Vox Sentences: Puerto Rico’s crisis downgraded from “terrifying” to “just really crappy”

Congress does something!!; there is no good news in the UK; the last NAFTA summit before Donald Trump gets elected and tears up the deal (he can't really do that).

Vox Sentences is written by Dylan Matthews and Dara Lind.

TOP NEWS

More like the TIRITA act

Spencer Platt/Getty Images

• The Senate invoked cloture Wednesday on the PROMESA act, a bill that would provide a process for Puerto Rico to restructure its $70 billion in debt and protect it from creditor lawsuits.

  [The Atlantic / Russell Berman]

• (How on earth did Puerto Rico acquire $70 billion in debt? Good question. One answer: Congress.)

  [Vox / Matt Yglesias]

• President Obama is expected to sign the bill this week, and not a moment too soon: Puerto Rico has another $2B in payments due on Friday. The island's governor has warned that even with PROMESA, it will default on at least $1B of the "most senior" debts.

  [Bloomberg / Michelle Kaske]

• But the bill would protect Puerto Rico from the lawsuits already being filed by the hedge funds that hold its debt, which are demanding that they be paid back even before essential government services are provided.

  [WSJ / Nick Timiraos]

• The fear of such a "race to the courthouse" had the White House pushing hard to pass the bill. Many senior Republicans went along (saying the alternative was a federal bailout), while other Republicans objected to any relief at all — and many Democrats, including Sen. Bob Menendez (D-NJ) and Sen. Bernie Sanders (D-VT), opposed the "colonialist" oversight board that would be empowered to restructure debt.

  [Bloomberg / Steven T. Dennis]

• To progressive critics, PROMESA addresses the worries of creditors without really addressing the needs of regular Puerto Ricans. But given that the island is currently in a downward spiral of population loss and economic slowdown, preventing total catastrophe is a decent first step.

  [WSJ / Nick Timiraos]

L'Art du L'Deal

Dan Kitwood/Getty Images

• The European Union and member countries are continuing to engage in pre-negotiation posturing about the terms on which Britain might leave the EU. On Wednesday, several member countries made it clear that they won't allow Britain to take part in the common European market (as Brexit supporters promised voters would be possible) without also taking part in free movement of EU citizens (which Brexit supporters promised voters they'd avoid).

  [BBC]

• Furthermore, some reports indicate that France and Germany might offer the UK a "deal" that would simply bar British banks from access to the EU market — which would be politically appealing but would cause the UK to lose a great deal of its tax base (to, surprise, France and Germany).

  [Ben Judah via Twitter]

• Of course, it's not at all clear who'll be doing the negotiating for Britain, as both major parties are holding new leadership elections. In the Conservative Party, the pending resignation of PM David Cameron creates a vacuum; in the Labour Party, a successful no-confidence vote against Jeremy Corbyn opens him up to the equivalent of a primary challenge.

  [Washington Post / Griff White]

• The biggest donor to the "Leave" campaign, meanwhile, is making noises about creating a whole new party to consolidate the Brexit coalition into a durable right-wing movement. He credits his success to "an American-style media approach": "Facts don't work."

  [The Guardian / Robert Booth, Alan Travis, and Amelia Gentleman]

• It doesn't look like there needs to be much more effort to stir up anti-immigrant sentiment. In the days after the referendum, 70 percent more hate crimes were reported than on the same days last month.

  [FT / Gonzalo Viña, Serena Tarling, and Henry Foy]

• Just as worrisome — though with a longer fuse — is the fact that Brexit could blow up the Irish peace process.

  [Vox / Pauline McCallion]

Adios, Three Amigos

Chris Roussakis/AFP/Getty Images

• The heads of Canada, the US, and Mexico met Wednesday, in the last North American summit featuring the three young, charismatic (and attractive-for-politicians) leaders known occasionally as the "Three Amigos": President Obama, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, and Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto.

  [Wonkette / Evan Hurst]

• (That caveat about attractiveness is fully deserved. Look how awkward these dudes are. They can't even shake hands!)

  [CNN Politics via Vine]

• This year's trilateral summit was more serious than usual. After all, the summit is a part of NAFTA — which presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump has promised to renegotiate and which many Americans (including progressive economists) have soured on.

  [Washington Center for Equitable Growth / Brad DeLong]

• Between Trump and Brexit, maybe it's unsurprising that Obama and Peña Nieto ended up defending economic globalism itself: "That's here, that's done," Obama said.

  [AP / Kevin Freking and Rob Gillies]

• He's right. It wouldn't be nearly as easy as Trump says to rip up NAFTA, or the many interlocking trade deals that flow from it.

  [Global News / Nick Logan]

• In fact, the summit added two more: an agreement for exporting Canadian beef to Mexico, and a new Canadian policy that will allow Mexicans to travel to Canada without visas (which probably gives Trump agita for other reasons).

  [Reuters / David Ljunggren]

• It's hardly a wonder that when Obama addressed the Canadian Parliament on Wednesday night, he was greeted with chants of, "Four more years!"

  [Daniel Dale via Twitter]

MISCELLANEOUS

TV shows are darker than ever. Literally. There's not enough lighting. [Slate / Matthew Dessem]

• A 3D-printed self-driving bus is driving around the DC area this month.

  [The Verge / Tamara Warren]

• A complete oral history of Angels in America, which turns 25 this summer.

  [Slate / Isaac Butler and Dan Kois]

• Some genius has finally created a Vine account mashing up hip-hop beats with video of livestock auctioneers.

  [AV Club / Chris Dart]

• A big new study suggests that eating butter is … basically fine.

  [Time / Alexandra Sifferlin]

VERBATIM

"This is NORMAL, DAD, if you can’t ACCEPT US then maybe you should just GET OUT, this is my BOYFRIEND and he’s an EAGLE." [The Toast / Mallory Ortberg]

• "We’re scientists. We understand the logic of science. It's easy to see what Greenpeace is doing is damaging and is anti-science."

  [Richard Roberts to Washington Post / Joel Achenbach]

• "As the only journalist to live undercover in North Korea, I had risked imprisonment to tell a story of international importance by the only means possible. By casting my book as personal rather than professional — by marketing me as a woman on a journey of self-discovery, rather than a reporter on a groundbreaking assignment — I was effectively being stripped of my expertise on the subject I knew best."

  [New Republic / Suki Kim]

• "I sat across from white girls in oversized T-shirts, white boys in basketball shorts, sweet kids with good hearts and sleep still in their eyes, who told me—either very nicely or very snidely, never anything in between—that it was harder for white people to get into college now than anyone else, because of affirmative action. They said this as their parents wrote me $450 checks to 'edit' their essays."

  [Jezebel / Jia Tolentino]

• "The loving, supportive, collaborative nature of the comments section was such that one regular commenter gave another a kidney, and commenters helped another leave an emotionally abusive marriage."

  [NPR / Annalisa Quinn]

WATCH THIS

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Vox / Javier Zarracina