Vox Sentences: Republicans agree Donald Trump is kinda racist

Hillary Clinton asymptotically approaches finish line; a rare moment of bipartisan agreement (on Donald Trump's racism); good news in the fight against halocarbons.

Vox Sentences is written by Dylan Matthews and Dara Lind.

TOP NEWS

West Coasters are used to getting plot twists spoiled

David McNew/Getty Images

• The last major round of state primaries in the Democratic presidential race happens tonight, including in California, the biggest state of them all.

  [Vox / Andrew Prokop]

• Bernie Sanders actually has a shot at winning California, in large part because his campaign has broken through with Asian and Latino voters.

  [Washington Post / Dave Weigel]

• Of course, per usual, Clinton's delegate lead is so prohibitive that Sanders would need to win overwhelmingly in California and everywhere else to overtake her in pledged (primary- and caucus-based) delegates.

  [Vox / Andrew Prokop]

• Most media outlets will likely crown Clinton the "presumptive Democratic nominee" after the polls close Tuesday. But the Associated Press went ahead and did it Monday night.

  [AP / Hope Yen, Stephen Ohlemacher, Lisa Lerer, and Catherine Lucey]

• The AP's projection was based on some assiduous tallying of superdelegates — which is to say, AP was eager to break the story on superdelegate commitments before polls closed Tuesday and everyone forgot about it.

  [Shaun King via Twitter]

• What the AP did was kosher. But it's still awkward for Sanders supporters, who really want the chance to persuade superdelegates to flip to Sanders after the voting is over...

  [Vox / Jeff Stein]

• ...and, counterintuitively, it's annoying to the Clinton campaign, which had been looking forward to a big ceremonial coronation Tuesday night and now has had its thunder kind of stolen.

  [Politico / Annie Karni]

Donald Trump is sorry you're offended

Mark Wilson/Getty Images

• Tuesday marked a high-water point for Republican willingness to call out Donald Trump's racism. Paul Ryan called Trump's attacks on Judge Gonzalo Curiel's "Mexican heritage" "the very definition of racism"...

  [ABC News / Benjamin Siegel and Mary Bruce]

• ...while Sen. Mark Kirk (R-IL) became the first prominent Republican to actually retract a Trump endorsement (while also saying Trump couldn't be trusted with nukes).

  [CNN / Tal Kopan]

• Trump appears to have gotten the message: In a long statement released Tuesday afternoon, he offered a classic non-apology apology, limiting his attacks to Curiel's membership in a Latino lawyers group (which is apparently hunky-dory and not racist at all).

  [Vox / Dara Lind]

• Trump has promised to shut up about the Trump University lawsuit (and Curiel) until after the election. The question is whether he'll keep that promise during his press conference Tuesday night.

  [Josh Barro via Twitter]

• The other question is how long it'll be until he's back in the news for something ridiculous — an event for which, if you are or know a prominent Republican who's endorsed Trump, you can practice with our handy simulation.

  [Vox / Dara Lind]

• (One potential "next ridiculous thing": BuzzFeed reports that Trump tried to do business with Muammar Qaddafi, former dictator of Libya and state sponsor of terrorism, in 2009.)

  [BuzzFeed News / Daniel Wagner and Aram Roston]

• The other, other question is just how many of the democratic norms that Trump has violated can survive his assault, and which ones will stay broken after he's gone.

  [Vox / Ezra Klein]

Now you HFC it...

Dennis Brack-Pool/Getty Images

• During a meeting today, President Obama and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi both promised that their governments would ratify the Paris climate deal this year.

  [Reuters / Jeff Mason and Valerie Volcovici]

• They weren't clear on how that would happen, which means it might not. But it's a big deal if India approves the pact — it would put the deal over the threshold for formal enactment. (Countries accounting for 55 percent of global emissions need to sign on before Paris becomes official.)

  [Washington Post / Steven Mufson]

• But carbon isn't the only greenhouse gas out there. Obama and Modi also reached an agreement on a plan to cut HFCs — halocarbons — which are responsible for 8 percent of humans' impact on climate.

  [Vox / Brad Plumer]

• Technically, they agreed to a deal to agree to a deal: They figured out a framework to amend the 1989 agreement regulating a related greenhouse gas to limit halocarbons as well.

  [Mashable / Andrew Freedman]

• This could be big. Cutting back HFC use could reduce global warming by as much as 0.5ºC over the next century.

  [Institute for Governance and Stable Development]

• Then again, that's still probably not enough to save the planet from likely disaster.

  [Vox / Brad Plumer]

MISCELLANEOUS

You really owe it to yourself to watch this montage of Guy Fieri eating, set to Johnny Cash's cover of "Hurt." [AV Club / Michael Duncan]

• Economists have called for an end to crop subsidies for years. Now, with cotton at least, they're getting their wish.

  [Houston Chronicle / Lydia DePillis]

• Behind the music of Lady Dynamite, the Netflix sitcom you really ought to be watching if you aren't already.

  [Daily Dot / Audra Schroeder]

• It's natural to be outraged by the leniency given to Stanford sexual assaulter Brock Turner. But it shouldn't make us lose sight of the perils of incarceration as a policy.

  [The Influence / Sarah Beller]

• How Drybar became the Starbucks of blowouts: taking them from an eccentric habit to a national craze.

  [BuzzFeed / Sapna Maheshwari]

VERBATIM

"I just feel that, you know - I wouldn't want to date my great aunt's guy. It just feels like it crosses an incestuous boundary. And Peggy just died. That's even more disrespectful, right? It's like, 'don't touch that.' You can't tap that!" [Hayley Atwell via IGN / Matt Fowler]

• "Sexist? Yeah, but I’m not misogynistic."

  [Morgan Freeman via Hollywood Reporter / Jonathan Handel]

• "Onto question No. 2: 'What if I told you this class is funded by federal welfare dollars?' Radford looked at her fiancé. They both wore a look of surprised amusement. 'Oh my god—we’re on welfare?!' Martin asked, chuckling. 'I never thought I’d be on welfare.' Pause. 'Well, that’s great!'"

  [Slate / Krissy Clark]

• "At one point, we made a series of demos at Golden State Recorders for Autumn Records. [Label co-owner] Tom Donahue had Sly Stone come in to help us. We were so bad that Sly eventually played all the instruments so the demo would sound OK."

  [Wall Street Journal / Grace Slick]

• "If there’s one thing life has taught me, it’s that high school literature teachers love convincing you that Middle English is close enough to Modern English for you to stumble along without a translation through Chaucer’s prologue, and I’m here to tell you that is some nonsense and you don’t have to stand for it."

  [The Toast / Mallory Ortberg]

WATCH THIS

How They Might Be Giants influenced art-rapper Open Mike Eagle [YouTube / Estelle Caswell]

Vox / Estelle Caswell

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