Vox Sentences: Picking a VP after losing is the most Reaganesque thing Ted Cruz has ever done

Ted Cruz's campaign officially crosses over into a parallel universe; Dennis Hastert sentenced to 15 months in prison not-officially-for child molestation; we may know all we'll ever know about those disappeared Mexican students.

TOP NEWS

Ted Cruz creates his own reality

Ty Wright/Getty Images

• Ted Cruz announced today that in the parallel universe where he receives the Republican nomination, parallel-universe Carly Fiorina is his running mate.

  [Vox / Andrew Prokop]

• It is actually not unprecedented for a candidate losing a primary to name a "running mate." Ronald Reagan did it in '76. (Didn't work.)

  [NYT / Jon Nordheimer]

• That does not make it any less batshit crazy. Remember that Ted Cruz has been mathematically eliminated from getting a majority of delegates on the first ballot. His only hope is a contested convention.

  [CNN / Theodore Schleifer]

• If he doesn't win Indiana next week, his campaign will be dead in all but name. Fiorina doesn't have any particular appeal there. Basketball, however, does — and Cruz called a hoop a "basketball ring" last night, so the state is basically lost.

  [Indianapolis Star / Allison Carter]

• The strategic argument for Fiorina: She'll help Cruz compete in California, where Trump currently has a 12-point polling lead. (We are … skeptical.)

  [RealClearPolitics]

• The actual best argument for picking Fiorina is that Donald Trump has trouble restraining himself from saying stupid things about women, and Fiorina can sometimes capitalize on that.

  [Vox / Dara Lind]

• Of course, had Cruz not unveiled the Fiorina pick today — to try to shift the media narrative from Trump's wins last night — the press might have paid more attention to an absolutely disastrous Donald Trump foreign policy speech.

  [Washington Post / Daniel W. Drezner]

"He has never disappointed me in any way"

Joshua Lott/Getty Images

• Dennis Hastert was sentenced to 15 months in federal prison on a bank fraud charge today.

  [Washington Post / Matt Zapotsky]

• The sentence is heavier than even prosecutors asked for — but might seem light, since Hastert's original crime (which he can no longer be prosecuted for) was sexually abusing several boys as a high school wrestling coach.

  [Vox / Dara Lind]

• At the beginning of the court case, both sides were dancing around the abuse. But in the sentencing hearing today, the judge called Hastert a "serial child molester."

  [Chicago Tribune / Jason Meisner, Jeff Coen and Christy Gutowski]

• I (Dara) would like to pause here to note that demonizing sex offenders (even child molesters!) can have really bad policy consequences, and it's worth trying not to go down the "but the children!" route. (Dylan concurs.)

  [New Yorker / Sarah Stillman]

• But it's also not like Hastert has been all that repentant. Even after pleading guilty, he and his lawyers were claiming that some of the alleged misconduct would have been normal in the 1970s.

  [CNN / Steve Almasy]

• And the letters sent in his defense from Republican luminaries like Tom DeLay were just horrifying: "He has never disappointed me in any way," DeLay's letter said. "We all have our flaws, but Dennis Hastert has very few."

  [Politico / Hanna Trudo and Josh Gerstein]

No closure in Ayotzinapa

Brett Gundlock/Getty Images

• Independent investigators have released their final report from the September 2014 disappearance of 43 Mexican students from Ayotzinapa Rural Teachers' College.

  [NYT / Kirk Semple]

• The release coincides with the arrest of a member of the Guerreros Unidos drug cartel. Mexico's government claims the investigators' report led them to the suspect. But this shouldn't be mistaken for closure.

  [Latin American Herald Tribune]

• Mexico's government has been pushing the theory since late 2014 that the Guerreros Unidos killed the students and burned their bodies in a garbage dump.

  [Mexico News Daily]

• It has been pursuing that theory forcefully. The government's oversight agency says it's received 47 allegations of torture from suspects the government had already arrested and interrogated in the case.

  [EFE]

• But the investigators found no evidence of a fire to corroborate the official story.

  [Mexico News Daily]

• The government's stonewalling of the independent investigators when they tried to dig deeper drove the investigators to basically give up. The report this week is evidence that the truth may never be known.

  [Los Angeles Times / Tracy Wilkinson]

MISCELLANEOUS

How Donald Trump is helping fuel the return of Hydrox, America's great Oreo alternative. [Bloomberg / Craig Giammona]

• New Girl showrunner Liz Meriwether explains what working with Prince was like. It's delightful.

  [NY Mag / Liz Meriwether]

• Should socialism be achieved through a violent revolution that overthrows the state? Opinions differ. The case against seems pretty strong.

  [Jacobin / Erik Olin Wright]

• The best joke told by every president from Washington to Obama. That said, the Obama one is clearly wrong; his best was clearly, "'Why don't you get a drink with Mitch McConnell?' they ask. Really? Why don't you get a drink with Mitch McConnell?"

  [Washington Post / Dan Zak]

• Tinder, but for orgies.

  [Gizmodo / Sophie Kleeman]

VERBATIM

"As real people became poorer and lost their jobs, the ones on TV got richer, and their jobs seemed more beside the point." [NYT Mag / Wesley Morris]

• "To the twice-divorced Donald, Melania is terrific. He’s never heard her fart or make doodie, as he once told Howard Stern. (Melania has said the key to the success of her marriage is separate bathrooms.) He can trust her to take her birth control every day, he boasted to Stern; she’s just amazing that way."

  [GQ / Julia Ioffe]

• "There is some precedent for having a running mate of the same gender."

  [Anita Dunn to MSNBC]

• "Who are you mad at? Why are you positing the audience as your enemy? I NEVER TOLD YOU THAT YOU COULDN’T GO TO SCHOOL. WHY ARE YOU MAD AT ME, EVIL REGINA SPEKTOR?"

  [The Toast / Mallory Ortberg]

• "The leads will not be siring some new species to save the world. I want my daughter to be destiny’s child, not to bear destiny’s child."

  [NYT / Heather Gerken]

WATCH THIS

The most famous baboons on the internet, explained [YouTube / Joss Fong]

G.K. and Vikki Hart