nightly brief

Top CNS stories for today including the Supreme Court ruling that Americans have a reasonable privacy expectations in their cellphone location data; Paul Manafort fails to sway a federal judge that, even if he should have registered as a foreign agent, the pro-Russia lobbying work at issue cannot sustain the money-laundering count he faces; Special Counsel Robert Mueller asks a federal judge to place limits on how and in what context attorneys for former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort can accuse the Justice Department of the “selective” or “vindictive” prosecution of their client; the Texas Supreme Court upholds an appeals court ruling that disallows local governments from banning single-use plastic bags, finding that state law bars ordinances restricting the sale or use of containers; Bay Area toll users will pay $34 million to settle a dispute with a contractor accused of doing defective work on the new eastern span of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge; a new study finds a voter-approved ballot measure aimed at reducing California’s prison population and ending racial disparities in the war on drugs has produced most of the cost-saving, equity-focused results it promised; the Supreme Court rules that companies can recover profits lost because of the unauthorized use of their patented technology overseas, and more.

Top CNS stories for today including the Supreme Court holding states may force online retailers to collect and remit sales tax on transactions even if they do not have a traditional storefront in the state; the Justice Department asking a federal judge to change the rules regarding the detention of immigrant families who enter the country illegally; Pacific Gas & Electric says it expects to pay at least $2.5 billion to cover the cost of lawsuits and other issues stemming from wildfires that killed 44 and destroyed thousands of homes in Northern California last year; new research shows a supermassive star thousands of times larger than the sun may have been what caused Milky Way stars in globular clusters to have such unique chemistry; another study finds democratic qualities are declining in the United States and 23 other countries, representing about one-third of the global population; the European Court of Justice scorched the country Malta on Thursday for its unrestrained and poorly supervised scheme that allows residents to trap seven species of finch, and more.

Top CNS stories for today including President Donald Trump signing an executive order ending his administration’s controversial policy of separating families at the U.S. border with Mexico; the president also revoked an Obama-era executive order establishing protections for oceans, coastlines and lakes; the artist who created the iconic piece claims “The Bean” sculpture in Chicago’s Millennium Park was used without permission in a National Rifle Association recruitment video; siding with anti-gentrification activists, San Francisco officials delay the construction of an eight-story housing development in a historically Latino neighborhood; CNS takes a look at Palermo, Sicily, a jewel of the Mediterranean once known as the “city of the Mafia,” and more.

Top CNS stories for today including the United States withdrawing from the United Nations Human Rights Council, one day after that organization’s chief slammed U.S. immigration policy as “unconscionable”; a federal judge finding Kansas’ voter ID law unconstitutional and sanctioning Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, ordering him to take additional legal education classes; a former Senate intelligence staffer indicted as part of the government’s leak probe claims the president’s remarks about him impinge on his right to a fair trial; California lawmakers advance reforms that would restrict the use of deadly force by law enforcement and make it easier for prosecutors to charge officers who abuse it; California’s primary turnout recorded a sharp increase this month, boosted by an infusion of Latino voters in Southern California and a new voting system in five counties; researchers at Georgia Tech say they may have found viable alternatives to traditional lithium battery construction; the EU General Court rules far-right French leader Marine Le Pen must reimburse the European Parliament for the cost of an assistant’s six-year employment, and more.

Top CNS stories for today including two political gerrymandering cases that stoked voter passions across the United States fizzling on procedural grounds at the Supreme Court; the justices also held that the existence of probable cause for the arrest of a Florida gadfly at a city counsel meeting does not bar his pursuit of a First Amendment retaliation claim against the body; about 2,000 people spent Father’s Day in the tiny Texas town of Tornillo chanting and marching against the opening of a temporary shelter for immigrant children separated from their parents under the Trump administration’s “zero tolerance” policy; two California Democrats crafting “gold standards” in net neutrality laws said they will amend and combine their bills before a vote this week in the Legislature; a new study finds warning labels with graphic images linking sugary drink consumption with tooth decay, Type 2 diabetes and obesity appear to reduce purchases of the drinks more effectively than calorie counts or text warnings; European leaders are quarreling, and clamoring for a solution, over what to do with the flow of refugees and immigrants fleeing war-torn and impoverished nations and arriving at Europe’s borders, and more.

Top CNS stories for today including a federal judge agreeing to jail former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort for witness tampering ahead of trial; prosecutors say they’ve reconstructed more than a dozen pages of shredded documents and obtained hundreds of encrypted messages from President Donald Trump’s embattled personal attorney Michael Cohen; Women’s and immigrant’s rights advocates blast the Trump administration for holding domestic violence is not a reason to grant an asylum request; a new lawsuit claims Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt has failed to protect city residents from high levels of sulfur dioxide pollution; a federal judge denies a request by President Donald Trump’s personal attorney Michael Cohen to prevent porn star Stormy Daniels’ lawyer from speaking to the press; the white ex-mayor of a wealthy city in Southern California, which is just 1.4 percent black, complains that he was placed in a racially gerrymandered district when the city went from at-large to district voting for City Council; the White House announces a 25 percent tariff on $50 billion worth of Chinese imports, escalating a trade dispute between the world’s two largest economies, and more.

Top CNS stories for today including an organization headed by former Attorney General Eric Holder suing Alabama, Georgia and Louisiana for allegedly using gerrymandering to dilute the strength of their black voters; a Justice Department watchdog said Thursday that former FBI Director James Comey bungled aspects of the Hillary Clinton email investigation, but that political bias did not factor into the FBI’s decision not to charge Clinton for mishandling classified information; New York Attorney General Barbara Underwood marks the president’s birthday with a $2.8 million petition to dissolve the Donald J. Trump Foundation for violations of state and federal law; a 27,000-acre wildfire burning in southwestern Colorado cuts off the cities of Durango and Silverton from their annual tourism revenue; the Sixth Circuit rules a distiller’s use of the Old Taylor name to pinpoint the location at which it will create a new bourbon does not infringe on a competitor’s trademark; the European Court of Justice upholds an asset freeze that has been imposed for seven years against a cousin of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, and more.

Top CNS stories for today including five states holding primary elections Tuesday, with two key GOP races marked by the candidates’ willingness to follow President Donald Trump’s policies; South Carolinians awoke Wednesday morning to word that Mark Sanford, who had never lost a race in his political career, had been defeated in his congressional primary by a candidate who made his lack of support for President Donald Trump the focus of her campaign; Special Counsel Robert Mueller requests a federal court in Virginia issue additional blank subpoenas for the first day of former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort’s trial; California official qualify a ballot initiative that would break up the nation’s most populous state and its $2.7 trillion economy; a new study finds melting Antarctic ice has raised global sea levels by more than a quarter of an inch since 1992; a grand jury returns indictments against five Russians and three Syrians accused of violating U.S. sanctions by shipping jet fuel and money to Syria, and more.

Top CNS stories for today including a federal judge approving the $85 billion merger of AT&T and Time Warner; Special Counsel Robert Mueller ordered to identify the people he believes helped former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort hide his lobbying income; a courthouse building boom is on the horizon in California after Gov. Jerry Brown and lawmakers preliminarily approved funding for 10 projects, including $460 million for a long-awaited project in Sacramento County; the European Court of Justice sides with a luxury retailer, ruling a law banning shape trademarks does not apply to the red soles of Christian Louboutin shoes; Courthouse News remembers Furusato, the Japanese fishing village between Los Angeles’s ports that was destroyed at the onset of World War II, and more.

Top CNS stories for today including a divided U.S. Supreme Court ruling 5-4 that Ohio’s method of pruning its voter rolls comports with federal law; but in a rare tie, the high court left intact an order expected to cost Washington billions of dollars after Native American tribes contested culvert work that blocked fish migration; the justices then went on to rule a Minnesota law that automatically revokes a former spouse’s life insurance beneficiary designation does not violate the U.S. Constitution’s contracts clause; a secretly recorded audio allegedly reveals Georgia’s lieutenant governor and gubernatorial candidate Casey Cagle acknowledging that he backed a controversial education bill he to block a primary opponent from receiving millions of dollars from a super PAC; a new study suggests rising global temperatures will lead to considerable spikes in the variability of annual corn yields by the end of the century; Italy’s new right-wing interior minister Matteo Salvini is keeping to his hard-line campaign promises and has begun to close his country’s borders to refugees, and more.

Top CNS stories for today including Special counsel Robert Mueller filing a superseding indictment against former Trump campaign chair Paul Manafort and a Soviet-born associate who is suspected of having ties to Russian intelligence; former CIA contractor Kevin Patrick Mallory is found guilty of conspiring to provide classified documents to Chinese operatives; adult film star Stormy Daniels’ former attorney fires back after she claimed earlier this week that he was a “puppet” for Donald Trump’s personal attorney; researchers say they’ve discovered the fossils of two new species of ancient saber-toothed predators that will help illuminate a key period in the early evolution of mammals; in the first of a two-part series, Courthouse News’ western bureau chief visits Cheyenne, Wyoming – an Old West railroad town that embraces the past while making the occasional attempt at innovation, and more.

Top CNS stories for today including the Senate Judiciary Committee approving President Donald Trump’s choice for a seat on the Ninth Circuit, despite the objections of both of the nominee’s home-state senators; Environmental Protection Agency administrator Scott Pruitt’s top legal counsel resigns; former Utah Attorney General Mark Shurtleff files a $60 million federal lawsuit alleging prosecutors, police and the FBI violated his rights during a 2014 bribery and corruption investigation; the use of the trademark Old Taylor Distillery – the namesake of E.H. Taylor, father of the modern bourbon industry – is contested before a Sixth Circuit panel; a new report misses the mark on the surge of the gig economy; the EU’s highest court rules that what consumers think of the Gaelic word glen is critical to a geographic-indication suit that the trade group for Scotch whiskey brought against a competitor in Germany, and more.

Top CNS stories for today including Senator Richard Blumenthal expressing confidence that Democrats emoluments clause challenge against President Donald Trump will advance; President Donald Trump’s nominee to the Third Circuit defends himself against Democrats’ attacks about his conservative record; a senior aide entangled in the multiple scandals dogging Environmental Protection Agency chief Scott Pruitt abruptly resigns; the city of Flint and several government officials argue before the Sixth Circuit for immunity on a bodily integrity claim brought by a mother and child who drank the city’s lead-contaminated water; the Wisconsin Supreme Court rules that a family can rent out their waterfront property on Hayward Lake to vacationers; a new study suggests that pollution hinders fungi that provide mineral nutrients to European tree roots, sparking malnutrition trends in the continent’s trees, and more.

Top CNS stories for today including Special Counsel Robert Mueller alleging Paul Manafort used an encrypted messaging app in order to tamper with a witness; a federal judge ruling President Donald Trump must submit to deposition in the next six months as part of the defamation suit he faces from former “Apprentice” contestant Summer Zervos; the Senate unanimously confirms a Latino judicial nominee to a seat on a federal court in Texas; political strategists, congressional candidates nationwide and President Donald Trump are watching closely Tuesday for signs of the forecast “blue wave” as millions of voters across the West cast their primary ballots; a new study looks at the how the subaudible sound pressure levels and shadow flicker of wind farms disturb some people; the European Court of Justice rules that member states where gay marriage is not recognized may not deny residency to spouses of EU citizens, and more.

Your Monday night briefing from the staff of Courthouse News Top CNS stories for today including a Colorado baker who

Top CNS stories for today including President Donald Trump announcing that his cancelled summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un is back on; a Russian company says it has four courses of attack ready to contest the charge that it funded pro-Donald Trump troll farms during the 2016 election; an Iowa judge agrees to issue a temporary injunction barring enforcement of the state’s newly enacted fetal-heartbeat law;lenders pushing small loans with interest rates above 100 percent are found to be flourishing in California; a new study in The Lancet recommends women trying to get pregnant again after a miscarriage should make sure to get enough vitamin D; a new study sponsored by the National Institutes of Health reports size matters, but bigger isn’t necessarily better when it comes to brains; with 1 in 10 pollinating insect species on the verge of extinction and a third of bee and butterfly species in decline, the European Commission issues a swarm of plans to protect creatures vital to our own survival, and more.

Top CNS stories for today including President Donald Trump pardoning conservative commentator Dinesh D’Souza who pleaded guilty to campaign finance fraud; the largest federal employee union claiming in court that President Trump is unlawfully restricting the amount of time government workers can devote to union activity; a federal judge upholds a U.S. government ban on the use of Kaspersky Lab cybersecurity products in government networks; in the third installment of a four-part series on the effort overturn a 150-year old law in Florida that strips felons of their voting rights for life, a proposal to dramatically change the law goes before voters in November; the Ninth Circuit panel rules a relative of an Egyptian composer lacked legal standing to bring a copyright infringement claim against rapper and business mogul Jay-Z; the European General Court rules EU parliament officials were wrong to fine a far-right member for saying within the span of a year that migrants were “human garbage” and that that men are intellectually superior to women, and more.

Top CNS stories for today including a federal judge warning the lawyer for porn actress Stormy Daniels that his attacks against the president’s personal attorney, Michael Cohen, could interfere in Cohen’s rights to a fair trial; a federal judge blocks Education Secretary Besty DeVos’ plan to force more than 60,000 defrauded students to repay loans some describe as worthless; setting the stage for a two-month trial, a federal judge rules Wednesday that the same law that bars the harassment of women seeking abortion services also applies to practitioners of the Chinese spiritual practice Falun Gong; in the second of a four-part series, Courthouse News finds Florida has been tenacious in its effort to block felons from having their right to cast a ballot restored; new evidence goes a long way to debunking the longstanding theory of when and how people first came to the Americas, and more.

Top CNS stories for today including President Donald Trump claiming on Twitter that Special Counsel Robert Mueller is “meddling” in the upcoming midterm elections; the Trump administration says between 80,000 and 120,000 political prisoners are being held in prison camps in North Korea; a federal judge refuses to halt a $30 billion privacy class action against Facebook as the Ninth Circuit weighs an emergency petition to stay the case; the Supreme Court rules reimbursement of costs and expenses under the Mandatory Victims Restitution Act only applies to government investigations and criminal cases, not private investigations or civil proceedings; a Harvard University study suggests the death toll in Puerto Rico from Hurricane Maria could be 70 times higher the official numbers; in the first of a four-part series, Courthouse News explores efforts to overturn Florida’s 150-year ban on voting by convicted felons, and more.

Top CNS stories for today including Heracles at the center of federal forfeiture proceedings in Southern California; President Donald Trump says his administration is talking to North Korea in the wake of his canceling a planned June summit with leader Kim Jong Un; the Virginia trial for former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort on multiple counts of bank and tax fraud will be pushed back two weeks; disgraced movie producer Harvey Weinstein is arraigned on rape and sex-crime charges; the names of judges who used taxpayer dollars to settle sexual harassment and sex discrimination complaints will be made public, thanks to a rule of court clarification passed unanimously by California’s Judicial Council; the United Nations secretary general emphasized Wednesday that President Donald Trump has an obligation to migrant children, and more.