Nightly Brief

Top CNS stories for today including the justices of the Supreme Court appeared divided over whether the Trump administration should be stopped from adding a citizenship question to the 2020 census; Admitted Russian agent Maria Butina claims a declaration from a former FBI official wrongfully accuses her of espionage activity that she was never charged with; Former Alabama judge Roy Moore is looking at running for a U.S. Senate seat again in 2020, and more.

Your Tuesday night briefing from the staff of Courthouse News

Sign up for CNS Nightly Brief, a roundup of the day’s top stories delivered directly to your email Monday through Friday.

National

1.) The justices of the Supreme Court appeared divided Tuesday over whether the Trump administration should be stopped from adding a citizenship question to the 2020 census.

2.) Admitted Russian agent Maria Butina claims a declaration from a former FBI official wrongfully accuses her of espionage activity that she was never charged with.

3.) The D.C. Circuit on Tuesday tossed aside a challenge from a group of Northeastern states looking to force the Environmental Protection Agency to sweep neighboring states into a regional ozone regulation system.

Actor and singer Jussie Smollett attends the "Empire" FYC Event in Los Angeles on May 20, 2016. A police official says "Empire" actor is now considered a suspect "for filing a false police report" and that detectives are presenting the case against him to a grand jury. Smollett told police he was attacked by two masked men while walking home from a Subway sandwich shop at around 2 a.m. on Jan. 29. He says they beat him, hurled racist and homophobic insults at him and looped a rope around his neck before fleeing. (Richard Shotwell/Invision/AP, File)

4.) In yet another plot twist in the Jussie Smollett saga, the two brothers who claim they helped stage his attack sued the actor’s attorneys for defamation in federal court Tuesday.

Regional

5.) Alabama may not have heard the last from Roy Moore. The former judge, twice removed from the Alabama Supreme Court, lost to Alabama’s first Democratic senator in more than 20 years in a cataclysmic race in 2017 when women accused him of decades-old sexual improprieties. Now he’s looking at running again in 2020.

Senator John Cornyn, R-Texas. (Associated Press/Photo by J. Scott Applewhite)

6.) MJ Hegar, the Air Force combat veteran who nearly unseated a Texas Republican congressman in last year’s midterms, announced Tuesday that she will challenge U.S. Senator John Cornyn in 2020.

International

A Roman Catholic funeral procession passes by murals on Falls Road in West Belfast, Northern Ireland, celebrating pro-Irish combatants during the Troubles and also Palestinian resistance against Israel. The residents of the Falls Road neighborhoods are predominantly pro-Irish and against the United Kingdom's withdrawal from the European Union. The UK's withdrawal from the EU is opening fresh divisions between pro-Irish and Catholic voters and pro-British and Protestant voters in Northern Ireland. (Photo Cain Burdeau/CNS)

7.) On Shankill Road in Belfast, the Union Jack flies from flagpoles, Queen Elizabeth II is revered and murals on buildings celebrate rifle-wielding pro-British paramilitary fighters. On this Protestant street, most people want Brexit to happen — the sooner the better.

This image taken from a helicopter in the High Arctic shows cracks in the permafrost. (Brocken Inaglory/Wikipedia)

8.) Scientists studying the impact of carbon released into the atmosphere by melting Arctic permafrost and heating up of the Earth’s surface reveal the potential multitrillion-dollar cost to the world economy in a new paper published Tuesday in Nature Communications.

Categories / Uncategorized

Subscribe to Closing Arguments

Sign up for new weekly newsletter Closing Arguments to get the latest about ongoing trials, major litigation and hot cases and rulings in courthouses around the U.S. and the world.

Nightly Brief

Subscribe to Closing Arguments

Additional Reads