Vox Sentences: After 40 days, the Oregon standoff comes to a quiet, sad close

The Oregon militia standoff comes to a close; scientists detect a gravitational wave for the first time; and Bernie Sanders prepares to compete in states that look a bit less like Vermont.

Vox Sentences is written by Dylan Matthews and Dara Lind.

TOP NEWS

The Oregon siege ends as sadly and bizarrely as it began

Joe Raedle/Getty Images

• Forty-one days ago, a group of militants in eastern Oregon seized Malheur National Wildlife Refuge. The last four remaining surrendered on Thursday after long negotiations with the FBI.

  [New York Times / Dave Seminara and Richard Perez-Pena]

• No shots were fired and nobody was injured today — a validation of the federal government's commitment to not use violence against the militants.

  [NPR / Camila Domonoske]

• David Fry, the last militant left, surrendered after a long, disturbing YouTube live stream in which his supporters begged him not to commit suicide, as 32,000 people listened in.

  [Vox / Libby Nelson]

• The tense moments shed light on the bizarre worldview of the militants, who also took to YouTube to compare themselves to William Wallace in Braveheart and to soldiers in the American Revolution.

  [The Washington Post / Dan Zak]

• Meanwhile, Cliven Bundy, the father of the group's leader, was also arrested on Wednesday and charged with six federal crimes in connection with a 2014 standoff he led in Nevada.

  [The Washington Post / Carissa Wolf, Kevin Sullivan, and Mark Berman]

• Franklin Graham, the controversial pastor and son of prominent evangelist Billy Graham, was among those who helped negotiate the end to the standoff.

  [Everton Bailey Jr. / The Oregonian]

Detecting gravity

SXS

• Scientists announced today the first detection of a "gravitational wave," opening the door to future tools that can "see" gravity the same way telescopes see light.

  [Vox / Brian Resnick]

• Researchers were able to hear and record the sound of two black holes that collided 1.3 billion years ago.

  [New York Times / Dennis Overbye]

• The discovery is a massive (if posthumous) validation of Albert Einstein's theory of general relativity, which predicted gravitational waves' existence.

  [Wall Street Journal / Robert Lee Hotz]

• More importantly, the technique used here could shed light on a variety of open questions in astronomy, such as what the universe was like in its infancy.

  [Wired / Sarah Scoles]

• The first person to spot the gravitational waves? A 33-year-old postdoc from Italy named Marco Drago.

  [Science / Adrian Cho]

On to Nevada

Jessica McGowan/Getty Images

• The Democrats will be debating in Madison, Wisconsin, tonight. Look for them to incorporate more language about racial and gender equality.

  [Wall Street Journal / Jerry Seib]

• With Bernie Sanders’s unexpectedly strong performance in New Hampshire, Nevada — where a Democratic caucus will be held on February 20 — is shaping up to be a real battleground. Hillary Clinton is thought to have an advantage with nonwhite voters.

  [New York Times / Adam Nagourney]

• The political arm of the Congressional Black Caucus endorsed Clinton today, a huge win for a candidate who needs support from nonwhite voters to improve her showing in the next two contests.

  [Vox / Michelle Hackman]

• Civil rights leader turned Georgia Congressman John Lewis was asked about Sanders’s 1960s civil rights activism, which Sanders mentions often when campaigning. The congressman got feisty: "I never saw him. I never met him."

  [Roll Call / Eric Garcia]

• And though absolutely no one was wondering, Jim Webb, an erstwhile candidate for the Democratic nomination, announced today that he will not run in the general election as an independent candidate.

  [Washington Post / Rachel Weiner]

MISCELLANEOUS

Women have less debt and lower credit card balances than men. But they have worse credit scores overall — because of the pay gap. [Fortune / Valentina Zarya]

• America leads the league in disgraced forensic labs that cause major miscarriages of justice. But this lab in Canada is bad even by American standards.

  [Vice / Tess Owen]

• The case that Peyton Manning is not just great, but the greatest quartberack of all time.

  [Washington Post / Neil Greenberg]

• The ACLU sued the New Orleans public defender's office for not provided adequate representation. If that forces the Louisiana legislature to pay up, getting sued could be the best thing to ever happen to the office.

  [Marshall Project / Eli Hager]

• The trolley problem, in video game form.

  [Pippin Barr]

VERBATIM

"'He did not miss, I was covered in cake. This man continued to yell insults against me ... and then they all calmly walked away." [Russian opposition leader Mikhail Kasyanov via Newsweek / Damien Sharkov]

• "The anti-corruption blogger and former Moscow mayoral candidate Alexey Navalny has written that the businesses had all the papers necessary to operate—otherwise they could not have stood up to police inspections and would not have been allowed to use city water and power. Of course, he claims, these papers were obtained, like most papers in Moscow, in illegal and extralegal ways, with money and connections. The city government could thus invalidate these papers anytime—or demand bigger bribes."

  [New Yorker / Masha Gessen]

• "Growing up it's like, before it's even called a gang, it's just your friends. You're all just hanging out every day."

  [Tina to Marie Claire / Colleen Curry and Michelle Mulligan]

• "In all three groups the people who received the survey using the term 'the mentally ill' had significantly lower tolerance scores than those who received the survey using the term 'people with mental illnesses.'"

  [The Conversation / Darcy Haag Granello]

• "Methamphetamine produces nearly identical effects to those produced by the popular ADHD medication d-amphetamine (dextroamphetamine). You probably know it as Adderall."

  [The Influence / Carl Hart]

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