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Vox Sentences: A sudden, inevitable riot in Milwaukee

Milwaukee erupts after a police shooting; more uncomfortable revelations about Donald Trump's campaign and Russia; flooding in Louisiana.

Vox Sentences is written by Dylan Matthews and Dara Lind.

TOP NEWS
Milwaukee burning
People pray during a commemoration ceremony for Sylville Smith in Milwaukee on Monday
Bilgin S. Sasmaz/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images
  • Several police officers and at least one observer have been injured in violent protests in Milwaukee since Saturday night, when 23-year-old Sylville Smith was killed by police. [BuzzFeed News / Salvador Hernandez and Ema O'Connor]
  • Milwaukee's mayor and police chief say that Smith (who had a criminal record) was armed, and that the shooting was justified, but have not yet released the video from the officer's body camera. [Christian Science Monitor / Nicole Orttung]
  • The ensuing violence has resulted in several incidents of arson and at least three shootings on Sunday night. [NYT / Kay Nolan and Niraj Chokshi]
  • Gov. Scott Walker called in the National Guard Sunday; he's imposing a curfew for Monday night. [Reuters / Brendan O'Brien]
  • Milwaukee County Sheriff David Clarke (who has little jurisdiction in the city) has vocally supported the governor, and blamed black cultural dysfunction for the protests. [Vox / Victoria M. Massie]
  • Residents aren't surprised by the eruption of violence. Milwaukee's been dealing with racial tensions for decades. [NYT / John Eligon]
  • It is literally the most segregated city in America. [Vox / German Lopez]
Trump->Manafort->Pro-Russian Ukrainians->Russia. 3 degrees!
Paul Manafort at the convention, looking contemplative.
Michael Robinson Chavez/The Washington Post via Getty Images
  • Donald Trump's campaign manager, Paul Manafort, received $12.7 million in secret payments from Ukraine's pro-Russia political party between 2007 and 2012, according to a new report in the New York Times. [NYT / Andrew E. Kramer, Mike McIntire, and Barry Meier]
  • On one level, this isn't surprising: Manafort is known for being an image consultant for unappealing national leaders. [Slate / Franklin Foer]
  • But it reinforces a sense (which sometimes shades into outright conspiracy theory) that Donald Trump and his campaign are oddly cozy with the Russian regime. [Vox / Zack Beauchamp]
  • Trump isn't exactly working to disprove this. In a foreign policy speech Monday, he excitedly proposed that the US and Russia could work together to defeat ISIS. [MSNBC]
  • The centerpiece of Trump's speech, though, was a reiteration of his proposal for "extreme vetting" for anyone entering the US — including an "ideological test" to ensure immigrants already agree with American values before they arrive. [Huffington Post / Christina Wilkie and Elise Foley]
  • The speech featured Trump (mostly) staying on script — something that, Republican insiders worry, is increasingly hard to get Trump to do. [NYT / Alexander Burns and Maggie Haberman]
  • He is running out of time. He is losing in every state you think of as a swing state — unless you think of Georgia as a swing state, in which case, well, there you go. [Vox / Andrew Prokop]
Louisiana drowning
Flooding near Baton Rouge
ArcGIS / Civil Air Patrol
  • At least seven people have been killed and 20,000 have been evacuated from their homes in southeastern Louisiana and southern Mississippi, after several days of flooding has swamped the area. [Weather.com]
  • A federal disaster was finally declared on Sunday in 15 Louisiana counties. [The Guardian / Tom Kutsch]
  • The best on-the-ground reporting on the effects of the flood comes from the Advocate, where reporter Bryn Stole is literally reporting from his car... [The Advocate / Heidi R. Kinchen and Bryn Stole]
  • ...and from Rod Dreher at the American Conservative, who's depicting a community both broken and resilient. [The American Conservative / Rod Dreher]
  • As of Sunday, some meteorologists were predicting the flood would crest Monday. But it's still not clear that the worst has passed. [The Advocate / Steve Hardy]
MISCELLANEOUS
All of Katie Baker's reporting on violence against women is worth reading, but her piece on Juanita Broaddrick's rape allegation against Bill Clinton is particularly necessary.

[BuzzFeed / Katie JM Baker]

  • Shaming people for listening to audiobooks rather than reading the text is nonsense — it's all the same to your brain. [NY Mag / Melissa Dahl]
  • There are 25 to 50 active serial killers in the US at any given point in time. The one afflicting black and Latino families in Phoenix has killed seven so far. [The Trace / Eric Markowitz]
  • Texas is set to execute a mentally disabled man who didn't kill anyone. He drove the getaway car in a botched robbery, and he told the actual killer not to bring a gun. [Washington Post / Kristine Guerra]
  • How the Olympics decided where to house each nation's athletes: "One building has all the Scandinavian nations except Norway. That country’s team is too big to fit with those of its geographic neighbors, so it shares a building with Malaysia." [NYT / John Branch]
VERBATIM
"Romance is not the goal of rabbits!"

[Slate / Nicole Cliffe]

  • "The Trump campaign is not a bad campaign. It’s not a messed-up campaign. It’s not a dysfunctional campaign. There is no campaign. Everybody that’s done this for a living and got paid to do it is, like, ‘Oh, my gosh, suppose this works. We’re all rendered useless.’ He will have destroyed an entire profession." [James Carville to New Yorker / Lizzie Widdicombe]
  • "In Venezuela, the clock is running backward. The country’s economic turmoil has brought malaria back, sweeping the disease out of the remote jungle areas where it quietly persisted and spreading it around the nation at levels not seen in Venezuela for 75 years, medical experts say." [NYT / Nicholas Casey]
  • "In the days after [SNCC's anti-Israel] newsletter was published, Jewish donors withdrew their support en masse. As one SNCC member working in the New York office reported, 'donations just stopped coming in.' SNCC never regained its financial footing, and eventually, ceased to operate." [Forward / Jonah Hassenfeld]
  • "Not to diminish the honesty of Biden’s musical selections … but we felt moved to put together our own Biden Summer Jam playlist, one that matches up a little more closely with the vice president living in our hearts. Observant readers might note that it’s just the entirety of Scorpion’s Love At First Sting, a brief break for a little 'Wango Tango,' and then right back into Steely Dan’s Can’t Buy A Thrill. This is not a bug." [AV Club / William Hughes]
WATCH THIS

You may like playing The Sims, but Elon Musk says you are the Sim. [YouTube / Alvin Chang, Joe Posner, and Gina Barton]

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