Nightly Brief

Your Wednesday night briefing from the staff of Courthouse News

Top CNS stories for today including the Supreme Court appearing highly conflicted over whether Maryland violated the First Amendment rights of Republicans by shifting the political makeup of their congressional district; one of several emoluments clause challenges faced by President Donald Trump received lift-off with a federal judge finding that Maryland and Washington, D.C., have standing to sue; in a stunning reversal, the Federal Circuit revived Oracle’s $9 billion copyright infringement lawsuit over Google’s Android smartphone platform; a NASA spacecraft that will be heading to the sun in July gets a final going over at the Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland before being shipped to Florida; a federal judge rules that descendants of Holocaust victims accusing France’s national railway of looting property from tens of thousands of Jews bound for concentration camps must bring their case before a French commission before suing in U.S. court, and more.

Sign up for CNS Nightly Brief, a roundup of the day’s top stories delivered directly to your email Monday through Friday.

National

1.)  Grappling with its second partisan gerrymandering case of the term, the Supreme Court appeared highly conflicted Wednesday on whether Maryland violated the First Amendment rights of Republicans by shifting the political makeup of their congressional district.

2.)  A federal judge has denied Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s request for a protective order for materials gathered during discovery for the upcoming trial of former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort in Alexandria, Virginia.

Regional

**7.) ** Louisiana will not bring criminal charges against two white police officers involved in the shooting death of Alton Sterling, a black man, which sparked widespread protests two years ago, the attorney general’s office said Tuesday.

**8.) ** Two tenants of the building scorched in last week’s deadly fire on the set of Edward Norton’s upcoming film “Motherless Brooklyn” filed a $14 million lawsuit Tuesday against the property owner and film company.

Science

**9.) ** NASA’s mission to touch the sun – or come as close as humanity has ever come before – is scheduled to launch on July 31, but on Wednesday at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland, the craft at the heart of the mission got its last going over before being shipped to Florida.

10.)  Human footprints recently discovered off Canada’s Pacific coast may be 13,000 years old, suggesting there was migration to the area during the last ice age.

International

**11.) ** A federal judge ruled that descendants of Holocaust victims accusing France’s national railway of looting property from tens of thousands of Jews bound for concentration camps must bring their case before a French commission before suing in U.S. court.