Vox Sentences: 1,000 migrants drowned in the Mediterranean last week, but sure, let's talk about a gorilla

Fewer people are crossing the Mediterranean, and more people are dying there; Donald Trump gets shamed into doing the right thing.

Vox Sentences is written by Dylan Matthews and Dara Lind.

TOP NEWS

Killed by neglect

Win McNamee/Getty Images

• The United Nations and the International Organization for Migration estimate that more than 1,000 migrants drowned trying to cross the Mediterranean to Europe in the past week alone.

  [Associated Press]

• Fewer migrants are crossing the Mediterranean in 2016 than in 2015. But more migrants are dying.

  [International Organisation for Migration]

• It would be nice to think of this as an unforeseeable consequence of a tougher European migration policy. But sadly, it was very predictable: Tougher border security the world over always leads to more deadly border crossings.

  [Washington Office on Latin America / Adam Isacson and Maureen Meyer]

• The problem isn't storms; the weather last week was fine. It's that smugglers are pushing migrants out on unseaworthy vessels — one wrecked ship last week didn't even have an engine — often against their will.

  [International Organisation for Migration]

• (Reminder: Someone being coerced to migrate is a victim of human trafficking.)

  [Vox / Dara Lind]

• The European Union has spent the past year fighting over who has to pay to take in the few asylum seekers the continent decides to admit. The Mediterranean disasters show just how insufficient that response is.

  [Reuters / Crispian Palmer]

• But at least some EU countries are trying to help — unlike the Swiss town of Oberwil-Lieli, which is paying the equivalent of $290,000 so that it doesn't have to accept 10 refugees as neighbors.

  [The Telegraph (UK) / James Rothwell]

Thoroughly vetted

Pat Carter/Getty Images

• Remember back in January when Donald Trump skipped out on a presidential debate and claimed he'd raised $6 million for veterans groups instead?

  [Vox / Tara Golshan]

• Well, it turns out (per the Washington Post's David Fahrenthold) that it's not clear how big Trump's donations actually were ... or where they went.

  [Washington Post / David A. Fahrenthold]

• Trump defended himself vigorously in a press conference Tuesday, attacking the media for doubting him and releasing a list of 41 veterans groups to which he had written checks.

  [NYT / Maggie Haberman and Ashley Parker]

• Except that about half of those groups told the Associated Press that they'd gotten the donations just last week — typically on the day the Post story came out.

  [AP / Jonathan Lemire and Jill Colvin]

• It's almost like Donald Trump has a history of blurring the line between his charitable donations and the rest of his business-turned-political empire (a history detailed here by Michael Daly).

  [The Daily Beast / Michael Daly]

• This might be why Trump won't release his tax returns! Just kidding, there are lots of reasons Trump won't release his tax returns.

  [AP]

Get off your high horse about the damn gorilla

Cincinnati Zoo

• On Saturday, Cincinnati Zoo officials killed a gorilla named Harambe after he grabbed and dragged a 4-year-old child who had gotten into his enclosure.

  [Vox / Alex Abad-Santos]

• The internet is outraged, because getting outraged and demanding punishment is what the internet does.

  [Vox / German Lopez]

• Some people are outraged about the zoo's decision to kill the gorilla instead of tranquilizing it — despite the fact that "just tranquilize it" is not a reasonable answer if you talk to actual animal policy experts.

  [Steve Dale]

• In this case, the zoo had determined that shooting Harambe with a tranquilizer would not have sedated him immediately and might have angered him in the meantime, endangering the child even more.

  [Washington Post / Sarah Larimer]

• Other people are outraged with the 4-year-old's family for allowing the child to fall. In fact, police are reportedly looking into criminal charges against the family.

  [CNN / Dominique Dodley, Sarah Jorgensen, and Steve Visser]

• Unsurprisingly, this has led to more than a little racism directed at the boy's mother for having a criminal record (something a lot of people have, and which does not make them unfit to be parents).

  [NY Daily News / Shaun King]

• Anyway, Dylan points out that if you eat meat you aren't allowed to get on your high horse about the value of the life of an animal. (You probably do not care about the value of the life of your high horse, either.)

  [Vox / Dylan Matthews]

MISCELLANEOUS

The chemical reason gin and tonics taste so good. [Quartz / Akshat Rathi]

• The oldest mosque in America isn't in New York or Los Angeles or Detroit. It's near Ross, North Dakota.

  [NYT / Samuel Freedman]

• Yesterday, dozens of enraged Pokémon fans marched to the Japanese Consulate in Hong Kong to protest the recent renaming of Pikachu in Cantonese.

  [Quartz / Zheping Huang]

• America is aging, and its homeless population is aging with it, creating serious problems for homeless seniors with declining health.

  [NYT / Adam Nagourney]

• A definitive history of Batman's extensive gay subtext.

  [Slate / Glen Weldon]

VERBATIM

"The millions of admirers of the TV presentation of ‘Roots’ didn’t include Ronald Reagan, who said, ‘Very frankly, I thought the bias of all the good people being one color and all the bad people being another was rather destructive.’" [Washington Post in 1977, via Post / Bethonie Butler]

• "Whether or not a pop-culture representation of a female friend group will be categorized as a clique hinges largely on whether viewers believe they would be accepted into the group."

  [New Inquiry / Alana Massey]

• "Souza’s photographs tell a different story – and the one that matters. Obama accomplished the impossible and made the White House an African American home for eight years."

  [The Guardian / Jonathan Jones]

• "There’s a video of Clinton on YouTube from 2007 that some on her campaign staff watch when they need a laugh, a classic 'That’s so Hillary' moment. In the clip, she’s concluding a campaign event when a bunch of American flags fall over, a full-on equipment malfunction. As Clinton helps to right the flags, she cannot keep herself from offering some flag-related tips to the relevant officials: 'I think that the bases are not weighted enough; that’s your problem.'"

  [NY Mag / Rebecca Traister]

• "Nancy Cardozo shares a house with her friend Aileen Ward in New Milford, Conn.; both are writers in their 90s. 'We eat everything we like,' Ms. Cardozo said. 'Any kinds of eggs, blini, any good red or beluga caviar with crème fraîche, cheesecake, chocolate soufflé with whipped cream, crème brûlée, filet mignon, pasta with pesto. Aileen drinks Lillet, and I’m vodka and tonic. We drink as much as we can.'"

  [NYT / Henry Alford]

WATCH THIS

It's not you. Bad doors are everywhere. [YouTube / Joe Posner and Roman Mars]

Vox / Joe Posner

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