Vox Sentences: What if they held a debate and Donald Trump didn’t show up?

Donald Trump escalates a feud with Fox News; the FBI makes its move on the Oregon militia; and France loses a high-ranking minister over controversial constitutional changes.

Vox Sentences is written by Dylan Matthews and Dara Lind.

TOP NEWS

Donald Trump vs. Fox News

Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images and Craig Barritt/Getty Images for Cosmopolitan Magazine and WME Live

• Fox News will be hosting a televised GOP presidential debate Thursday night. But as of Wednesday, frontrunner Donald Trump will not attend.

  [Donald J. Trump via Twitter]

• The apparent reason: Megyn Kelly will be one of the debate moderators, and Trump has a long-running (mostly one-sided) feud with Kelly going back to the first GOP debate in August.

  [Vox / Tara Golshan]

• The professed reason: the sour-grapes statement Fox News put out Tuesday morning, mocking Trump's toughness, after Trump was already teasing he wouldn't do the debate.

  [Donald J. Trump via Twitter]

• Will this help Trump? Will it hurt him? Will he give in at the last minute? No one knows except perhaps Trump himself.

  [Vox / Andrew Prokop]

• Fox, for its part, is apparently wracked by anxiety over the prospect of losing out on Trump — with lots of finger pointing about who's to blame.

  [NYMag / Gabriel Sherman]

• Meanwhile, after months of complaining by supporters of candidates not named Hillary Clinton that the Democrats weren't having enough debates, MSNBC has partnered with the New Hampshire Union-Leader to hold an "unsanctioned" debate in New Hampshire a few days before its February 9 primary.

  [BuzzFeed News / Evan McMorris-Santoro]

• In a strange twist, though, Clinton has agreed to participate — but current New Hampshire frontrunner Bernie Sanders hasn't.

  [Union-Leader]

The Oregon standoff is now officially a standoff

Multnomah County Sheriff's Office via Getty Images

• Last night, local and federal law enforcement agents arrested several of the leaders of the militia group occupying the Malheur Wildlife Refuge building in Oregon. Those arrested include Nevada-based ringleader Ammon Bundy.

  [OregonLive]

• Bundy and 7 others face federal charges of "conspiracy to impede federal officers" through force or intimidation.

  [Register-Guard / Jack Moran]

• Militia spokesperson LaVoy Finicum was shot by federal agents during the traffic stop that led to the arrests.

  [Vox / Libby Nelson]

• Accounts of Finicum's death vary. (That's an understatement.) Some militia supporters claim that he was killed while surrendering with his hands up; others who claim to have witnessed the scene said that he was brandishing his weapon or tried to attack the police.

  [KATU]

• The militia members remaining in the wildlife refuge have decided that they're going to stay put, even after the arrests of their compatriots.

  [OPB / Ryan Haas, John Rosman, and John Sepulvado ]

• But law enforcement is closing in. On Wednesday, they surrounded the refuge and established checkpoints — officially turning the occupation into a standoff.

  [OPB / Ryan Haas, John Rosman, and John Sepulvado ]

• And late Wednesday, Ammon Bundy himself — through his lawyer — urged the remaining occupiers to leave.

  [KATU / Lincoln Graves via Twitter]

"Sometimes to resist means leaving"

Thierry Chesnot/Getty Images

• French Justice Minister Christiane Taubira has resigned from government rather than back a controversial constitutional amendment.

  [BBC ]

• France's parliament is considering several changes in the wake of the November terrorist attacks in Paris — but the most controversial would strip French citizenship from binationals accused of terrorism.

  [NYT / Adam Nossiter]

• Since the proposal would, by definition, only apply to French citizens of foreign descent (including those born in France), Taubira — the only high-ranking black politician in France — condemned it vociferously as an attempt to divide French citizens into two classes.

  [The Guardian / Angelique Chrisafis]

• But as justice minister, Taubira was expected to whip for the bill when the national assembly starts debating it this week. She appears to have resigned instead.

  [France24]

• Taubira has herself been the target of racism in France; in 2013, a right-wing newspaper mocked her by comparing her to a monkey and offering her a banana.

  [France24]

• (The banana episode was then mocked by the satire tabloid Charlie Hebdo — in one of the many cases where Charlie Hebdo has been criticized for reinforcing the very stereotypes it's claiming to mock.)

  [Vox / Zack Beauchamp]

• Taubira is being replaced by a prominent backer of the surveillance expansion law France passed last year. Taubira had said at the time that if she weren't in the government she would have protested that bill.

  [NYT / Aurelien Breeden]

MISCELLANEOUS

Darren Rainey, a diagnosed schizophrenic imprsioned in a Florida prison for cocaine possession, died after being locked in a scalding shower by prison guards for nearly two hours as his skin peeled from his body. The death was ruled an accident. [The Guardian / Richard Luscombe]

• Let's face it: The current presidential primary system is real dumb. Here are six options to replace it.

  [NPR / Danielle Kurtzleben]

• After a blizzard hit DC this past weekend, only a handful of senators and staff showed up to Tuesday's session. They were all women.

  [Washington Post / Emily Heil]

• Startups targeting consumers tend to get the most press — think Uber, Washio, Handy, etc. But enterprise software, while super boring, is just as important, and some in Silicon Valley are trying to finally make it cool.

  [Re/code / Noah Kulwin]

• Lisa Ann was one of the world's most famous and successful porn stars before her 2014 retirement. Now she's become a fantasy football guru.

  [The Guardian / Dave Schilling]

VERBATIM

"Asked by BuzzFeed News to cite his greatest foreign policy influence apart from Reagan, Cruz cited Reagan anyway." [BuzzFeed / Rosie Gray]

• "Some 27 states have called for a convention on a balanced budget amendment, which would force the federal government to pass budgets that do not enlarge the national debt. This means that theoretically just seven more states have to act for a constitutional convention to be called, at least on that subject."

  [Slate / Ashley Balcerzak]

• "The last time you went to a restaurant, what did you order? A plate of celery and radishes to start, perhaps? How about a pack of cigarettes or an alligator pear salad? These things rarely make an appearance on restaurant tables today, but not so long ago, they were all common on American menus, as a massive collection of historical menus at the New York Public Library shows."

  [Washington Post / Ana Swanson]

• "Amélie Mathilde Julia Marie Morgan Panon Desbassayns de Richemont, the daughter of Anne R. de Richemont Smithers of New York and Vicomte Patrick de Richemont of Paris, was married Jan. 23 to Thomas Atkinson."

  [NYT]

• "José Delgado, grabbed headlines with a grand demonstration at a bullring in Córdoba, Spain. Delgado had invented a device he called a stimoceiver—a radio-controlled brain implant that could pick up neural signals and deliver tiny shocks to the cortex. When Delgado stepped into the ring, he flashed a red cape to incite the bull to charge. As the animal drew close, Delgado pressed two buttons on his radio transmitter: The first triggered the bull’s caudate nucleus and slowed the animal to a halt; the second made it turn and trot off toward a wall."

  [Wired / Daniel Engber]

WATCH THIS

Why your laptop charger is so hot [YouTube / Liz Scheltens, Gina Barton, and Audrey Quinn]

Vox / Liz Scheltens and Gina Barton

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