Vox Sentences: A genuine old-school filibuster!

Aggressive action taken in response to tragedy might violate due process: a description of today's news in guns, and in alligators.

TOP NEWS

Talking it out

C-SPAN

• As of the sending of this newsletter, Senate Democrats are engaged in what appears to be an honest-to-goodness talking filibuster to demand congressional action on gun control.

  [Vox / Jeff Stein]

• In particular, Democrats appear to be rallying around a bill proposed by Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) last year — which would prohibit "known or suspected terrorists" (in other words, people on a terrorism watch list) from legally purchasing guns.

  [Washington Post / Karoun Demirjian]

• Republicans (even those generally supportive of gun control, like Pennsylvania's Pat Toomey) aren't on board with Feinstein's proposal. They want to establish an actual process to determine if someone is a dangerous enough terrorist that he or she should be banned from buying a gun.

  [Politico / Seung Min Kim]

• The Republicans have a point. The master terrorism watch list, known as the TSDB, has 800,000 people on it, and it's just as opaque, arbitrary, and abuse-rife as any other institution of the surveillance state.

  [The Intercept / Jeremy Scahill and Ryan Devereaux]

• And it's extremely easy to imagine that if the terrorism watch list becomes used to ban gun purchases, it will continue to expand — which is counterproductive for intelligence gathering.

  [Vox / Dara Lind]

• One key Republican is on board: presumptive presidential nominee Donald Trump. He reportedly wants to meet with the NRA to get it to back the proposal. (His logic: The NRA endorsed him, and therefore he holds all the cards.)

  [Wired / Issie Lapowsky]

• Suffice it to say, the NRA is not playing ball.

  [NPR / Meg Anderson and Domenico Montenaro]

No news is Fed news

Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

• The Federal Reserve announced today that nothing is changing: It isn't raising interest rates this quarter.

  [WSJ / Jon Hilsenrath and Kate Davidson]

• Weirdly, this actually is news, because as recently as a few weeks ago — before June's disastrous jobs report — Fed Chair Janet Yellen was signaling a rate hike.

  [CNBC / Jacob Pramuk]

• The Fed keeps doing this. As Vox's Tim Lee points out, it's creating a vicious cycle: Markets are getting spooked by rate hike rumors, but weak markets lead the Fed to change its mind.

  [Vox / Timothy B. Lee]

• It's not just the American markets — global firms are making decisions about where to invest based on how high companies' relative interest rates are (and Jared Bernstein argues that if the US gets too far ahead of other countries, that could be bad for everyone).

  [Washington Post / Jared Bernstein]

• It doesn't appear that they're breaking the cycle, either. While the Fed's forecast predicted fewer rate hikes in 2017 and 2018 than expected, the central bank is still sticking to its plan to raise rates two more times this year (which means September and December).

  [USA Today / Paul Davidson]

• The solution (per Tim Lee): The Fed needs to choose signals that will cause the market to respond in the desired way — not keep talking about what it would like to do.

  [Vox / Timothy B. Lee]

Justice for alligators!

Sam Greenwood/Getty Images

• The body of a 2-year-old dragged off by an alligator on the grounds of a Walt Disney World resort has been discovered.

  [NBC News / Elizabeth Chuck, Phil Helsel, and Shamar Walters]

• While the story is horrifying, keep in mind that overall kids today are, historically speaking, pretty darn safe.

  [The Washington Post / Christopher Ingraham]

• But wildlife attacks have been a problem ever since humans have been encroaching on animals' territory. (This article dates back to 2001; the phenomenon is millennia older at least.)

  [National Geographic News / Joan Lowy]

• May and June are mating season for many animals and therefore can be a peak time for unusually aggressive behavior (like the alligator spotted on the porch of a South Carolina home earlier this year).

  [Atlanta Journal-Constitution / Debbie Lord]

• Orlando is particularly used to the wages of encroachment. Its suburbs have had a black bear problem for years. The Sentinel even did a great interactive package on it a few years ago.

  [Orlando Sentinel]

• Tragically, the animals in this are afforded no due process. Authorities looking for the 2-year-old summarily killed at least four alligators looking for evidence of the remains — after killing them, they found no evidence that those alligators had been responsible.

  [NYT / Nick Madigan and Christine Hauser]

• This total-war approach might be merited when Florida inevitably has to deal with the invasive Nile crocodiles that are apparently thriving in its swamps. But for alligators (and bears!), it seems grossly disproportionate.

  [The Verge / Lizzie Plaugic]

MISCELLANEOUS

Smash Mouth operates the most defensive band Twitter account in the world. [Gawker / Ashley Feinberg]

• "Game developer Barbie" is this season's hottest toy designed specifically to troll Gamergate misogynists.

  [Slate / Casey Fiesler]

• Despite the defeat of Vincent Orange, the number of DC Council members with colors for last names has reached a record high of four.

  [Greater Greater Washington / David Alpert]

• The case against using periods

  [Washington Post / Jeff Guo]

• The British Brexit debate has descended into outright naval warfare in the Thames. It's delightful.

  [BuzzFeed / Matthew Champion and Jim Waterson]

VERBATIM

"Two weeks ago, an Irish farmer found a massive hunk of ancient butter buried in his local bog. It’s been sitting there for about 2,000 years, but experts say it’s technically still edible." [Quartz / Thu-Huong Ha]

• "We like to joke that we’re Lin-Manuel Carrie Bradshaws, and he’s such a Lin-Manuel Miranda."

  [George St. Geegland to Scott Aukerman, via Uproxx]

• "My problem is people love me or they hate me."

  [Donald Trump via Alexandra Jaffe]

• "Poor whites are the most stressed group and are 17.8 percent more likely to experience stress in the previous day than middle-class whites. In contrast, middle-class blacks are 49 percent less likely to experience stress than middle-class whites, and poor blacks are 52 percent less likely to experience stress than poor whites."

  [Brookings / Carol Graham]

• "I got the best advice from Ilana. We lived together in Brooklyn, and when you live in Brooklyn, there's a lot of catcalling. Her advice for it was to go, 'Suck my dick!' Because here's what it does: The guy is having a mental image of you, like, naked, and then when you go, 'Suck my dick' or 'Lick my balls,' it throws them for a loop. They're like, 'Wait, she has balls? What am I picturing now?'"

  [Rachel Bloom to the Hollywood Reporter / Lacey Rose]

WATCH THIS

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