Vox Sentences: Donald Trump is officially your Republican presidential nominee

Too bad everyone's still talking about his wife's plagiarism scandal.

Vox Sentences is written by Dylan Matthews and Dara Lind.

TOP NEWS

Trump* family values

Carolyn Cole/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images

• Donald Trump is officially the presidential nominee of the Republican Party.

  [Vox / Jeff Stein]

• It's arguably the first good news his campaign's gotten all week. The big story coming out of the first night of Trump's convention was the speech given by Trump's wife, Melania — or rather, the speech given by Michelle Obama at the 2008 Democratic National Convention, a paragraph or so of which mysteriously made its way into Melania's remarks.

  [Jarrett Hill via Twitter]

• The similarities between the two speeches are embarrassing, in part because the passage in question is about values (like integrity) that Obama (slash Trump) learned from his family, and partly because, before delivering the speech, Melania Trump had proudly told interviewers she was writing it herself.

  [Vox / Brad Plumer]

• Despite the paper trail, the campaign boldly denied that any plagiarism — even accidental — had taken place.

  [LAT / Melanie Mason]

• Excuses ranged from "Michelle Obama didn't invent the English language" (fact check: true, but huh?) to "these are pretty common words and ideas in a nomination speech" (fact check: also true, but Melania clearly wasn't familiar with the phrase "your word is your bond" before).

  [Vox / Sarah Kliff]

• The Trump campaign's refusal to acknowledge the error is par for the course. What's more surprising is that Republican delegates have rushed to fall in line, even on this most trivial of issues.

  [Fusion / Andrew Joyce]

• As Vox's Matt Yglesias argues, this is bad. Plagiarism — and the surpassing laziness and sloppiness it reveals in the Trump campaign — is exactly the sort of sin that even Trump's ideological allies should be worried about.

  [Vox / Matt Yglesias]

• The rest of Monday night's convention programming — the theme of which was that America was under attack and nonwhite Americans were partly to blame — suggests that Trump's supporters will continue to pose a problem for America, even if Trump's campaign is too sloppy to win.

  [Vox / Dara Lind]

• Anyway, there's another night of all this, under the theme "Make America Work Again." Hopefully no one will steal any speeches this time.

  [Talking Points Memo / Allegra Kirkland]

Don't let the door kiss you on your way out

Tim Boxer/Getty Images

• Fox News chair Roger Ailes appears to be on his way out. According to reports, Ailes is currently negotiating with 21st Century Fox over the terms of his departure. (Early reports that Ailes was getting a $40 million severance package were premature.)

  [NYT / John Koblin and Jim Rutenberg]

• Ailes is being ousted because of a mountain of sexual harassment allegations that have piled up against him in the past two weeks, starting with former Fox anchor Gretchen Carlson and quickly accumulating as other women came forward with their stories.

  [Vox / Emily Crockett]

• Several of these women were Fox employees afraid to talk to lawyers because of their Fox contracts. But not only has 21st Century Fox brought in lawyers to investigate the allegations, it's waived the relevant contract clauses to encourage women to come forward.

  [CNN Money / Brian Stelter and Dylan Byers]

• (If this sounds like Fox brass isn't protecting Ailes, that would be correct. Fox head Rupert Murdoch and his sons, who are top executives at the company, have reportedly agreed that Ailes needs to leave.)

  [New York / Gabriel Sherman]

• One of the Fox employees who's reportedly come forward to accuse Ailes of harassment: powerhouse anchor Megyn Kelly. That might have been the tipping point, as Kelly is a star within the network.

  [New York / Gabriel Sherman]

• But top Fox executives are reportedly worried that other stars — including Bill O'Reilly — will leave the network if Ailes leaves.

  [FT / Matthew Garrahan and Anna Nicolaou]

• If that happens, maybe they can form a new television endeavor with the man who's reportedly been advising Ailes through the scandal — Donald J. Trump.

  [Washington Post / Alyssa Rosenberg]

Hard questions in Germany

Karl-Josef Hildenbrand/AFP/Getty Images

• Four people were injured Monday in an ax attack on a train in Weimar, Germany.

  [NYT / Melissa Eddy]

• The attack (which has been claimed by ISIS) was carried out by a 17-year-old immigrant from Afghanistan, who'd immigrated to Germany without his parents and applied for asylum. Investigators believe the perpetrator "self-radicalized" while in Germany.

  [The Guardian / Philip Oltermann]

• This might bear superficial similarities to the wave of New Year's Eve sexual assaults in Germany, some of which were carried out by immigrant men. But the self-radicalization issue shows the problem isn't simple "cultural differences" — but rather the challenge Germany faces in integrating hundreds of thousands of refugees.

  [NYT / Alison Smale]

• The country passed a major integration law earlier this year, which encourages refugees to work and sets requirements for language learning and cultural integration in order to stay.

  [Gatestone Institute / Soeren Kern]

• And there have been some promising local successes: When some German towns were hit with floods in early June, Syrian refugee communities pitched in with relief.

  [Christian Science Monitor / Olivia Lowenberg]

• But immigrant integration is an extremely difficult thing. And its success relies both on whether immigrants themselves want to adopt a new way of life and whether the natives among whom they settle want to accept them.

  [COMPAS / Ben Gidley]

• If Germany — and Europe — can figure out how to successfully integrate immigrants, it could save the continent from demographic decline. But that is a big, big, big if.

  [New York / Annie Lowrey]

MISCELLANEOUS

If you have a family member who's dependent on opioids, here's an evidence-based guide for how best to intervene and help them. [FiveThirtyEight / Maia Szalavitz]

• In 1953, 97 percent of men ages 25 to 54 were either employed or actively looking for work. Now that number is down to 88 percent, and no one really knows why.

  [Foreign Affairs / Jason Furman]

• Given the political climate, it's not the biggest surprise that Ezra Pound is making a comeback.

  [LA Review of Books / Lucas Klein]

• Britain got hooked on fried chicken in the financial crisis. Now it's become a battleground over the eating habits and consumption choices of the poor and working class.

  [Foreign Policy / Alicia PQ Wittmeyer]

• The Equals aren't among the best-remembered British bands of the late '60s, and when they are remembered it tends to be for the Clash's cover of their song "Police on My Back." But they made history as the first major interracial rock band in the UK.

  [Pitchfork / Jason Heller]

VERBATIM

"I’m worried that I will be the last Republican president." [George W. Bush via Politico / Shane Goldmacher]

• "Almost no one wants to harm children, and the ones who do tend to target kids close to them."

  [Pacific Standard / Malcolm Harris]

• "It’s hard to imagine now, but in the years after the kaleidoscope was first invented in 1816, it distracted the public as much as an iPhone. A person couldn’t walk down a street in London without seeing people staring into these tubes and walking into walls from being so immersed in the new invention."

  [Atlas Obscura / Jason Farman]

• "Unfortunately for him, Eric Andre just wanted to tear shit up, telling Jones, 'I want you to have sex with my wife.' Jones was taken aback and declared that Andre was just there to disrupt his free speech, with maybe one person in the crowd actually finding the exchange funny. Eventually, Andre grabbed the mic to ask 'who put the bombs in Tower 7,' which Jones took as 'something legitimate' for once, but Andre was ushered off of the stage before things could go further down that hole."

  [AV Club / Sam Barsanti]

• "I was concerned that because this is the same genetic Sulu — although we’re in an alternate timeline — that we would be inadvertently implying that sexual orientation was a choice."

  [John Cho to AV Club / Esther Zuckerman]

WATCH THIS

This plane could cross the Atlantic in 3.5 hours. Why did it fail? [YouTube / Phil Edwards]

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