Vox Sentences: Barack Obama’s immigration plan cheat sheet

1. Obama's immigration plan

Marchers rally under the Chinatown Gateway before marching to the Metropolitan Detention Center during one a several May Day immigration-themed events on May 1, 2014. (David McNew/Getty Images)

• President Obama will announce his plan to protect 4.3 million undocumented immigrants from deportation at 8pm tonight. Here's what to expect.

  [Vox / Dara Lind]

• The program is modeled after — and expands by 270,000 — the existing program providing relief to people who came here as children.

  [Vox / Dara Lind]

• The remaining 4 million covered by the new program are parents of US citizens and/or green card holders.

• 6.2 million undocumented immigrants are left unprotected.

• If you're more of a visual learner, here's a video explainer.

  [Vox / Dara Lind and Joss Fong]

• Here's the legal memo justifying the action — notably, it argues that parents of people currently protected from deportation aren't legally eligible.

  [Vox / Andrew Prokop]

• Covered people won't be eligible for Obamacare.

  [New Republic / Jonathan Cohn]

• The best arguments for and against the policy.

  [Vox / Ezra Klein]

• Giving undocumented immigrants legal status (which this doesn't really do, but it's close) increases their incomes, and thus tax revenues.

  [Migration Policy Institute]

• Republicans are split on how to block the plan.

  [Bloomberg / Erik Wasson, Heidi Przybyla, and Mike Dorning]

• The closest historical analogue is a 1990 program launched by George H.W. Bush to protect family members of people covered by the 1986 amnesty law from deportation.

  [Vox / Dara Lind]

• But David Frum argues Bush, unlike Obama, was obeying Congress's intent.

  [The Atlantic / David Frum]

• Obama's address has the potential to influence Latinos and elites, but probably won't persuade the non-Latino public.

  [Bloomberg View / Jonathan Bernstein]

• Ramesh Ponnuru: Obama's plan is a "break with the country's constitutional tradition."

  [Bloomberg View / Ramesh Ponnuru]

• Eric Posner: nonsense, this is a "routine exercise of presidential power."

  [Slate / Eric Posner]

• Lanhee Chen: this shouldn't stop Congressional Republicans from passing immigration reforms themselves.

  [Bloomberg View / Lanhee Chen]

• The policy is meant to keep families together — but our immigration system has already caused "hundreds of thousands" of citizens to move abroad for their spouses.

  [Slate / Susan Ferriss]

2. Mike Nichols, 1931-2014

Mike Nichols hugs Warren Beatty and Annette Bening during the 38th AFI Life Achievement Award ceremony honoring Mike Nichols. (Frazer Harrison/Getty Images for AFI)

• Mike Nichols, the legendary comedian turned stage director turned film director, has died at 83.

  [Vox / Kelsey McKinney]

• The seduction scene from The Graduate is a perfect illustration what made him such a compelling director.

  [Vox / Todd VanDerWerff]

• A profile of Nichols before the opening of Death of a Salesman, which he directed on Broadway in 2012.

  [NY Mag / Jesse Green]

• Nichols liked to say there were "only three kinds of scenes: a fight, a seduction or a negotiation." Here are examples of each from his films.

  [Slate / Dana Stevens]

• He got his start in a sketch comedy duo with Elaine May, which ended abruptly after four years. 52 years after that, they reunited for a joint interview with Vanity Fair.

  [Vanity Fair / Sam Kashner]

• A great compilation of Nichols and May's sketches.

  [Dangerous Minds / Richard Metzger]

• Nichols' The Birdcage (written by May and starring Robin Williams and Nathan Lane), and much of the rest of his oeuvre, helped mainstream gay culture.

  [Daily Best / Kevin Fallon]

• "Mike Nichols summoned me to lunch years ago, after he saw The Substance of Fire, to tell me that if he had directed my play, he’d have ruined it with jokes. This was his way of saying, 'Let’s be friends.'"

  [Vanity Fair / Jon Robin Baitz]

• Want to read more? Longreads' guide to Nichols has you covered.

  [Longreads / Mark Armstrong]

3. Misc.

• French leftists are really upset about the new Assassin's Creed game and its skeptical view of the French Revolution.

  [NYT / Dan Bilefsky]

• Community colleges are the cornerstone of the American higher education system — and get way fewer donations than selective schools that are already rich.

  [NYT / Ginia Bellafante]

• The sociological theory that explains why the Bill Cosby rape allegations are only now getting attention.

  [NYT / Brendan Nyhan]

• The system that let incompetent contractors botch the launch of HealthCare.gov still hasn't been reformed.

  [Slate / David Auerbach]

• 72 percent of people who want the Redskins to keep their name admit they wouldn't use it in front of a Native American.

  [DCist / Matt Cohen]

• If you want a dedicated keyboard for GIFs, well, there's an app for that now.

  [The Atlantic / Robinson Meyer]

4. Verbatim

• "[US Rep. Steve] Cohen says he later looked up the definition of moat and realized that it is defined as a water barrier that completely surrounds a protected structure."

  [NBC News / Kelly O'Donnell]

• "Oh man, how about the biggest question of them all—why were their eyes on the windshield? "

  [The Hairpin / Anna Fitzpatrick]

• "Why do I enjoy comedies, if I can’t distance myself from events in them? I wouldn’t like to be at a real wedding where someone fell down."

  [Crooked Timber / John Holbo]

• "One does not merely plop a burrito in front of a hamster and expect him to eat it."

  [Washington Post / Caitlin Dewey]

• "There are bags of puke on the moon."

  [Slate / Ben Mathis-Lilley]

• "Most people would agree that the pressures of pop stardom are inhumane and warping, but should we do a complete overhaul of the music industry and replace human idols with virtual ones?"

  [NY Mag / Lindsay Zoladz]