Reuters US Domestic News Summary

Following is a summary of current US domestic news briefs. Legal challenges to Trump emergency declaration face uphill battle

Democratic lawmakers, states and others mulling legal challenges to President Donald Trump's national emergency declaration to obtain funds to build a U.S.-Mexico border wall face an uphill and probably losing battle in a showdown likely to be decided by the conservative-majority Supreme Court, legal experts said. After being rebuffed by the U.S. Congress in his request for $5.7 billion to help build the wall that was a signature 2016 campaign promise, Trump on Friday invoked emergency powers given to the president under a 1976 law. The move, according to the White House, enables Trump to bypass lawmakers and redirect money already appropriated by Congress for other purposes and use it for wall construction. California, New York promise legal challenges to Trump's emergency declaration

California and New York suggested on Friday they would take legal action against President Donald Trump's national emergency declaration aimed at freeing up billions of dollars in funds to build a wall along the U.S. border with Mexico. Trump's move would circumvent Congress, and he predicted in comments made in the White House's Rose Garden that the emergency declaration would face a lengthy legal challenge. Dismissed employee kills five co-workers in Illinois factory shooting

A gunman opened fire at an Illinois factory just after receiving notice of termination from his job there on Friday, killing five fellow workers and wounding five policemen before he was slain by police, authorities said. The assailant, identified as Gary Martin, 45, had worked at the Henry Pratt Company for 15 years before Friday's violence unfolded at the firm's sprawling facility in Aurora, 40 miles (65 km) west of Chicago, Aurora Police Chief Kristen Ziman said. Trump to nominate Jeffrey Byard as U.S. emergency management chief

President Donald Trump intends to nominate Jeffrey Byard, a senior official at the U.S. Federal Emergency Management Agency, to be its administrator, replacing Brock Long who said this week he was resigning, the White House said on Friday. Byard currently serves as associate administrator for response and recovery at FEMA, the agency's "senior-most executive over disaster response, recovery, logistics, and field operations," the White House said in a statement. Trump declares emergency for border wall, House panel launches probe

President Donald Trump on Friday declared a national emergency in a bid to fund his promised wall at the U.S.-Mexico border without congressional approval, an action Democrats vowed to challenge as a violation of the U.S. Constitution. The Republican president's move, circumventing Congress, seeks to make good on a 2016 presidential campaign pledge to build a border wall that Trump insists is necessary to curtail illegal immigration he blames for bringing crime and drugs into the United States. U.S. Supreme Court to decide legality of census citizenship query

The U.S. Supreme Court will decide the fate of a fiercely contested plan by President Donald Trump's administration to add a citizenship question to the 2020 census, agreeing on Friday to an expedited review of a judge's ruling blocking the plan. The justices, in a brief order, granted the administration's request to hear its appeal of Manhattan-based U.S. District Judge Jesse Furman's Jan. 15 ruling even before a lower appeals court has considered the matter. Oral arguments will take place in late April, with a ruling due by the end of June. Army calls base housing hazards 'unconscionable,' details steps to protect families

Deeply troubled by military housing conditions exposed by Reuters reporting, the U.S. Army's top leadership vowed on Friday to renegotiate its housing contracts with private real estate firms, test tens of thousands of homes for toxins and hold its own commanders responsible for protecting Army base residents from dangerous homes. In an interview, the Secretary of the Army Mark Esper said Reuters reports and a chorus of concerns from military families had opened his eyes to the need for urgent overhauls of the Army’s privatized housing system, which accommodates more than 86,000 families. Amazon invites Ocasio-Cortez for tour, calls worker claims untrue

A senior Amazon.com Inc executive on Friday disputed claims raised by Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez that Amazon workers face "dehumanizing conditions" as being untrue and invited her to take a tour of company facilities. Ocasio-Cortez, a newly elected progressive Democrat who was an outspoken critic of the plans to locate Amazon's second headquarters in a New York City neighborhood near her congressional district, asked on Twitter if Amazon's culture of "strict performance" is "why Amazon workers have to urinate in bottles & work while on food stamps to meet 'targets?' Performance shouldn’t come at the cost of dehumanizing conditions." Senate inquiry to probe Russian agent's meetings with Treasury, Fed

The U.S. Senate Finance Committee has launched an inquiry into meetings in 2015 between top Obama administration officials, a Russian central banker and Maria Butina, who has pleaded guilty to conspiring to work as a Russian agent to influence American foreign policy. The bipartisan inquiry, announced jointly by the panel's Chairman Charles Grassley and ranking Democrat Ron Wyden, was sparked by an exclusive Reuters article from July. Philadelphia beats U.S. appeal in sanctuary city case

A federal appeals court said on Friday the Trump administration cannot cut off grants to Philadelphia for its refusal to cooperate with immigration authorities seeking to deport immigrants who are in the country illegally. In a 3-0 decision, the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia said the U.S. attorney general lacked power to condition that city's receipt of $1.6 million for local law enforcement on its compliance with three new requirements.