nightly brief

Top CNS stories for today including a federal judge voicing sympathy for Indonesian immigrants fighting for asylum after the U.S. government abruptly ordered them out of the country; the trial of an undocumented immigrant accused of killing a woman walking along the San Francisco waterfront began Monday; a federal judge in Wisconsin ruled Monday that a village must prove it has jurisdiction over the Oneida Nation to enforce a permit requirement for an annual festival on the tribe’s reservation; the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope captures images of two galaxies becoming one, and more.

Top CNS stories for today including the Senate passing a $4 trillion budget framework, a key step in the Republican plan to pass a tax package by the end of the year; a federal judge denied a request by the Trump administration to pause proceedings in multiple lawsuits challenging the decision to end a program that shields young undocumented immigrants from deportation; a new study finds that despite wiping out nearly half of all life on Earth, one of the most devastating mass extinctions did not fundamentally alter marine ecosystems, and more.

Top CNS stories for today including nineteen attorneys general asking a federal judge for a nationwide emergency restraining order to stop President Trump from ending subsidies that reduce health care costs for lower-income Americans; hundreds of protesters converged on the University of Florida campus ahead of a planned speech by white nationalist Richard Spencer; fire-ravaged California communities got much needed good news with Gov. Jerry Brown’s executive order suspending some regulations to spur rebuilding efforts; the exiled former president of Ukraine lost his challenge Thursday to an asset freeze imposed by the EU government, and more.

Top CNS stories for today including several families of U.S. troops killed or wounded in Iraq suing some of the world’s biggest pharmaceutical companies claiming their alleged bribes to officials lengthened the conflict there; an attorney told a federal judge that the government’s objection to the judicial branch’s authority to probe President Donald Trump puts the commander in chief above the law; California’s $17 billion water project reached a tipping point Tuesday after a Silicon Valley water district voted against Gov. Jerry Brown’s approach; a federal judge tossed claims over reporting on payments that a powerful Russian billionaire made to former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort, and more.

Top CNS stories for today including a federal judge on Tuesday temporarily blocking President Donald Trump’s third effort at a travel ban; the Supreme Court agreed to put a pin Tuesday in its consideration of a class action over what has been called “the single largest fraud ever perpetrated on the city of New York”; Oregon environmentalists continued their battle against a project that they might be expected to support – mountain biking trails on Mount Hood; federal prosecutors unveiled what they called first-of-their-kind fentanyl indictments Tuesday against a pair of Chinese nationals, and more.

Top CNS stories for today including EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt announcing that the agency would begin pushing back against lawsuits which target it by ending “sue and settle” practices; a federal jury returning a guilty verdict against the New Jersey man who carried out a series of nonfatal bombings in New York and New Jersey last year; California Gov. Jerry Brown on Sunday vetoed a President Donald Trump-inspired proposal that would have required presidential candidates to release their tax returns in order to appear on the statewide ballot; researchers may have confirmed a notion that’s central to Douglas Adams’ novel “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” — that dolphin are smarter than us, and more.

Top CNS stories for today including 15 states and Washington D.C. say they’re stepping up to sue the Trump administration over the president’s decision to scrap subsidies to health insurance companies; the White House decertifies Iran’s compliance with the 2015 nuclear deal; the fires in California’s Wine Country have become the deadliest in state history, as the death toll rose to 31 on Friday morning with hundreds still missing; researchers say when Viking Leif Eriksson sailed to what is now Newfoundland in the 11th century, he had no idea the eastern Canadian island was home to indigenous people, and more.

Top CNS stories for today including President Donald Trump signing an executive order aimed at allowing trade associations and other groups to offer their own health plans; at least 26 people have died and some 3,500 homes and businesses have been destroyed by the blazes, which were well on their way to becoming the deadliest and most destructive in California history; California Gov. Jerry Brown signed a criminal-justice reform package focused on reducing juvenile sentences and recidivism; Europe’s highest court dealt a blow to mom-and-pop organic food shops, finding they must have permits to sell their merchandise on the internet, and more.

Top CNS stories for today include the death toll from nearly two dozen wildfires burning throughout Northern California continuing to rise and several fires burning in the Wine Country grew unabated, even as the region braced for another bout of gusty winds; the country’s largest water district cemented support for Calif. Gov. Jerry Brown’s contentious Bay Delta water project, agreeing to pay an estimated $4.3 billion; new evidence shows that runoff from just 10 rivers in the third world are responsible for most of the billions of pounds of plastic waste that enter the ocean every year, and more.

Top CNS stories for today including California’s iconic Wine Country being ravaged by wildfires, two of nearly 20 fires raging across the Golden State that have so far left at least 11 people dead and thousands of homes destroyed; a challenge poised to resolve how long parties have to file appeals in civil cases brought pointed questions Tuesday from Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg; the European Court of Justice ruled Tuesday that liability for one passenger’s injuries in a 1996 fatal car accident involving an uninsured, drunken driver, falls to the Motor Insurers’ Bureau of Ireland, and more.

Top CNS stories for today including President Donald Trump proposing a set of sweeping and rigid immigration reforms that he said must be included in any legislation addressing the status of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals recipients; California adopts one of the most rigorous campaign-finance laws in the nation, with Gov. Jerry Brown’s signing on Saturday of a bill to require clear disclosure of political contributors in print, television and online ads; word that scientists who want to study the effects of pollution and climate change don’t need to look any further than a feather, and more.

Top CNS stories for today including Attorney General Jeff Sessions issuing a sweeping directive to federal agencies to do as much as possible to accommodate those who claim their religious freedoms are being violated; the Trump administration rolling back a requirement under the federal health care law that employers include birth-control coverage in their health insurance plans; a high-ranking diplomatic security officer testifying about what he saw five years ago when attackers overran the U.S. diplomatic compound in Benghazi; a new study revealing that our hair color, mood and sleep patterns are all influenced by our Neanderthal DNA, and more.

Top CNS stories for today including the National Rifle Association on Thursday calling for additional regulations on the device that allowed the Las Vegas shooter have the semi-automatic guns used in the worst mass shooting in U.S. history to function as fully automatic weapons; California’s mammoth $17 billion plan to overhaul the West Coast’s largest estuary taking another hit, after state auditors revealed a combination of skyrocketing costs and shaky oversight plague the contentious water project; approximately 75 percent of the honey sampled by researchers across the globe contains trace samples of pesticides, according to a new study, and more.

Top CNS stories for today including Senate Democrats grilling several of President Donald Trump’s judicial nominees Wednesday, calling into question everything from one candidate’s views on corporal punishment to another’s taste for office decor that evokes the confederacy; the Federal Emergency Management Agency asking a federal judge to dismiss claims from three Texas churches that FEMA’s disaster aid policies unconstitutionally discriminate against religious organizations; conservationists filing a federal complaint to vacate the registrations of neonicotinoid pesticides to prevent the extinction of 26 endangered species, and more.

Top CNS stories for today including the Supreme Court being urged to crack down on Wisconsin Republicans for political gerrymandering; attorneys at Covington & Burling bringing the first court challenges to what they call the Trump administration’s Muslim Ban 3.0; a federal judge ruling a Florida county’s practice of banning non-theists from giving the invocation before public meetings is unconstitutional; San Francisco taking its first step toward removing a monument that some say glorifies the conquest of Native Americans, and more.

Top CNS stories for today including Justice Stephen Breyer taking a stand for workers as the Supreme Court kicked off its October term with a focus on employment arbitration agreements; meanwhile the high court prepared for what Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg referred to as the “most important” that will come before the court this term, the partisan gerrymandering challenge Tuesday it will hear Tuesday; the D.C. Circuit slamming regulators for attempting to withdraw 23,000 acres from a wild horse sanctuary after 26 years of protection they now attribute to a mapping mishap; a team of researchers says the likelihood that life on earth came from outer space has been mathematically proven, and more.

Top CNS stories for today including Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price resigning Friday amid mounting outcry over his use of private jets and military aircraft for government business; President Donald Trump submitting his latest wave of federal judicial nominations, with four of the conservative nominees slated for vacancies on the Fifth Circuit; scientists in Beijing and Vienna on Friday holding the first real-world demonstration of an intercontinental space-ground quantum communication network; in our latest Dispatch from the Road, Courthouse News’ western bureau chief returns to his home state of Maine and finds a once-fading town in the throes of a rebirth, and more.

Top CNS stories for today including the Supreme Court agreeing to decide whether government-employee unions can force nonmember workers to pay bargaining fees; the Senate confirming President Donald Trump’s nominee to the Eighth Circuit; California moving its presidential primary election up from June to March beginning in 2020; scientists find forests have become emitters, rather than filters of carbon, potentially upending global efforts to address climate change, and more.

Top CNS stories for today including Congressional Republicans releasing the framework of a tax system overhaul on Wednesday that calls for drastically reducing the number of tax brackets, slashing the corporate tax rate and changing the way companies are taxed; numerous North American songbird populations are declining; the European Commission on Wednesday slapped Swedish truck manufacturer Scania with a whopping $1.03 billion fine for its role in a price-fixing cartel that spanned 14 years, and more.

Top CNS stories for today including legal experts warning the Senate about serious constitutional flaws that undermine their attempts at giving Special Counsel Robert Mueller some job security; Missouri’s Attorney General announcing he will hire an independent investigator to find out if his predecessor withheld evidence before Anthony Lamar Smith’s family settled a wrongful death lawsuit; London’s National Gallery told it need not surrender Henri Matisse’s 1908 oil painting “Portrait of Greta Moll” to Moll’s heirs, whose lawsuit failed at every point, and more.