Vox Sentences: Make the KGB Cyber Unit Great Again

Hillary Clinton officially makes history; Donald Trump tells Russia to do some crimes; the Freddie Gray prosecutions come to an end.

Vox Sentences is written by Dylan Matthews and Dara Lind.

TOP NEWS

18 million more cracks

Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images

• On Tuesday night, the Democratic Party formally nominated Hillary Clinton as its candidate for president, marking the first time in American history that a woman has won a major party nomination.

  [NYT / Patrick Healy and Jonathan Martin]

• The event happened 96 years after the passage of the 19th Amendment gave women the right to vote. Glamour spoke to five women born before women had the right to vote about what Clinton's nomination meant to them.

  [Glamour / Maggie Mertens]

• Clinton's run, and her previous attempt in 2008, built on progress made by the dozens of women who previously ran either in primaries or as third-party contenders. The National Archives has a great feature on two of the most notable: Sen. Margaret Chase Smith (R-ME), who ran in 1952 and lost to Dwight Eisenhower, and Rep. Shirley Chisholm (D-NY), who ran in 1972 and was the first black woman to mount a credible campaign.

  [National Archives / Audrey Amidon]

• Regardless of your feelings about Hillary Clinton as a person, this is a huge historic step forward, which will likely meaningfully increase women's political participation and encourage more women to become candidates in the future.

  [Vox / Sarah Kliff]

• Clinton's own speech isn't until Thursday, so the big event Tuesday night was Bill Clinton, giving the traditional first spouse's speech. He used the opportunity to tell a version of their life story in which he is a supporting character and she is the star.

  [Vox / Todd VerDerWerff]

• Even in defeat, Bernie Sanders got to play an important role. He was the one who asked delegates, following yesterday's roll call vote, to unanimously accept Hillary Clinton as the Democratic nominee.

  [CNN / Manu Raju, Tom LoBiano, and Dan Merica]

• Wednesday night's speeches are already underway, and will include both Vice President Joe Biden and his would-be successor Tim Kaine. But the biggest name on the docket is, of course, President Barack Obama.

  [Vox / Andrew Prokop]

HACK THE PLANET

Gustavo Caballero/Getty Images

• You may not know this about Donald Trump, but he really does not like being ignored!

  [Vox / Dara Lind]

• So, smarting from two days of DNC-focused media coverage, Trump went and told the press that he wanted the Russian government to hack Hillary Clinton's old State Department emails.

  [Washington Post / Philip Rucker, Robert Costa, and Jose DelReal]

• His comms people are now trying to do damage control, claiming that all he really said was that the FBI should get a chance to look at the missing emails, but that's nonsense. Trump's meaning was clear, and besides, the FBI already recovered many of Clinton's deleted emails.

  [Jason Miller]

• The whole situation naturally raises questions about Trump's strong affinity for Russia, which has been a constant theme throughout the campaign. Vox's Zack Beauchamp has an excellent explainer to get you up to speed.

  [Vox / Zack Beauchamp]

• Let's not get conspiratorial; some of the stronger takes, alleging that Trump is effectively a Russian agent, are plainly ridiculous. But his admiration for Putin and enthusiasm for Putin's geopolitical agenda is concerning all the same.

  [NY Review of Books / Masha Gessen]

• Case in point: After being asked about recognizing Crimea as a Russian territory, Trump said he "would be looking into that." This could just be him bullshitting without knowing what he's talking about, but that's not great either.

  [Politico / Tyler Pager]

All Night, All Day, We Will Fight for Freddie Gray

Brendan Smialowski/AFP/Getty Images

• Baltimore prosecutors have dropped all remaining charges against the three police officers yet to be tried in the death of Freddie Gray.

  [Baltimore Sun / Kevin Rector and Justin Fenton]

• Gray was the 25-year-old black man who died in police custody on April 19, 2015, prompting widespread protests and outrage, as well as indictments for six officers prosecutors concluded were responsible for the fatal neck injury he suffered while in the back of a police van without a seat belt.

  [Vox / German Lopez]

• Four officers have had their cases go to trial so far. Three were acquitted, and one had a mistrial; the latter will not face a second trial now.

  [NYT / Sheryl Gay Stolberg and Jess Bidgood]

• In her statement announcing the dropping of charges, Baltimore City State's Attorney Marilyn Mosby explained that her office stands by their accusations but concluded that "without substantive reforms to the current criminal justice system we could try this case 100 times and cases just like it and we would still end up with the same result."

  [Justin Fenton]

• Mosby, to that end, is calling for a set of reforms meant to ensure future cases end differently, including more resources for independent investigations by the prosecutor's office.

  [Baltimore Sun / Justin Fenton]

MISCELLANEOUS

Tempted by Jill Stein? Then you should keep in mind that she wants a moratorium on all GMOs and pesticides, a shockingly anti-science policy. [Slate / Jordan Weissmann]

• Over two weeks in March, terrorist attacks killed 247 men, women, and children. The New York Times went out to meet their families and tell each of their stories.

  [NYT]

• Hillary Clinton's voice in 1969, when she delivered her famous Wellesley commencement address, is basically unrecognizable, in a fascinating way.

  [The Atlantic / Russell Berman]

• If you want to know what a cashless society would look like, you could do worse than see what Sweden's got going on.

  [BuzzFeed / Charlie Warzel]

• You know that big blocky S sign that everyone used to draw in middle school? Julian Morgans tried to figure out where it came from and, well, it's a giant mystery.

  [Vice / Julian Morgans]

VERBATIM

"A Wal-Mart store pulled a popular T-shirt proclaiming 'Someday a woman will be president' off its shelves, saying it was offensive to some shoppers." [Associated Press / John Pacenti, 1995]

• "Wow, it still pains us that we made this mistake 20 years ago. We’re proud of the fact that our country – and our company – has made so much progress in advancing women in the workplace, and in society."

  [Walmart spokesperson Danit Marquardt to Huffington Post / Elise Foley, 2016]

• "Hillary Clinton, who will accept the Democratic nomination this week, in Philadelphia, has vacillated on Guantánamo. But as Secretary of State, Administration sources say, she was far more willing than Obama to take political risks to get it closed."

  [New Yorker / Connie Bruck]

• "Since settling in to his new home on satellite radio, which he did in 2006, [Howard] Stern and his show have gradually taken on an improbable new dimension. Scattered among the gleefully vulgar mainstays are now long, starkly intimate live exchanges — character excavations that have made Mr. Stern one of the most deft and engrossing celebrity interviewers in the business and a sought-after stop for stars selling a movie or setting the record straight."

  [NYT / David Segal]

• "Welfare was a replacement for what was once commonly referred to as home relief. The empathy in that term was soon blunted by associations with the people granted relief, such that older generations will recall home relief practically uttered as a negative epithet by the 1950s and ’60s. Meanwhile, reflect on what a warm, charitable word welfare is at its core, and how much static and bile we must peel away to hear it that way again."

  [Aeon / John McWhorter]

WATCH THIS

How a TV show gets made [YouTube / Estelle Caswell and Caroline Framke]

Vox / Tom Humberstone

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