Vox Sentences: Okay, now you can freak out about Donald Trump

(BONUS: a link to the leaked draft of Trump's convention speech!)

TOP NEWS

Ted Cruz's heel turn

Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

• In a twist worthy of a reality show, Ted Cruz spoke at the Republican National Convention last night and refused to endorse Donald Trump. Instead, he urged attendees to "vote your conscience" and was booed offstage.

  [Vox / Todd VanDerWerff]

• Cruz isn't known for his loyalty, and many assumed he'd lied to the Trump campaign about what he'd say onstage. But the Republican National Committee had the text of his speech in advance, and some reports indicate the Trump campaign itself approved it — and even orchestrated the booing.

  [Politico / Burgess Everett and Seung Min Kim]

• The scene was chaotic (as Vox's Libby Nelson, who was on the convention floor, reports). Heidi Cruz was escorted out by security as hecklers shouted at her, "Goldman Sachs!"

  [Vox / Libby Nelson]

• On Thursday morning, Cruz explained his snub as a response to Trump's insults of Heidi Cruz and his speculation that Cruz's father was somehow involved in the assassination of John F. Kennedy.

  [Chicago Tribune]

• But Cruz isn't just acting on Texan honor. If Trump loses badly in 2016, Cruz will be one of the few leaders untainted by association with him — and thus, arguably, one of the few equipped to lead the party out of the wilderness.

  [Vox / Dara Lind]

• It's a big gamble, though. The question isn't whether Trump will lose badly but whether a Trump loss would be enough to cause the GOP establishment to reject the populist coalition he's assembled. That's not a sure bet.

  [The New Republic / Brian Beutler]

Nuclear war just got a little more likely, NBD

https://cdn1.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/rBhRTSZCclXAgtfpkxh0HaOU1vE=/600x0/apps.voxmedia.com/vox-images/STCIULTTHVXACGKS-GettyImages-578133554.0.jpg

• Speaking of Donald Trump — remember Donald Trump? — he told the New York Times on Wednesday that despite the US's obligations under the NATO treaty, he wouldn't defend NATO members attacked by foreign countries, like, say, the Baltic states on Russia's border.

  [Vox / Zack Beauchamp]

• (You can read the full interview transcript here; it is arguably even more of a word salad than most of Trump's interviews on policy have been.)

  [NYT ]

• The interview is just the latest sign that a Trump administration would pursue extreme detente with Russia. (Earlier this week, the Trump campaign helped scrap language from the GOP platform that took an aggressive stance in favor of Ukrainian independence.)

  [Politico Magazine / Anna Nemtsova]

• Russian President Vladimir Putin believes the Baltics shouldn't be part of NATO to begin with (based on an interpretation of NATO's original purpose that NATO does not share). He thinks they're in Russia's sphere of influence, which is precisely why he might attack them.

  [NATO Review / Michael Ruhle]

• Needless to say, other NATO members are not pleased with Trump's comments.

  [Washington Post / Adam Taylor and Michael Birnbaum]

• One foreign minister of a NATO member told the Daily Beast's Michael Weiss that Trump's election would represent "the end of the West."

  [The Daily Beast / Michael Weiss]

• But the stakes are higher still. A Russian attack in the Baltics could trigger the kind of escalation that would lead to US/Russia nuclear war. Trump's comments just made that chain reaction a little more likely.

  [Vox / Zack Beauchamp]

• Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is unfazed. He waved it off as a "rookie mistake," hinted that a President Trump would appoint Cabinet officials who would rein in that sort of remark, and said that Trump didn't have any certain policy positions of his own and would adopt Senate Republicans' instead.

  [AP]

• McConnell might want to listen to Trump's speech tonight accepting the nomination. At least according to the draft leaked by Politico, it certainly has some policy positions — but it's also chock full of the apocalyptic tone McConnell thinks Trump's officials would rein in.

  [Politico]

"I don't know"

WSVN

• On Wednesday evening, North Miami police shot a caregiver, Charles Kinsey, as he was trying to help his autistic patient cope with a police encounter. (Kinsey is in good condition after the shooting.)

  [Vox / German Lopez]

• Police were responding to a 911 call about Kinsey's patient, who was playing with a toy truck and was reportedly terrified by police. Kinsey was trying to deescalate the encounter.

  [Miami Herald / Charles Rabin]

• Kinsey's concern was legit: People with mental health issues are often in the most danger from police, who are often the first responders in mental health crises and often respond over-aggressively.

  [Vox / German Lopez]

• Some municipalities have made progress in training police specifically in dealing with the mentally ill and disabled. (Rule No. 1: deescalate.)

  [CNN / Liza Lucas]

• It's not clear exactly why police shot Kinsey. Some reports indicate they were trying to shoot his patient —having mistaken a toy truck for a gun — and hit Kinsey instead.

  [WPLG / Amanda Batchelor, Todd Tongen, and Carlos Suarez]

• After Kinsey was shot and asked the officer why, the officer reportedly replied, "I don't know." According to a statement by the police union Thursday, though, the officer was concerned that Kinsey's life was in danger and attempted to shoot the patient to save Kinsey.

  [Huffington Post / Nick Wing]

• As implausible as that sounds, it's also very familiar. Police officers' accounts of shootings (often with the assistance of union representatives) tend to adhere to a few key tropes — which happen to overlap, conveniently, with the legal standards that govern when shootings are justifiable.

  [Rare / Jonathan Blanks]

MISCELLANEOUS

Sorry, American Pokémon trainers: Someone has already caught 'em all. You will have to look to other sources for meaning in your life. [Polygon / Allegra Frank]

• When commentators talk about "real Americans," they typically mean white Christians without college degrees living in the South or Midwest. That's only 20 percent of the country.

  [FiveThirtyEight / Nate Silver]

• The case for gender quotas in legislatures — including Congress.

  [Autostraddle / Carmen Rios]

• In March, Najim Laachraoui detonated a suicide bomb in Brussels. Now his brother Mourad is representing Belgium at the Rio Olympics, in taekwondo.

  [Der Spiegel / Lukas Eberle]

• There is now a Pokémon Go service called PokéDates, because of course there is.

  [The Verge / James Vincent]

VERBATIM

"Despite what a vast majority of Bloomington wants, we can’t ban a handgun from a public pool or a machine gun from a parade float." [NYT / Bloomington Mayor John Hamilton]

• "It took three decades and over a hundred titles for Mega Man to make up its mind about what it wanted to say about humanity and technology, but the conclusion it finally reached offers a bracing antidote to the anti-progress sci-fi allegories that precede it."

  [AV Club / Patrick Lee]

• "Walking away from the main merch area, I overheard one of the black vendors selling pro-Trump gear being interviewed. The journalist asked him his name, and the vendor responded, 'I’ll just give you my first name. Don’t really want my friends to think of me differently. Just trying to provide.'"

  [NY Mag / Rembert Browne]

• "Since the average American kid sees an estimated 8,000 murders on TV before they turn 12, they end up primed to think that violence is a regular part of life."

  [NY Mag / Drake Baer]

WATCH THIS

How free mobile games are designed to make money [YouTube / Joss Fong and Dion Lee]

Vox / Dion Lee