Vox Sentences: What we know about the truck attack in Nice

Dozens dead after a truck runs over Bastille Day celebrants in Nice; planning for chaos inside and outside the Republican National Convention.

Vox Sentences is written by Dylan Matthews and Dara Lind.

TOP NEWS

A horrific truck attack

Valery Hache/AFP/Getty Images

• Dozens of people are dead in Nice, France, after a truck attack during a Bastille Day celebration Thursday night. Here's what we know.

  [Vox / Libby Nelson]

• The truck drove about 1.2 kilometers over people before stopping. The Nice prosecutor says 73 are dead.

  [CNN / Ralph Ellis and Steve Almasy]

• "Ramming" attacks have been used in the past by Palestinian terrorists, though they're less common in Europe and America.

  [Department of Homeland Security]

• Officials have described this as a "premeditated attack"; the driver reportedly had grenades and arms in the truck. However, the motive is currently unknown, and no terrorist groups have claimed responsibility for the attack.

  [Vox / Libby Nelson]

• The lack of information has not stopped Donald Trump from spouting off on Twitter and Fox News about how this attack shows the need to "get tough" (presumably against Muslims).

  [Donald Trump via Twitter]

• Don't be like Donald Trump. Use caution when reading breaking news and developing stories. Here, as always, is a handy guide for critical consumers.

  [WNYC]

Chaos inside the party...

Aaron P. Bernstein/Getty Images

• The dust appears to be settling: As of this writing, it looks like Indiana Gov. Mike Pence will be Donald Trump's vice presidential nominee. That's what many outlets are reporting, anyway.

  [Vox / Andrew Prokop]

• The fact that we can't tell you for sure that this is the case, several hours after it was initially reported, is partly due to Trump's eleventh-hour announcement that he's "postponing" his VP selection in light of the attack in Nice...

  [Donald Trump via Twitter]

• ...and partly an indication of just how chaotic the past few days have been in Trumpworld — thanks to an apparent split between the nominee's children (who favored Newt Gingrich) and his top staffers, who favored Pence.

  [Washington Post / Robert Costa]

• If the role of Trump's children behind the scenes is unusual, so is the fact that they are all speaking separately at the Republican National Convention in Cleveland next week — along with athletes, businesspeople, and a mysterious man named Andy Wist.

  [NPR / Danielle Kurtzleben]

• Trump's convention — because that's what it is — is just as notable for who won't be speaking: several stars and rising stars in the GOP. Some are likely bitter at Trump's triumph (the Bush family); others are probably trying as hard as possible to avoid being associated with Trump, making it easier for them to run for president in 2020 after he loses.

  [NBC News / Jane C. Timm]

• A few Republicans are still trying to stop Trump in 2016. The RNC's rules committee met today, representing the last stand for "NeverTrump" factionalists hoping to change the rules to "unbind" delegates pledged to a particular candidate.

  [Vox / Andrew Prokop]

• But the desire to skip ahead to 2020 is robbing the NeverTrumpers of their opportunity. A group of Ted Cruz supporters are more interested in pushing through changes that would make it easier for Cruz to win next cycle — and they're forcing the RNC to cut a deal with them, not the NeverTrumpers.

  [NBC News / Ari Melber, Leigh Ann Caldwell, Alexandra Jaffe, and Brad Gold]

• The party tried to hash all this out in closed-door negotiations today — abruptly pausing the rules committee meeting, as BuzzFeed writes, "under the ruse of a printer jam." (Admittedly, given the way the rest of this election has gone, this was a plausible excuse.)

  [BuzzFeed / Rosie Gray and Tarini Parti]

...chaos out on the streets

Angelo Merendino/Getty Images

• Speaking of the convention, a lot of people — including, apparently, US Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson — are very concerned that the widespread protests outside the convention will turn violent, or at least unruly.

  [AP / Richard Lardner]

• The ostensible reason for concern is recent protests over police killings and the Dallas massacre of police. The underlying reason: Trump supporters and Trump protesters have been getting increasingly violent with each other over the course of the campaign.

• Even before last week, the FBI had been "checking in" on some activists in advance of the convention — which could be construed, without a lot of difficulty, as an attempt to deter them from going to Cleveland at all.

  [LAT / Matt Pearce]

• In the wake of Dallas, though, even some activist groups have scaled back their plans to avoid the designated "protest zone."

  [BuzzFeed / Adrian Carrasquillo]

• About that "protest zone." About half of the city of Cleveland will be under restrictions of some form during the convention.

  [NYT / Alicia Parlapiano and Anjali Singhvi]

• And within the designated "event zone" near the convention center itself, there are strict limits about which items can be brought in — tennis balls and fake guns are out — but real guns will be permitted thanks to successful lobbying by open carry activists.

  [CNN / Gregory Krieg, Tal Yellin and Will Mullery]

• Police, for their part, will be wearing millions of dollars in body armor and riot gear, thanks to federal grants. This isn't that unusual — it's common for cities hosting political conventions — but it does mean they'll be equipped for confrontation.

  [Mother Jones / Brandon Ellington Patterson]

• If you are going to Cleveland, please don't trust articles (like this one) that purport to tell you how to behave in a way that you won't get arrested.

  [The Marshall Project / Simone Weichselbaum]

• Often, whether police arrest protesters is an all-or-nothing decision; individual protesters don't get to opt out. That's what happened in Baton Rouge last weekend (which the ACLU is suing the police department over), and that's likely to be the mindset Cleveland police are in next week.

  [Lafayette Daily Advertiser / Claire Taylor]

MISCELLANEOUS

Since Sandra Bland died last year, at least 810 more people have lost their lives in jail. Nearly a third were suicides. And at least a third occurred within three days of booking. [Huffington Post / Dana Liebelson and Ryan J. Reilly]

• People in nursing homes are having sex, and the Times is ON IT.

  [NYT / Winnie Hu]

• Bad news if Hillary Clinton picks Tim Kaine: For some reason, ClintonKaine.com is currently hosting "Hillary Potter" fanfic.

  [ClintonKaine dot com]

• Ohlala is an app that lets women charge men for dates — and further blurs the line between socially stigmatized escort services and widely accepted dating apps.

  [The Verge / Emily Yoshida]

• Peter Piot is usually credited as the discoverer of Ebola. But he's not — and, depending on your definition of "discoverer," might not even have co-discovered the disease.

  [STAT / Helen Branswell]

VERBATIM

"Galbraith has made a $15-an-hour minimum wage his policy cornerstone, though he plans to staff his campaign with unpaid interns, the 'great American invention,' as he calls them." [Burlington Free-Press / Jess Aloe]

• "This Marxist bro I was talking to made a reference to Žižek that he obviously assumed I would get, and my heart sank. He was a nice guy, actually, but I saw the conversation stretching out in front of us, and I saw myself having to say things about Žižek and listen to him say things about Žižek, and I saw that I really did not want this to happen."

  [The Hairpin / Rosa Lyster]

• "No one can say how many deaths and injuries might have been prevented if everyone who was shot had received the mental health care they needed."

  [Boston Globe / Jenna Russell, Michael Rezendes, Maria Cramer, Scott Helman, and Todd Wallack]

• "I said, 'Look, we’re the white party. If this continues, we’re going the way of the Whigs.' Everyone said, 'that’s a terrible thing to say.'"

  [Pat Buchanan to NYT / Nicholas Confessore]

• "Insurance companies, for their part, say there's a shortage of therapists. But it's not that simple. Especially in urban areas, there are lots of therapists. They just don't want to work with the insurance companies."

  [NPR / April Dembosky]

WATCH THIS

This is how the NRA swings elections [YouTube / Liz Plank, Matteen Mokalla, Dean Peterson, and Jeff Stein]

Vox / Dean Peterson

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