Vox Sentences: Here’s what the GOP Congress will do

1. What the GOP does now

Speaker of the House John Boehner (R-OH) (L) and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) emerge from the White House to speak to the media on November 16, 2012 in Washington, DC. (Roger Wollenberg/Getty Images)

• Republicans will officially control Congress as of January 3, so House Speaker John Boehner and incoming Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell laid out their plan in an op-ed.

  [WSJ / John Boehner and Mitch McConnell]

• The first issue mentioned is approving the Keystone XL pipeline, which could be more important now that oil prices are falling and shipping oil from Canada by rail is getting less cost-effective.

  [Vox / Brad Plumer]

• The second one mentioned, the Hire More Heroes Act, would let employers not count veterans who get VA care as employees for the purposes of the Obamacare requirement that employers in businesses with 50+ people provide health insurance; the bill passed the House nearly unanimously and has a lot of Democratic support.

  [Government Executive / Sophie Novack]

• The third is a proposal to change the Obamacare employer mandate's 30-hour a week threshold for "full time" employment to 40 hours a week, such that the mandate no longer applies to workers working 30-39 hours.

  [Marketwatch / Sean Kennedy]

• That proposal, the CBO estimates, would lead to about 1 million people losing health insurance.

  [TPM / Sahil Kapur]

• Another top priority is repealing the medical device tax, a small part of Obamacare's funding; the medical device industry has waged a heated campaign against the tax since Obamacare's passage.

  [Vox / Sarah Kliff]

• Republicans' victory could make it easier to pass fast-track trade authority, letting Obama negotiate the big Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal more easily; however, car companies oppose the move, and some observers fear it can't break a Democratic filibuster.

  [Washington Post / Steven Mufson]

• Oh yeah, Democratic filibusters — assuming the filibuster survives, those will be a thing, and Ramesh Ponnuru argues they mean Obama won't have to veto much.

  [Bloomberg View / Ramesh Ponnuru]

2. Obama and Khamenei, pen pals

Portraits of Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei (R) and the former Ayatollah Khomeini outside Khomeini's shrine. (John Moore/Getty Images)

• President Obama sent a letter to Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei about fighting ISIS.

  [WSJ / Jay Solomon and Carol Lee]

• A timeline of Obama's diplomacy with Iran.

  [United States Institute of Peace]

• There's a lot of potential for cooperation to backfire: it could help Bashar Assad (who is a key Iranian ally), and it could solidify Iranian influence in the Iraqi government.

  [Vox / Zack Beauchamp]

• Another concern: Obama tied help with ISIS to Iran playing ball on a nuclear deal, which could make anti-ISIS cooperation a lot tougher.

  [Brookings / Suzanne Maloney]

• That's new for the administration, which has long tried to keep the nuclear and ISIS issues separated.

  [Business Insider / Armin Rosen]

• One theory: sending the letter, and making it public, makes it harder for Iran to blame the US if nuclear negotiations fall apart.

  [Meir Javedanfar]

• John Boehner's reaction: "I don't trust the Iranians. I don't think we need to bring them into this."

  [Reuters / Patricia Zengerle]

3. SCOTUS basically has to rule on gay marriage

Kody Partridge (R) and her partner Lauri Wood (L) celebrate after an act of the Supreme Court effectively legalized same-sex marriage in Utah on October 6, 2014. (George Frey/Getty Images)

• The Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld bans on same-sex marriage in Ohio, Michigan, Kentucky, and Tennessee.

  [NYT / Erik Eckholm]

• It's the first federal appeals court to rule that way, making it extremely likely the Supreme Court will rule to resolve the dispute.

  [Vox / German Lopez]

• Previously, the Court had tried to sidestep the issue, which meant that pro-marriage equality rulings in the Fourth, Seventh, Ninth, and Tenth Circuits were allowed to stand.

  [Vox / German Lopez]

• If the Court legalizes same-sex marriage, the majority will almost certainly include Anthony Kennedy, whose legacy rests on three major gay rights decisions, where he authored the court's opinion.

  [NYT / Adam Liptak]

• But it's not crazy to think John Roberts would join in the majority.

  [Slate / Mark Joseph Stern]

4. Misc.

• The election forecasts, ranked (the Washington Post's came out on top).

  [NYT / Josh Katz]

• The big criminal justice reform ballot proposition California passed could lead to 40,000 fewer criminal charges leading to incarceration every year.

  [FiveThirtyEight / Hayley Munguia]

• Colorado shows that turnout wasn't the only cause of Democrats' loss.

  [NYT / Nate Cohn]

• How "spirit animals" became a meme.

  [The Atlantic / Megan Garber]

• Providence voters denied themselves another Buddy Cianci mayoralty.

  [New Republic / Claire Groden]

• What Interstellar gets wrong about astrophysics.

  [Slate / Phil Plait]

• AC/DC's drummer has been charged with hiring a hitman to kill two people.

  [Stereogum / Tom Breihan]

5. Verbatim

• "We were just getting close to the Multnomah Falls area when my Dad announced: 'I know how to kill someone and get away with it.'"

  [BBC / Melissa Moore]

• "You can trick someone to click, but you can’t trick someone to share."

  [BuzzFeed / Ben Smith]

• "Until somebody develops a new, less racist way of comparing the value of two numbers, people are going to define the winner of a group as the candidate with more votes."

  [NY Mag / Jonathan Chait]

• "Psychopaths of Stalin's order arise so rarely in history that forensic psychiatry has few insights to offer."

  [Literary Review / Donald Rayfield]

• "Here’s the problem with this kind of civic engagement: Spending public money is a serious business, and serious business can often be incredibly boring."

  [The Atlantic / Alana Semuels]