Nightly Brief

Top CNS stories for today including new evidence emerged suggesting the controversial citizenship question on the upcoming census was explicitly designed to benefit white Republicans; Four black voters claim Mississippi’s system for electing statewide officials is intentionally racist and designed to disenfranchise the African-American population; New Hampshire became the 21st state to abolish the death penalty, and more.

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National

1.) A month after the Supreme Court appeared primed to allow a citizenship question on the upcoming census, new evidence emerged on Thursday suggesting the controversial query was explicitly designed to benefit white Republicans.

Former campaign adviser for President Donald Trump, Roger Stone accompanied by his wife Nydia Stone, left, and daughter Adria Stone, arrives at federal court in Washington, Thursday, Feb. 21, 2019. Stone was ordered to appear in court over a Instagram post he made about U.S. Judge Amy Berman Jackson. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)

2.) A day after special counsel Robert Mueller explained for the first time why he did not charge President Donald Trump personally with a crime, attorneys argued Thursday that still-murky details in Mueller’s report invalidate Roger Stone’s indictment.

This 2015 artist's rendering shows the James Webb Space Telescope. On May 30, 2019, the U.S. Government Accountability Office reported that NASA's major projects are more than 27 percent over baseline costs and the average launch delay is 13 months. That's the largest schedule delay since the GAO began assessing NASA's major projects 10 years ago. The still-in-development James Webb Space Telescope is the major offender. (Northrop Grumman/NASA via AP)

3.) A government watchdog group reported Thursday that NASA’s major space projects are over budget and falling behind schedule.

Regional

4.) Mississippi’s system for electing statewide officials is intentionally racist and designed to disenfranchise the African-American population, according to a federal lawsuit filed Thursday by four black residents seeking to upend a Jim Crow-era law more than a century later.

Paperwork and voting stickers sit out for voters of the Georgia primary election Tuesday, July 24, 2018 at the Chattanooga Valley Church of the Nazarene in Flintstone, Georgia. (Erin O. Smith/Chattanooga Times Free Press via AP)

5.) Groups who claim Georgia’s elections procedures are fundamentally flawed and prevent minorities from voting may proceed with their lawsuit, a federal judge ruled Thursday.

N.H. Sen. David Watters (D-Barrington, Dover, Rollinsford, and Somersworth) pauses after the tally was announced in a vote on the death penalty at the State House in Concord, N.H., Thursday, May 30, 2019. The death penalty was repealed in New Hampshire immediately after the state Senate cast enough votes to override Gov. Chris Sununu's veto. (AP Photo/Charles Krupa)

6.) Just barely reaching the two-thirds vote to override their governor’s veto, lawmakers made New Hampshire the 21st state on Thursday to abolish the death penalty.

Science

Workers tend to a well head during a 2013 hydraulic fracturing operation outside Rifle, in western Colorado. A federal judge has blocked oil and gas drilling on almost 500 square miles in Wyoming and says the government must consider cumulative climate change impacts of leasing public lands across the U.S. for energy development The order marks the latest in a string of court rulings over the past decade faulting the government's consideration of emissions when issuing energy leases. (AP Photo/Brennan Linsley, File)

7.) Fracking – the process of pulling oil and gas from beneath Earth’s surface by injecting water into subterranean rock – not only requires a huge amount of water, it can also cause chemicals to seep into the local groundwater. But in a study published Thursday, Chinese researchers say the oil and gas industry should look to carbon dioxide as a replacement for water fracturing.

A road leading to Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument in Kane County, Utah. (Bill Girdner/Courthouse News)

8.) Once the global leaders in land conservation, the United States and Brazil are now scaling back legal protections for national parks and other lands at an alarming pace – compromising efforts to conserve biodiversity and mitigate climate change, a new study suggests.

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