Reuters US Domestic News Summary

Following is a summary of current US domestic news briefs. OxyContin maker Purdue agrees to settle Oklahoma opioid case, source says

Purdue Pharma LP has agreed to settle a lawsuit by the state of Oklahoma accusing the maker of painkiller OxyContin of helping fuel an opioid abuse epidemic, a person familiar with the matter said on Tuesday. The settlement is the first stemming from a wave of recent lawsuits over the drugmaker's marketing of painkillers. Democrats push for Mueller report to Congress by next week, Republicans resist

A fight brewed between Democrats and Republicans over the public release of Special Counsel Robert Mueller's report on Russian meddling in the 2016 U.S. election, while President Donald Trump kept up attacks on his critics on Monday. As the Senate Judiciary Committee's Republican chairman called for an investigation into the origins of the probe of any Trump campaign links with Russians, the Senate leader blocked a second attempt by Democrats to pass a measure aimed at pushing the Justice Department into full disclosure of the report. Petrochemical disaster still hampering efforts to clear Houston shipping bottleneck

The backlog of vessels waiting to traverse through the Houston Ship Channel grew on Monday while it remained closed to traffic for a third day as emergency workers attempted to clear a petrochemical spill from the Intercontinental Terminals Co (ITC) storage facility in Deer Park, the U.S. Coast Guard said on Monday. Thirty-one vessels waited to enter the Houston Ship Channel on Monday, while another 31 waited to leave, up from 26, respectively, on Sunday morning. The seven-mile section of the Houston Ship Channel from Light 116 to Tucker's Bayou remained closed, said Coast Guard Vessel Tracking Service Watch Supervisor Ashley Dumont. Flooding woes add to trade war stress in 'Trump country' farm belt

Nebraska grain farmer Ryan Ueberrhein was barely breaking even after the U.S.-China trade war pushed prices for his soybean crop to a decade low. Then the nearby Elkhorn River burst its banks as flooding swept across the U.S. farm belt. Uberrhein's farm was left covered in debris after the roiling water receded. He has mounting debts. And he is worried that President Donald Trump may not be able to strike a trade deal with China that would end tariffs on U.S. soybean exports - and allow him to sell whatever grain is left intact at a better price. Ex-Trump campaign aide Papadopoulos disavows Mueller plea deal

George Papadopoulos, the first Trump campaign aide charged in Special Counsel Robert Mueller's Russia investigation, disavowed his guilty plea in a book released on Tuesday, claiming he was unfairly pressured into cutting a deal. Papadopoulos, who was plucked out of obscurity to work as a foreign policy adviser for Donald Trump during the 2016 presidential election campaign, has become an increasingly vocal critic of Mueller's Russia probe since completing a 12-day prison term in December. U.S. House to vote on overriding Trump veto of resolution ending border emergency

A test of U.S. Republican lawmakers' loyalty to President Donald Trump will come on Tuesday when the House of Representatives votes on a long-shot effort to override his veto of a resolution ending the emergency he declared at the U.S.-Mexico border. The Democratic-led House had little expectation of gaining the Republican support needed to reach the roughly 290 votes, or two-thirds majority, required to override Trump's veto. The 435-member House passed the resolution last month by 245-182, later joined by the Republican-led Senate. Pentagon chief says $1 billion of funding shifted to border wall

The U.S. Department of Defense shifted $1 billion to plan and build a 57-mile section of "pedestrian fencing", roads and lighting along the border between the United States and Mexico, the Pentagon chief said on Monday. Last week, the Pentagon gave Congress a list that included $12.8 billion of construction projects for which it said funds could be redirected for construction along the U.S.-Mexico border. Kamala Harris courts unions, minorities with call to raise teacher pay

U.S. Senator Kamala Harris on Tuesday released a plan that would use federal money to raise teachers' salaries, in a nod to several constituencies whose help she will need to win next year's Democratic presidential nomination – teachers unions, women and black voters. The proposal – Harris' first major policy rollout as a 2020 White House candidate – would invest $315 billion over 10 years to give the average teacher a $13,500 raise, or about a 23 percent salary increase, according to a Harris campaign aide. It would be financed by expanding an estate tax on the wealthy but the aide did not provide details. U.S. high court to hear historic electoral map manipulation cases

In two cases that could reverberate through U.S. politics for years to come, the Supreme Court is set on Tuesday to hear arguments over the contentious practice of manipulating electoral district boundaries to entrench one party in power. The justices last year failed to deliver a definitive ruling on the legality of the practice, called partisan gerrymandering. They will get another chance in cases challenging North Carolina's Republican-drawn statewide U.S. House of Representatives map and a single Democratic-drawn House district in Maryland. Father of Sandy Hook victim found dead in apparent suicide: police

The father of one of the children killed in the 2012 mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School was found dead of an apparent suicide on Monday morning at his office in Newtown, Connecticut, police said. Jeremy Richman, 49, was the father of Avielle Richman, one of 20 children, all 6 or 7 years old, killed along with six adult staff members by a man with a semi-automatic rifle at the school in Newtown. It stands as one of the deadliest mass shootings in U.S. history.