Vox Sentences: Brazil’s VP should not have done the “tape yourself giving a speech to practice” thing

North Carolina tries to give its bathroom bill a makeover; Brazil's VP might be a little too eager to practice his reluctant assumption of the presidency; Paul Ryan is. Not. Running. For. President.

Vox Sentences is written by Dylan Matthews and Dara Lind.

TOP NEWS

North Carolina's governor learns how it feels to be given a label you don't identify with

Knight/Raleigh News & Observer/TNS via Getty Images

• In an attempt to neutralize the nationwide backlash that North Carolina is facing as a result of its anti-LGBTQ House Bill 2, Gov. Pat McCrory issued an executive order today tweaking the law.

  [LA Times / Matt Pearce]

• The executive order adds gender identity and sexual orientation to the nondiscrimination policy for North Carolina state government employees, and opens the door to allowing anti-discrimination suits in state court.

  [Vox / German Lopez]

• The executive order does not actually fix the parts of HB2 that caused the backlash. The law still bans towns and cities from adopting nondiscrimination laws of their own that cover sexual orientation and gender identity — like the law passed in Charlotte that started the fight to begin with. And McCrory's order does not rescind HB2's mandate that all North Carolinians use the public bathroom designated for their birth-assigned sex.

  [ACLU]

• Attorney General Roy Cooper, a Democrat who's challenging McCrory for governor in November, has refused to defend HB2 because it's out of line with state law. The executive order theoretically fixes those conflicts — which might make it easier to attack Cooper politically.

  [Colin Campbell via Twitter]

• According to the Obama administration's Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, though, federal law already prohibits discrimination based on gender identity, which would render even the updated HB2 illegal.

  [BuzzFeed News / Dominic Holden]

• That said, the EEOC hasn't actually gotten a court to accept this interpretation of the Civil Rights Act yet. So in North Carolina, as in a lot of other places, discrimination remains legal.

  [Vox / German Lopez]

Memo to Brazil: (faceplant)

Mario Tama/Getty Images

• On Monday, a committee in the lower house of Brazil's congress voted to recommend President Dilma Rousseff for impeachment.

  [The Guardian / Jonathan Watts]

• This development has been gestating a long time. The impeachment isn't officially about Rousseff's role in the Petrobras scandal that has engulfed Brazilian politics — but it certainly feeds on her unpopularity.

  [Vox / Zack Beauchamp]

• Rousseff still has to lose a vote in the full lower house, followed by an actual trial in the Senate, to officially be impeached.

  [NYT]

• And since the speaker of the lower house is himself facing bribery charges — and is (allegedly) connected to an offshore account in the Panama Papers leak — he might not be able to whip his chamber's votes.

  [Forbes / Keren Blankfield]

• This did not, however, stop Rousseff's vice president — who is going to judge the impeachment trial in the Senate, if it gets that far — from recording a video of the remarks he'd give as Brazil's new president after Rousseff is removed from office.

  [AFP ]

• Rousseff's allies accuse the vice president of a clumsy coup attempt. The vice president claims he accidentally released a cellphone video of him "practicing" such a speech — which honestly is only a little less weird.

  [BuzzFeed News / Hayes Brown]

Paul Ryan gently suggests to the GOP that their fixation on him is a little weird

Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

• Paul Ryan has an announcement: Paul Ryan is not running for president. Period. You can't make him.

  [CBS News / Rebecca Shabad]

• The fact that Ryan had to give a speech making this clear is partly the fault of Ryan and his staff, who released a video over the weekend that sure looks like a presidential campaign ad.

  [Talking Points Memo / Katherine Krueger]

• But it's also the fault of Republican Party insiders like Charles Koch, who have been not-so-secretly hoping they can be rescued from their omnishambles of a presidential campaign when the party unites this summer to nominate Ryan at the convention.

  [Huffington Post / Ryan Grim and Sam Stein]

• Arguably, it's better for Ryan to wait this cycle out, let the Republican nominee get slaughtered by Hillary Clinton, and go into 2017 as the undisputed head of the Republican Party.

  [Business Insider / Josh Barro]

• Besides, he has a pretty good excuse: He's the chair of this summer's convention. It would not be a good look if the convention ended with him nominating himself.

  [NPR / Susan Davis]

• Unfortunately for Ryan, that requires him to be at the convention — and many of his fellow Republicans, including Jeb Bush, are reportedly planning to skip entirely.

  [CNN / Manu Raju and Deirdre Walsh]

MISCELLANEOUS

Terriers might be the best one-season TV show ever made. You should go watch it ASAP. [AV Club / Phil McCausland]

• Fifteen years ago, Michelle Fitzgerald was playing a political operative on The West Wing. Then she quit acting to become one.

  [Washington Post / Monica Hesse]

• Malik Jalal, a tribal leader in Pakistan, claims he is on the US drone kill list. Here's how he gets by knowing that.

  [The Independent / Malik Jalal]

• Relatedly, the Helen Mirren drone movie Eye in the Sky is very good, and this expert commentary is a useful clarification on what it gets right and what it misses.

  [The Guardian / Derek Gregory]

• Marco Rubio, free of having to get literally anyone to like him anymore, is doing the right thing and pushing for funding to fight Zika.

  [The Hill / Peter Sullivan]

VERBATIM

"I’ve always been an outsider. I scramble hard to preserve my outsider status, if you will." [Bob Woodward to Slate / Isaac Chotiner]

• "The Guardian commissioned research into the 70 million comments left on its site since 2006 and discovered that of the 10 most abused writers eight are women, and the two men are black."

  [The Guardian / Becky Gardiner, Mahana Mansfield, Ian Anderson, Josh Holder, Daan Louter, and Monica Ulmanu]

• "At my day job as an editor at a women’s website, I receive a daily mess of emails promoting random products and activities as 'empowering.' Recent offerings include the Pure Barre workout, divorce, Miley Cyrus, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, ancient Egyptian sex rites, leggings, sending nude photos, receiving nude photos, declining to send or receive nude photos, doing stand-up comedy and purchasing full-bottomed lingerie."

  [NYT Mag / Jia Tolentino]

• "A few came out on the defense — 'We are simply not a NIMBY neighborhood' — but rather insisted that this was about their rights as homeowners and neighbors."

  [Greater Greater Washington / David Whitehead]

• "A team of scientists unveiled a new tree of life on Monday, a diagram outlining the evolution of all living things."

  [NYT / Carl Zimmer]

WATCH THIS

A brief history of America and Cuba [YouTube / Johnny Harris and Max Fisher]

Victor Gillam

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