Vox Sentences: It’s happening. Republicans are learning to love the Trump.

Paul Ryan unwilling to bet the House against Trump; France's controversial labor reforms; yet another court battle over the Affordable Care Act.

TOP NEWS

Sad!

Win McNamee/Getty Images

• America's most prominent Republican circa 2014, Paul Ryan, met with America's most prominent Republican circa 2016, Donald Trump, on Thursday. By all accounts, the meeting was foreign-leader-summit levels of prenegotiated and ego-driven.

  [Politico / Jake Sherman and John Bresnahan]

• But it ended with an anodyne statement about "a very positive step toward unification," which is generally assumed to mean that Ryan's not endorsing Trump yet but will do so at some point.

  [NBC Nightly News via Twitter]

• It's not clear whether Ryan will get anything out of Trump. He wants the GOP to be a party of fiscal conservatism, but he doesn't really have any leverage to get Trump to be less populist.

  [Vox / Matt Yglesias]

• In fact, arguably Ryan would be able to sit out this election cycle and reclaim his mantle as leader of the Republican Party after Trump's presumed embarrassing defeat in November.

  [Business Insider / Josh Barro]

• The question is whether he wants to stay speaker of the House, since his members have been making noises about the need for him to back Trump; Rep. Mike Kelly (R-PA) said, "It’s okay to grieve, but after three days it’s time to rejoin the living."

  [NBC News]

• Maybe Ryan folded. Or maybe Trump is more conciliatory than he seems — he's already softening his language around a ban on Muslim immigration, which means Donald Trump is literally giving in to political correctness.

  [Vox / Dara Lind]

Conservatives, labor unions, and students vs. the socialists

Jean-François Monier/AFP/Getty Images

• French Prime Minister Manuel Valls survived a vote of no confidence in the lower house of France's parliament Thursday.

  [Reuters / Brian Love]

• The conservative opposition is trying to unseat the current government over controversial labor reforms instituted by President François Hollande, which would make it easier for companies to fire workers and give them more flexibility over labor conditions.

  [The Guardian / Angelique Chrisafis]

• Part of the objection from conservative politicians is to Hollande's tactics; the president (who's contemplating whether to seek reelection, and is very unpopular) implemented the measures by executive order and allowed the legislature to undo them by a censure vote instead.

  [UPI]

• But Hollande's reforms are also facing protests by tens of thousands of students and labor union members.

  [Reuters / Brian Love]

• This might not be surprising. It is France, after all. Protest is essentially a civic religion.

  [Vox / Zack Beauchamp]

• For the young people in particular, though, this is a delayed version of the protests that swept Europe (and the US) circa 2011; other countries' youth were protesting austerity, while France's were, well, trying to elect Hollande.

  [The Guardian / Pierre Haski]

• And even though the reforms are supposed to benefit young people by making it easier for them to get jobs, they eliminate the permanent job contract that many in France see as a marker of adulthood and financial independence.

  [NYT / Pamela Druckerman]

Are you excited for another Obamacare lawsuit???

Luke Sharrett/Getty Images

• A federal judge sided with the House of Representatives, and against the Obama administration, in a case about the legality of a key section of the Affordable Care Act on Thursday.

  [Huffington Post / Cristian Farias and Jeffrey Young]

• (The law will stay in effect pending appeal.)

• Specifically, the judge ruled that the Obama administration acted illegally in distributing subsidies to insurance companies for enrolling poor Americans, without the funds having been appropriated by Congress first.

  [SCOTUSBlog / Lyle Denniston]

• The Wall Street Journal has a good analysis of the practical impact of the subsidies: They drastically reduce out-of-pocket health care costs for people who use health care the most.

  [Wall Street Journal / David Blumenthal and Sara R. Collins]

• Or, to put it another way, they make it easier to address public health issues facing the poorest Americans — like Medicaid expansion has been able to do with the opioid crisis, but only in the states that have accepted it.

  [Vox / German Lopez]

• It's unlikely that the House will be able to take the case all the way to the Supreme Court and win.

  [The Incidental Economist / Nicholas Bagley]

• But politically, simply by continuing to bring lawsuits against the ACA, conservatives are fostering an impression that it's controversial and vulnerable.

  [Sahil Kapur via Twitter]

MISCELLANEOUS

If you read one article about the 2016 election this whole year, make it this one on Hillary Clinton's interest in extraterrestrials and UFOs. [NYT / Amy Chozick]

• Quiz: Can you tell which of these slogans are quotes from TED talks and which come from North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un?

  [Mother Jones / Dave Gilson]

• The Swedish government is experimenting with six-hour workdays — and finding that they make productivity go up and sick days go down.

  [Bloomberg / Rebecca Greenfield]

• Reese's cups stuffed with Reese's pieces will soon be on store shelves near you, just waiting to fill the space in Dylan's freezer not already taken up by Girl Scout Tagalong and Thin Mint cookies.

  [Eater / Chris Fuhrmeister]

• Good news for people with end-stage kidney disease: Congress is weighing legislation to set up pilot programs to provide non-cash compensation to kidney donors.

  [The Daily Beast / Betsy Woodruff]

VERBATIM

"The Oversteegen sisters would flirt with Nazi collaborators under false pretences and then lead them into the woods, where instead of a make-out session, the men would be greeted with a bullet." [Vice / Noor Spanjer]

• "Despite a persistent ability to attract media attention, organized Ku Klux Klan groups are actually continuing a long-term trend of decline."

  [Anti-Defamation League]

• "A gender-reveal party might at least take on a sheen of medical accuracy if it were called a 'sex-reveal party,' with the added bonus that it would also sound more like a fun orgy."

  [Slate / Jessica Winter]

• "'There's no worldwide anti-furry conspiracy,' stresses Conway, better known online and during conventions as the lab-coat clad samurai cockroach Uncle Kage."

  [Vice / Jennifer Swann]

• "The reader for whom you write is just as intelligent as you are but does not possess your store of knowledge, he is not to be offended by a recital in technical language of things known to him … He is not a student preparing for an examination & he does not want to be encumbered with technical terms. His sense of literary form & his sense of humor is probably greater than yours."

  [H.G. Wells via The Last Word on Nothing / Michelle Nighuis]

WATCH THIS

The racist history of US immigration policy [YouTube / Alvin Chang, Joe Posner, and Gina Barton]

Vox / Alvin Chang