks in an interview with Sarah Palin are being interpreted as retreating on the flat tax question, but I don't see it. He's still pointedly refusing to endorse standard GOP tax proposals.

  [Mother Jones / Kevin Drum]

• The simpler interpretation is that he's just genuinely more left-wing on economics than most Republicans — which is part of his appeal.

  [Vox / Matt Yglesias]

• Grover Norquist isn't worried, even though Trump and Jeb Bush are the only GOP candidates who haven't pledged to never raise taxes.

  [NYT / Alan Rappeport]

• The best Trump tax proposal is was and always will be his plan for a one-time wealth tax of 14.25 percent on all wealth above $10 million to pay off the national debt. It is not at all clear what problem this would solve.

  [Vox / Dylan Matthews]

MISCELLANEOUS

Let's say civilization ends and we only get to keep one bit of scientific knowledge. Twelve scientists each pick the breakthrough they'd preserve. [BuzzFeed / Tom Chivers]

• Thousands of towns and cities have "nuisance ordinances" that can wind up evicting domestic violence victims for calling the cops on their abusers.

  [ThinkProgress / Bryce Covert]

• Meet CIS, the anonymous Japanese day trader who made $34 million by shorting stocks in the wake of China's market meltdown.

  [Bloomberg / Jason Clenfield and Yuji Nakamura]

• You've probably never heard of Amalgamated Bank, but it's the most important financial institution in the Democratic Party.

  [NYT / Nicholas Confessore]

• Prosecutors in Lynchburg, Virginia, have charged an 11-year-old autistic boy with felony assault for having a meltdown in class. His parents and other autism rights advocates are fighting back.

  [Richmond Times-Dispatch / Katrina Dix]

VERBATIM

"Nearly 80% of all US currency in circulation is denominated in $100 bills." [Quartz / Matt Phillips]

• "Wal-Mart, in the midst of spending $1 billion to raise employees’ wages and give them extra training, has been cutting the number of hours some of them work in a bid to keep costs in check."

  [Bloomberg / Shannon Pettypiece]

• "Lab found traces of cocaine and sourdough. They call it Sweet Chowder. It's a drug soup from Baltimore."

  [Sean Tejaratchi via AV Club / Marah Eakin]

• "We will be good people in this country; we won’t be drug dealers. We will build the country."

  [Syrian refugee in UK to the Guardian / Amelia Gentleman]

• "I do know what it means for somebody to be bad at achieving the goals they set for themselves. I do know what it means for someone to be good at pursuing goals that I dislike. I have no idea what it would mean for a person to 'be bad.'"

  [Nate Soares]

WATCH THIS

(Vox/Christophe Haubursin)

• What undercover videos tell us about meat in America.

  [YouTube / Christophe Haubursin]

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