Vox Sentences: The big Supreme Court Obamacare case, explained

1. Seeing like "the state"

Michael Carvin, lead anti-Obamacare attorney, answers questions outside the Supreme Court after oral arguments. (Alex Wong/Getty Images)

• Today was Supreme Court oral arguments for King v. Burwell, the case that could deny more than 7 million people health-insurance subsidies under the Affordable Care Act.

  [Vox / Adrianna McIntyre]

• Here's the backstory: after Obamacare passed, states were given the option to start insurance exchanges. But most declined. So the federal government set up exchanges on their behalf.

  [Vox / Adrianna McIntyre]

• But the text of the law says that you're eligible for subsidies if you buy insurance from an exchange "established by the state."

  [Vox / Sarah Kliff]

• A group of Obamacare opponents challenged the subsidies on the grounds that "established by the state" excludes federal exchanges.

  [Vox / Sarah Kliff]

• The drafters of the law think this is a preposterous misreading of Congressional intent and that there was never any ambiguity in writing it that the subsidies also applied to federal exchanges.

  [Vox / Sarah Kliff]

• Today's oral arguments were surprising because they focused on a number of issues not raised by either the challengers or the administration.

  [Vox / Sarah Kliff]

• Perhaps most importantly, Justice Anthony Kennedy suggested that if the subsidies don't apply to federal exchanges, then they're too big a carrot for the federal government to dangle in exchange for getting on board with Obamacare. That kind of federal coercion of states, he worried, is unconstitutional.

  [Vox / German Lopez]

• That was widely interpreted as a sign he'll side with the Obama administration, but it's basically impossible to predict justices' decisions just from oral arguments (and it's worth remembering that Kennedy ruled against Obamacare the last time it was before the court).

  [Vox / Sarah Kliff]

• Two other surprises: Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg suggested that the plaintiffs weren't actually hurt by being offered subsidies and thus don't have standing for the case, and Justice Samuel Alito suggested that the court might delay an anti-Obamacare ruling from taking effect to let Congress fix the law.

  [Vox / Sarah Kliff]

• Intriguingly, the Obama administration rejected the idea that the plaintiffs don't have standing.

  [Bloomberg View / Noah Feldman]

• You can read the whole oral arguments here.

  [Vox / German Lopez]

• While a negative ruling would be bad for Obamacare, much of the law — including the Medicaid expansion, insurance for people until age 26, and health-insurance regulations — would endure.

  [NYT / Margot Sanger-Katz]

• According to a union poll (so take it with a dash of salt), 71 percent of Americans don't think it should matter if the exchanges were federal or not.

  [The Hill / Sarah Ferris]

2. Email my heart

Hillary Clinton and her aide Philippe Reines shortly before her confirmation as Secretary of State and her move to a private email system. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

• Hillary Clinton did not have a government email during her four years as Secretary of State, relying exclusively on a private email address.

  [NYT / Michael Schmidt]

• It appears that she violated federal regulations requiring that all communications be stored as part of the State Department's record-keeping system.

  [NYT / Michael Schmidt and Amy Chozick]

• In response to a 2014 query, Clinton turned over 55,000 pages of personal-account emails that the State Department didn't previously have, but she got to pick and choose what was included.

  [Vox / Andrew Prokop]

• Her address was @clintonemail.com, a domain name registered the day her confirmation hearings began.

  [Washington Post / Philip Bump]

• She used an email server that, the AP reports, has been "traced back to her family's New York home."

  [AP / Jack Gillum and Ted Bridis]

• In addition to all the ethics concerns, that's just sloppy security-wise; running a secure email system is hard, and it likely would have been easier to infiltrate Clinton's than a government system.

  [Vox / Timothy B. Lee]

• The deeper problem is that transparency rules are very easy to evade; using the official email for mundane matters and keeping another address for secret communication wouldn't have sparked as much attention and would've been just as bad.

  [Vox / Ezra Klein]

• Some Democratic attempts to let Clinton off the hook here have been genuinely embarrassing. Sen. Ben Cardin (D-MD): "People have different ways of communicating. I have a granddaughter who does nothing but text. You’ll never find a letter written with her. So everybody’s different."

  [NYT / Jonathan Martin and Maggie Haberman]

• And the Clinton camp hasn't exactly done a great job keeping it together, judging from the massive temper tantrum Clinton's close aide Philippe Reines threw on an email chain with several reporters.

  [Gawker / JK Trotter]

• Given voters' short memories, though, it's doubtful this will end up mattering come election time.

  [NYT / Brendan Nyhan]

3. Scot-free

Officer Darren Wilson, pictured after his altercation with Michael Brown. Photos released from grand jury proceedings.

• Darren Wilson won't face federal civil-rights charges for killing Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, which — barring a major reversal — means he won't be prosecuted at all for the shooting.

  [Vox / German Lopez]

• This was expected, as anonymous federal officials had previously told reporters they weren't planning on bringing charges.

  [Washington Post / Sari Horwitz and Kimberly Kindy]

• In other Ferguson news, the Justice Department has released its full report finding widespread racial bias in the Ferguson Police Department.

  [Vox / German Lopez]

• The details — including racially disparate stops and numerous racist emails — really have to be seen to be believed.

  [Vox / Jenée Desmond-Harris]

4. Misc.

• Have strong opinions on who the best Marxist theorists are? Then get ready for Marx Madness.

  [Marx Madness]

• Max-Hervé George has a policy from a French insurance company that lets him buy stocks at prices that are up to a week old. At last report, he was getting 68.6 percent annual returns.

  [Jason Kottke]

• Putting affordable housing in rich areas where jobs are is tough. Subsidizing transit from cheaper areas — as Seattle's now trying — might be more promising.

  [Washington Post / Emily Badger]

• Let's say you want to do as much good as possible. Given how many more animals there are than humans, why wouldn't that be all you cared about?

  [Slate Star Codex / Scott Alexander]

5. Verbatim

• "People accept that we all make mistakes, but robots are expected to be infallible."

  [FT / Chris Bryant]

• "The more overlap two ingredients have in flavor, the less likely they are to appear in the same Indian dish."

  [Washington Post / Roberto Ferdman]

• "I could produce some clichés, which have the merit of being true. Life without love is a pretty empty affair."

  [Noam Chomsky to Democracy Now / Aaron Maté]

• "Randy needed a win. Kleiner needed a win. Everybody needed a win. I could use some wins."

  [Fortune / Adam Lashinsky]

• "He believes that the Kim dynasty’s three-generation stranglehold on the North Korean people—and its draconian restriction on almost any information about the world beyond its borders—will ultimately be broken not by drone strikes or caravans of Humvees but by a gradual, guerrilla invasion of thumb drives filled with bootleg episodes of Friends and Judd Apatow comedies."

  [Wired / Andy Greenberg]

• "A participant in an antidepressant drug trial was given placebo tablets — and then swallowed 26 of them in a suicide attempt. Even though the tablets were harmless, the participant’s blood pressure dropped perilously low."

  [NYT / Paul Enck and Winfried Hauser via Dan Lewis]