Nightly Brief

Your Monday night briefing from the staff of Courthouse News

Top CNS stories for today including a divided U.S. Supreme Court ruling 5-4 that Ohio’s method of pruning its voter rolls comports with federal law; but in a rare tie, the high court left intact an order expected to cost Washington billions of dollars after Native American tribes contested culvert work that blocked fish migration; the justices then went on to rule a Minnesota law that automatically revokes a former spouse’s life insurance beneficiary designation does not violate the U.S. Constitution’s contracts clause; a secretly recorded audio allegedly reveals Georgia’s lieutenant governor and gubernatorial candidate Casey Cagle acknowledging that he backed a controversial education bill he to block a primary opponent from receiving millions of dollars from a super PAC; a new study suggests rising global temperatures will lead to considerable spikes in the variability of annual corn yields by the end of the century; Italy’s new right-wing interior minister Matteo Salvini is keeping to his hard-line campaign promises and has begun to close his country’s borders to refugees, and more.

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National

1.) Challengers said the process blocked more than 7,500 qualified Ohioans from voting in the 2016 election, but the Supreme Court ruled 5-4 Monday that the state’s method of pruning its voter rolls comports with federal law.

2.) An unusual tie Monday at the Supreme Court has left intact an order expected to cost Washington billions of dollars after Native American tribes contested culvert work that blocked fish migration.

3.) The Supreme Court invited the U.S. solicitor general on Monday to weigh in on whether a $10.2 billion judgment against Sudan was properly reduced.

4.) Siding with the adult children of a deceased Minnesota man, the Supreme Court ruled Monday that a state law that automatically revokes a former spouse’s life insurance beneficiary designation does not violate the U.S. Constitution’s contracts clause.

Regional

6.) Before results started trickling in from California’s primary election last week, cable news hosts and national media relentlessly primed viewers about the ensuing chaos about to be sparked by the state’s unusual voting process. But a funny thing happened the morning after the election: both major parties claimed victory.

7.) A secretly recorded audio allegedly reveals Georgia’s lieutenant governor and gubernatorial candidate Casey Cagle acknowledging that he backed a controversial education bill he described as “bad public policy” to block an opponent in the Republican primary from receiving millions of dollars from a super PAC.

8.) Facing the prospect of conflicting injunctions ordering it to end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program and keep it going, the Department of Justice on Friday urged a Texas federal judge not to further complicate the legal battle over DACA.

Science

10.) Rising global temperatures will lead to considerable spikes in the variability of annual corn yields by the end of the century, increasing the likelihood of simultaneous low outputs across several high-producing regions, the National Academy of Sciences reported on Monday.

International

11.) Italy’s new right-wing interior minister Matteo Salvini is keeping to his hard-line campaign promises and has begun to close his country’s borders to refugees and immigrants from war-torn and impoverished African and Middle Eastern nations.

12.) The U.S. Treasury Department slapped new sanctions on five Russian companies and three Russian individuals Monday for “malign and destabilizing cyberactivities.”

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