Top Eight
Your Tuesday night briefing from the staff of Courthouse News
Top eight stories for today including California Governor Gavin Newsom appointed the state’s first Latino senator to fill Vice President-elect Kamala Harris’ seat; President-elect Joe Biden will name Connecticut’s education chief Miguel Cardona as the U.S. Secretary of Education; Texas and eight other Republican-controlled states urged a federal judge to end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, and more.
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National
1.) President-elect Joe Biden will name Connecticut’s education chief Miguel Cardona as the U.S. Secretary of Education, maintaining a commitment to a diverse cabinet while tapping someone who pushed to keep schools open amid the coronavirus pandemic.
2.) Not 24 hours out from mounting its defense to one of three federal antitrust suits it faces, Google was thrust in the headlines Tuesday upon the leak of a draft version of the suit in Texas that accuses the search engine of secret dealings with Facebook.
3.) Texas and eight other Republican-controlled states urged a federal judge Tuesday to end Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, sticking to their claims the Obama administration overstepped its authority in creating the program.
4.) Pharmaceutical companies are holding out hope that the mRNA technology used to develop breakthrough Covid-19 vaccines is flexible enough to provide for seasonal shots in case immunity gained from initial vaccination is short-lived.
5.) President-elect Joe Biden forecast a bipartisan approach to solve problems created by the pandemic in the beginning stages of his presidency during a speech Tuesday while reserving a sharp rebuke of President Donald Trump for his failure to guard against and respond to a cybersecurity breach of federal agencies.
Regional
6.) Although nearly 40% of California’s 40 million residents are Latino or Hispanic, the state has never had a Latino or Hispanic U.S. senator. Until Tuesday, when Governor Gavin Newsom tapped Secretary of State Alex Padilla to fill Vice President-elect Kamala Harris’ seat.
7.) The Democratic candidate for Iowa’s 2nd Congressional District filed a challenge to her six-vote loss with the U.S. House of Representatives on Tuesday, saying not all votes in her favor have been counted.
International
8.) Europe’s top rights court found that Russia was wrong to revoke a man’s nationality for not listing all of his siblings on a citizenship form.
