Vox Sentences: “Donald Trump may be a rat, but I have no desire to copulate with him”

A mudslinging, wife-threatening, rat-copulating contretemps; US kills ISIS second-in-command* (*yes, again); a surprisingly consequential Russian tax policy.

Vox Sentences is written by Dylan Matthews and Dara Lind.

TOP NEWS

Take the GOP wives, please

Alex Wong/Getty Images

• The Republican presidential primary has, predictably, devolved into people flinging mud at Donald Trump and Ted Cruz, the two remaining credible candidates.

  [Vox / Matt Yglesias]

• The contretemps started earlier this week when, on the eve of the Utah primary, an anti-Trump PAC ran a Facebook ad that used old nude photos of Melania Trump to cast the potential first lady in an unflattering light.

  [BuzzFeed News / McKay Coppins]

• Trump responded by going after "lyin' Ted" Cruz, and threatened on Twitter to "spill the beans" about Cruz's wife, Heidi. (It's not clear what Trump is referring to — Heidi Cruz has struggled with depression, but those beans have already been spilled.)

  [Washington Post / Philip Bump]

• This is where we pause to remind you that both Melania Trump and Heidi Cruz are actual human beings. Here are some interesting articles about them to push back against all this macho bullshit.

  [Vox / Tara Golshan]

• On Friday morning, disturbing allegations surfaced about Ted Cruz's love life.

  [Washington Post / Alexandra Petri]

• The allegations ran in National Enquirer, which has had a cozy relationship with the Trump campaign in the past (although there's also evidence that allies of Marco Rubio were peddling the Cruz rumors last month).

  [NY Mag / Gabriel Sherman]

• Cruz's response to the allegations was to blame Roger Stone — a Trump ally who started his career with the Richard Nixon operation, engaging in the Nixonian dirty tricks known by the indelible name "ratfucking."

  [Wikipedia]

• Of course, Cruz couldn't say "ratfucking." What he said was even better: "Donald Trump may be a rat, but I have no desire to copulate with him."

  [Mediaite / Sam Reisman]

• A selection from Trump's response: "Ted Cruz’s problem with the National Enquirer is his and his alone, and while they were right about O.J. Simpson, John Edwards, and many others, I certainly hope they are not right about Lyin’ Ted Cruz."

  [Jose DelReal via Twitter]

• Ain't democracy great?

US kills ISIS No. 2, take 3

Hillary Clinton

• US defense officials believe they've killed the man known as Haji Imam, who was allegedly the "second-in-command" within ISIS.

  [The Daily Beast / Kimberly Dozier]

• If you're getting déjà vu, there's a reason: This is the third time in the past year that the US has killed ISIS's "number-two official."

  [Adam Johnson via Twitter]

• This doesn't necessarily reflect badly on the US military. It has, after all, been very aggressive in going after ISIS tactical leaders. It's just been even more aggressive in hyping the importance of those leaders to ISIS's operation.

  [PBS / Priyanka Boghani]

• The fact of the matter is that ISIS is designed to function as an anonymized, bureaucratic operation. Its people are designed to be replaceable. So after one is killed, he is simply replaced.

  [BBC / Aidan Lewis]

• It's this sort of dynamic that shows just how vacuous and stupid the "plans" of Hillary Clinton and others to "destroy ISIS" really are.

  [Vox / Zack Beauchamp]

Eating the seed corn

Sasha Mordovets/Getty

• Vox's Max Fisher argues, persuasively, that the biggest global news of the week might be that Russia is considering a huge hike on its oil tax.

  [Vox / Max Fisher]

• Oil, as you probably know, is really cheap right now. That is very bad for Russia's energy-dependent economy.

  [NYT / Neil MacFarquhar]

• It's also bad for the Russian budget — half of the government's revenue comes from oil and gas taxes.

  [Bloomberg / Anna Andrianova and Dina Khrennikova]

• And the Russian government needs to spend a lot of money to ensure regional stability (not least through richly subsidizing leaders of client states, like Ramzan Kadyrov in Chechnya.

  [Vox / Amanda Taub]

• The problem is that by hiking the oil tax to make money in the short term, the Russian government will disincentivize future oil field development — damaging its economy in the long term. The New York Times's Andrew Kramer calls this "eating the seed corn."

  [NYT / Andrew E. Kramer]

• And if the economy gets stuck in long-term doldrums, that's not so good for regional stability either.

  [Vox / Max Fisher]

MISCELLANEOUS

Have you ever wanted to be a deranged hermit on a full-time basis? Well, a New Hampshire theme park has just the job for you. [Boston Globe / Steve Annear]

• One reason to hold hearings on Merrick Garland: We need answers on whether or not he cut off Fred Eisenhammer at a summer camp relay race in Lincolnwood, Illinois.

  [Chicago Tribune / Fed Eisenhammer]

• Poor white kids are less likely to go to prison than even rich black kids.

  [Washington Post / Max Ehrenfreund]

• We're only a few months into the Zika outbreak. But researchers have already learned a surprising amount about how the disease works.

  [STAT / Helen Branswell]

• The case for having your body cryonically frozen when you die (no, seriously).

  [Wait But Why / Tim Urban]

VERBATIM

"How can you not love this stuff? Because it’s not about the gravely important issues of the day? Get a life, you babies!" [Slate / Leon Neyfakh]

• "For all the talk about how important diversity is within organizations, white and male executives aren’t rewarded, career-wise, for engaging in diversity-valuing behavior, and nonwhite and female executives actually get punished for it."

  [Harvard Business Review / Stefanie K. Johnson and David R. Hekman]

• "You would be surprised how seldom it occurs to people that their problems are not their fault."

  [NYT / Richard Brouillette]

• "Al Pacino, as Brando’s heir, rattles around in a part too demanding for him. James Caan is OK as his older brother."

  [New Republic / Stanley Kauffmann]

• "I’m pretty positive that That Thing You Do took its story line from 'MMMBop' and us. I’m kidding, but they do speed the song up!"

  [Zac Hanson to NY Mag / Rebeca Milzoff]

WATCH THIS

Syria's war: who is fighting and why [YouTube / Max Fisher and Johnny Harris]

Vox / Johnny Harris

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