Update: Coverage of second Republican debate on CNN.
A Republican debate that was anyone's to win; the one man who could sink the Iran deal; and Great Britain wants to shut down the Channel tunnel to keep migrants out.
Vox Sentences is written by Dylan Matthews and Dara Lind.
TOP NEWS
The best case every candidate can make that he won last night's Republican debate

Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
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So. Who won the Republican debate last night? Let's run through the claims, strongest to weakest:
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Donald Trump. Trump was targeted heavily by moderators for past liberal policy views and for his history of misogyny. But at this point, he has so little shame that it barely even phased him.
[Vox / Ezra Klein]
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Marco Rubio was the actual winner of the debate, according to DC elites, appearing poised and charismatic and generally like a viable general election candidate.
[Vox / Dara Lind]
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Trump got the most search traffic over the debate as a whole, but a spike of interest in Ted Cruz early in the debate was the most search interest any candidate got all night.
[Time / Tessa Berenson ]
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Home-state governor John Kasich held his own; Quartz and other outlets were impressed with his passionate defense of Medicaid expansion.
[Quartz]
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The only post-debate overnight poll (admittedly, from a not-terribly-reputable pollster) handed the win to Ben Carson. So did Charles Krauthammer. It is hard to remember literally anything Carson said.
[OneAmerica News Network]
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We're on shaky ground now, but let's keep going: Nate Cohn of the New York Times argued that Scott Walker addressed the biggest concern about his candidacy by showing he could handle tough questions.
[New York Times / Nate Cohn]
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Chris Christie and Rand Paul weren't impressive on their own, but their fight over NSA data collection was the most-talked-about moment on Facebook and Twitter — ensuring that people know where they stand, at least.
[Reuters / Emily Stephenson]
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Mike Huckabee impressed the members of Frank Luntz' focus group. He also argued that taxing prostitutes and pimps could help save Social Security.
[Fox News Insider]
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No one would argue that Jeb Bush won this debate on the merits. But if Washington, the viewers, and the voters can't agree on a winner, isn't that good news for the person many still assume is the candidate to beat?
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By the way: trick question. The real winner was Carly Fiorina, who dominated the late-afternoon debate of low-polling candidates that preceded the main debate.
[Vox / Timothy B. Lee]
Chuck Shomer

(Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
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Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) is basically the only person who could stop the Iran deal. Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) wants to stop the Iran deal.
[Vox / Zack Beauchamp]
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The deal itself isn't up for congressional review, but Congress can prevent Obama from holding up his end of the bargain, by imposing legislative sanctions on Iran. For a vetoproof majority, Republicans need about a fifth of Democrats.
[Washington Post / Greg Sargent]
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Schumer's own vote isn't that important. But he's the next Senate Minority Leader (upon Harry Reid's retirement in 2017). He's perhaps the only Democrat influential enough to get others to support sanctions even with the president on the other side.
[Talking Points Memo / Sahil Kapur]
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Schumer isn't picking this fight out of pique. He is intensely and personally pro-Israel. In 2010, he told a Jewish radio show, "my name .... comes from the word shomer, guardian, watcher...One of my roles, very important in the United States Senate, is to be a shomer — to be a or the shomer Yisrael."
[New York Magazine / Dan Amira]
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But liberal groups like MoveOn are livid, and openly campaigning for someone else to challenge Schumer for the Majority Leadership.
[Business Insider / Brett Loguirato]
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The White House is understandably pissed, and is trading recriminations with Schumer's office about how the news came out last night, during the Republican presidential debate. Press Secretary Josh Earnest didn't quite say Schumer's path to the Majority Leadership was in doubt — but he came close.
[Politico / Edward-Isaac Dovere]
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The timing would have been odd for any senator. But it marks perhaps the first time in Chuck Schumer's career he's given up an opportunity to get in front of a camera.
[Washington Post / Emily Heil]
Great Britain's immigration panic

A makeshift migrant camp in Calais. (Rob Stothard/Getty Images)
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Great Britain is panicking over an influx of migrants coming via the tunnel under the English Channel, almost all of whom are coming from a camp in Calais, France (and prior to that, mostly from West Africa).
[New York Times / Stephen Castle and Aurelien Breeden]
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The British government is threatening to completely close down the "Chunnel" at night — when both goods and migrants are trucked between Britain and France. The operators of the Tunnel claim this would cost them the equivalent of $350 million a year, and disrupt industry throughout Europe.
[Telegraph / David Barrett]
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There are about 5,000 migrants at the Calais camp, which, by all accounts, is an absolute hellhole. If you have the stomach for it, the camp's depicted in one of the best magazine articles (for many reasons) I've read this year.
[Dagbladet / Anders Fjellberg]
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This explainer from Jonathan Portes does a good job of contextualizing Britain's migrant panic, making this key point: "Why do all the people crossing the Mediterranean want to come to Britain? Most of them don't."
[The Guardian / Jonathan Portes]
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The world is in the midst of the worst migration crunch since World War II. Millions of people are fleeing violence and persecution. But the causes of migration are often complicated.
[New York Times / Patrick Boehler and Sergio Pecanha]
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From the perspective of Britons, though, it seems like an invasion. Last week, Prime Minister David Cameron referred to a "swarm of people" coming into Britain for jobs — which, in fairness, is better than the British columnist earlier this year who referred to refugees as cockroaches and said she hoped they drowned in the Mediterranean.
[The Guardian / Jessica Elgot and Matthew Taylor]
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Oxford academic Paul Collier inadvertently revealed what's behind the anxiety, when he was forced by a journalist to admit he didn't consider nonwhite Britons to be "indigenous."
[Vox / Amanda Taub]
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Collier is an unusually influential nativist; in 2011, he wrote a book about how migration hurts developing countries. Foreign Affairs' takedown of the book is worth a read.
[Foreign Affairs / Michael Clemens and Justin Sandefur]
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But he's expressing attitudes that are typical among some Britons — or, for that matter, some Americans. People often feel comfortable talking about anxieties that immigrants will steal natives' jobs, but they're generally motivated by deeper anxiety about preserving the country's "culture."
[Vox / Dara Lind]
MISCELLANEOUS
In Japan, 90 percent of adoptions are of adult men in their 20s and 30s — because of norms regarding family succession in businesses. [Now I Know / Dan Lewis]
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The pay gap between men and women isn't about what occupations people choose. It's the result of women being paid less than male counterparts in the same line of work.
[Richmond Fed / Claudia Goldin]
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Medieval British church sanctuary laws were pretty nuts. Basically you could get out of jail if you confessed your crime, gave up all your possessions, and fled to France.
[Slate / Eric Grundhauser]
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When you watch a romantic comedy with a black cast, Netflix recommends movies with black casts — not white romantic comedies.
[Washington Post / Soraya Nadia McDonald]
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Let us now praise SolarCity, Elon Musk's least-covered but arguably most important startup.
[Slate / Daniel Gross]
VERBATIM
"Everyone is drinking, peering into their screens and swiping on the faces of strangers they may have sex with later that evening. " [Vanity Fair / Nancy Jo Sales]
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"I think my son’s bully makes some good points."
[Clickhole]
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"Saying a company’s customer base is a cult may just be another way of saying the company has a sustainable competitive advantage in the form of deep customer loyalty."
[NYT / Josh Barro]
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"You would think my boob had popped out and shot Gandhi."
[Tara Reid via Slate / Amanda HEss]
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"Drake is the chilling logical extreme of the beta male’s triumph over the last decade: the ultimate evolution of the nerd turned jock, forever working every angle of his underdog status that may or may not have ever been merited but certainly isn’t anymore."
[Pitchfork / Meaghan Garvey]
WATCH THIS

Vox / Estelle Caswell
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How did pink become a girly color?
[YouTube / Estelle Caswell]
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