Nightly Brief

Your Thursday night briefing from the staff of Courthouse News

Top CNS stories for today including a federal judge saying he would allow twin lawsuits challenging the Trump administration's decision to withhold $28 million in law-enforcement funds from sanctuary jurisdictions in California; throngs of scientists, doctors, attorneys, and others filled the San Francisco Public Library to urge the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency not to dismantle restrictions on carbon pollution; attorneys for the Hartford Courant argued before the Connecticut Supreme Court that it should be allowed access to journals of the gunman who massacred 20 first-graders and six adults at Sandy Hook Elementary School in 2012; the European Commission, tired of waiting while social media platforms and websites to decide what to do about illegal content, mandated pulling terrorist content down within an hour, and more.

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National

1.) A federal judge said Wednesday he would allow twin lawsuits brought by the city of San Francisco and the state of California to proceed, seeking to block the Trump administration from withholding $28 million in law-enforcement funds from sanctuary jurisdictions in California.

2.) A federal judge on Tuesday sided with Big Oil’s request to keep two climate change suits in federal court, a move that could foreshadow doom for efforts to hold oil companies liable for rising sea levels.

Regional

3.) Throngs of scientists, doctors, attorneys, government officials and private citizens filled the San Francisco Public Library’s Koret Auditorium on Wednesday to urge the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency not to dismantle restrictions on carbon pollution.

4.)  The federal judge who granted environmentalists’ injunction to stop a pipeline from crossing the Atchafalaya Basin concluded that public interest in wetlands outweighs a company’s potential financial setbacks.

5.) Attorneys for the Hartford Courant argued Thursday before the Connecticut Supreme Court that it should be allowed access to journals and other belongings of the gunman who massacred 20 first-graders and six adults at Sandy Hook Elementary School in 2012.

6.) Lawyers for the Commonwealth of Virginia appeared before the state Supreme Court Thursday arguing that legislators are legally allowed to create electoral district maps — even if the districts are not as compact as critics would hope.

Science

7.) As mammals, dolphins face constant pressure to hunt their prey and make it back to the surface before running out of oxygen. Marine biologists now believe they use information gathered on previous dives to plan their meals.

8.)  Your next family reunion could be a lot more crowded: After analyzing millions of interconnected online genealogy profiles, scientists have collected the largest, scientifically vetted family tree to date, which at 13 million people is slightly larger than the population of Belgium or Cuba.

International

9.) The U.S. government wasn’t purely motivated by foreign policy concerns when it lifted a ban on lemon imports from Argentina, a federal judge ruled.

10.) Tired of waiting while social media platforms and websites hem and haw over what to do about illegal content, the European Commission on Thursday set the bar high at least when it comes to terrorist content: Pull it down within an hour.

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