Vox Sentences: It’s official

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Impeachment is really happening; Pakistani train ignites and death toll rises.

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This week in impeachment news

The latest testimony from the House’s impeachment investigation into President Trump: the White House didn’t just place Trump’s call with the Ukrainian president into a secure system — a senior White House lawyer directed everyone not to talk about it. [Politico / Natasha Bertrand]
That came from Alexander Vindman, a National Security Council member. Trump’s supporters immediately smeared him based on his immigrant background. [Slate / William Saletan]
The other major news this week was the House’s vote on impeachment procedures. It passed with two Democrats opposing it. [Vox / Andrew Prokop]
The vote occurred on that same day that senior National Security Council aide Timothy Morrison and Ambassador to Ukraine William B. Taylor Jr. gave closed-door testimony about President Trump’s call to Ukraine. [New York Times / Nicholas Fandos]
Politico has a comprehensive graphic of the most powerful and influential people involved in the impeachment inquiry. [Politico]
Despite Trump’s claims that the impeachment inquiry is actually good for him, polling indicates near-majority support for his removal. [Vox / Aaron Rupar]
How did Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy get dragged into an American impeachment scandal anyways? [NPR / David Greene, Shannon Rhoades, and Arezou Rezvani]
Coming this Saturday on Impeachment, Explained: Andrew Prokop sits down with Ezra Klein and is joined by Rep. Zoe Lofgren, the only member of the House to be there during both the Nixon and Clinton impeachments, who explains exactly how the House impeachment process works. [Vox / Ezra Klein]

Pakistan train passengers killed in fire

A train passing through the town of Rahim Yar Khan, Pakistan combusted after a gas canister exploded. [CNN / Julia Hollingsworth and Adeel Raja]
”We could hear people crying and screaming for help. I thought we would die. The next car was on fire. We felt so helpless,” said surviving passenger Chaudhry Shujaat. Shujaat boarded the train only a few hours earlier with his wife and two children. [NBC News]
The death toll has risen to 74, with at least 30 injured. Survivors blame many of the fatalities on the failure of the train to stop until 20 minutes after the explosion. [TIME / Asim Tanveer]
Pakistani Railways Minister Sheikh Rashid Ahmed said that the train authorities should accept responsibility for failing to enforce safety standards that prohibited the use of personal gas stoves onboard. [Al Jazeera]
While officials have debated if train accidents are at an all time high, the data is still murky. [BBC]

Miscellaneous

Here’s the other dog from the al Baghdadi raid. [CNN / Nora Neus]
More than just politics, reparations hit at something deeper. [Vox / Tiffanie Drayton]
After living most of his life in New York, Trump declares residence in Florida. [New York Times / Maggie Haberman]
Google purchases wearable tech company Fitbit for over $2 billion. [CNBC / Lauren Feiner]
Europe is looking to get rid of daylight saving time shifts by 2021. [The Guardian / Jennifer Rankin]

Verbatim

“Despite scientific evidence demonstrating that animals ... are sentient, intelligent beings, the average American consumes more than 220 pounds of red meat and poultry per year. The power of the $4.6 trillion global carnistic industry is unprecedented.” [Founder and president of Beyond Carnism Melanie Joy on the impact of eating meat]

Listen to this: Instagram’s war on nipples

How a social media platform is campaigning against this sexualized body part and what it’s doing to expression. [Spotify]

In Iowa, only 5 percent of Biden supporters are younger than 45

The 11-day teachers’ strike in Chicago paid off

The radical reform necessary to prepare California’s power system for the 21st century

White House: the opioid epidemic cost $2.5 trillion over 4 years

He needed a gender-affirming procedure. The hospital said no.

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The Ugly History of Dual-Loyalty Charges

When Representative Ilhan Omar recently complained about “the political influence in this country that says it is okay to push for allegiance to a foreign country,” many noted accurately that she had deployed a trope—dual loyalty—that had been used against Jews for years. But this accusation has a broader history in the United States, having been used against several religious minorities—including Muslims like Omar. Indeed, many battles over religious freedom have revolved around dual-loyalty claims. [ Read: Ilhan Omar just made it harder to have a nuanced debate about Israel ] In the 19th century, many attacks on Catholics stressed that these immigrants were pawns of a foreign power. In the 1830s, Samuel Morse—then a prominent painter and later the inventor of the telegraph—urged Americans to build “walls” and “gates” to keep out Catholic immigrants, who would always be loyal to Rome. Because these Catholic immigrants were decrepit —“halt, and blind, and naked”—they were easy to co...

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