Nightly Brief

Your Tuesday night briefing from the staff of Courthouse News

Top CNS stories for today including President Donald Trump firing Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and replacing him with CIA Director Mike Pompeo; Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke bristling as senators pressed him over his alleged use of taxpayer funds for private plane travel; Infowars creator Alex Jones and other right-wing media personalities were sued Tuesday by a former State Department official who says they made him a target of harassment; a new study says hundreds of new fossils reveal that pterosaurs died off abruptly during the same mass extinction event that ended the reign of dinosaurs; the European Court of Human Rights ruled Spain’s criminal conviction of two men who burned a photograph of the Spanish royal couple during a protest of an official visit by the king violated the men’s right to free expression, and more.

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National

1.) President Donald Trump announced a major shakeup in his cabinet Tuesday, removing Rex Tillerson as secretary of state and replacing him with CIA Director Mike Pompeo.

2.) Railing against the delays, unnecessary secrecy and buckets of black redaction ink that bedevil the public-records process, members of the U.S. Senate pressed government officials Tuesday about their efforts to improve compliance with the Freedom of Information Act.

3.) An ex-Republican frontrunner for the U.S. Senate race in Massachusetts is taking credit for the surprise announcement by Senator Elizabeth Warren that she will not run for president in 2020.

4.)  Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke bristled Tuesday when senators pressed him over his alleged use of taxpayer funds for private plane travel, telling lawmakers the reports were “insults and innuendos.”

Regional

5.) A Georgia state representative hit Governor Nathan Deal with a federal complaint Monday, challenging his refusal to let protesters converge on the Capitol next week as part of a nationwide demonstration commemorating victims of last month’s school shooting in Parkland, Florida.

6.) Shaking up the New York political scene, a federal jury found Governor Andrew Cuomo’s former right-hand man Joseph Percoco guilty on Tuesday of taking bribes from heavyweight corporate donors.

7.) At a time when the Trump administration is working to cut back federal environmental rules, a professor from the University of Houston Law Center says state and local governments should take on part of the regulatory role.

8.) Infowars creator Alex Jones and other right-wing media personalities were sued Tuesday by a former State Department official who says they made him a target of harassment after he posted a video showing a car attack during a white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia.

Science

9.) Hundreds of new fossils reveal that pterosaurs died off abruptly during the same mass extinction event that ended the reign of dinosaurs, according to a study published Tuesday in the journal PLOS Biology.

International

10.) Spain’s criminal conviction of two men who burned a photograph of the Spanish royal couple during a protest of an official visit by the king violated the men’s right to free expression, the European Court of Human Rights ruled Tuesday.

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