Nightly Brief

Your Thursday night briefing from the staff of Courthouse News

Top CNS stories for today including the Supreme Court delivered defeat to election-reform advocates by reinstating gerrymandered district maps that it called “highly partisan, by any measure”; The nation’s highest court affirmed that the Commerce Department must reconsider adding a citizenship question to the 2020 census; A German humanitarian group is provoking another standoff with Italy after one of its ships carrying 42 immigrants and refugees rescued from the Mediterranean Sea entered Italian waters without authorization, and more.

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National

1.) The Supreme Court delivered defeat to election-reform advocates for the second year in a row Thursday, reinstating gerrymandered district maps that it called “highly partisan, by any measure.”

2.) Saying that the evidence plainly undercuts the Trump administration’s explanations for adding a citizenship question to the 2020 census, the Supreme Court unanimously affirmed Thursday that the Commerce Department must reconsider the move.

3.) In a halting endorsement of police forgoing warrants when a suspected drunken driver is unconscious, the Supreme Court ruled 5-4 Thursday that the driver’s blood is likely to be tested anyway for diagnostic purposes.

4.) On the heels of a legal victory that gave Democrats the green light to gather documents from businesses owned by President Donald Trump, lawmakers made new demands Thursday for records they say will help shed light on any constitutional issues surrounding the president’s profits from his hotel in Washington, D.C.

Regional

5.) Already convicted federally on a host of financial crimes, former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort pleaded not guilty Thursday to related criminal charges by New York authorities.

6.) The Southern California Gas Company asked a state utilities commission to exclude a damning report detailing the root causes of the 2015 Aliso Canyon methane blowout from the investigation of its safety culture, because a state employee who oversaw operations to close the leak contracted a rare form of cancer and is now suing the utility.

International

7.) A German humanitarian group is provoking another standoff with Italy after one of its ships carrying 42 immigrants and refugees rescued from the Mediterranean Sea entered Italian waters without authorization.

8.) A study released Thursday finds that clouds formed by condensation trails from airplanes contribute most of the global warming caused by air traffic and predicts that by 2050 the contrails’ effects on climate will triple from those in the year studied.

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