Reuters US Domestic News Summary

Following is a summary of current US domestic news briefs. U.S. military advances sprawling mission to quell housing-safety scandal

One U.S. military base has dubbed it Operation Victory Homefront. It's a mission the world's most powerful military never envisioned. To safeguard American service families living on U.S. bases around the world, the military branches have been dispatching commanders to visit nearly 300,000 housing units since February and document health and safety hazards – many of the military's own making. Son of sheriff's deputy charged with burning three Louisiana black churches

The son of a sheriff's deputy was charged with burning down three predominately black churches in southern Louisiana over the past two weeks, officials said on Thursday, saying they acted quickly out of concern he would strike again. Holden Matthews, 21, a white resident of St. Landry Parish, the county where the fires occurred, was charged with three counts of simple arson on religious buildings, each count of which carries a prison sentence of up to 15 years, Louisiana Fire Marshal H. "Butch" Browning said. White House considered releasing detained migrants in sanctuary cities: Washington Post

White House officials have tried to pressure U.S. immigration authorities to release migrants detained at the border into so-called sanctuary cities such as San Francisco to retaliate against President Donald Trump's political adversaries, the Washington Post reported on Thursday. The Post, which reviewed emails on the issue and spoke to unnamed officials at the Department of Homeland Security, said the White House proposed the measure at least twice in the past six months. Sanctuary cities are those where local officials decline to hand over illegal immigrants for deportation. U.S. Supreme Court will allow execution, Alabama still delayed as death warrant expired at midnight

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled early Friday that Alabama can proceed with the execution of a death row inmate whose lawyers argued that lethal injections had been botched in the past, causing a painful death and that execution by nitrogen hypoxia was a better alternative. But the order came too late, as the death warrant expired at midnight Thursday and Alabama prison officials called off the execution for that night. DOJ charges property firm founder, former executives in Ponzi scheme

U.S. federal prosecutors charged the owner and two former executives of Woodbridge Group of Companies LLC on Thursday with orchestrating a $1.3-billion Ponzi scheme involving 10,000 victims. Robert Shapiro, the owner of the luxury-property company, and former directors of investments Dayne Roseman and Ivan Acevedo were charged in the Southern District of Florida with conspiracy to commit mail and wire fraud and substantive mail fraud counts, the Department of Justice (DOJ) said in a statement. Chicago sues Jussie Smollett over costs of investigating alleged attack

The city of Chicago filed a lawsuit on Thursday against Jussie Smollett seeking three times the damages it said it incurred in the investigation of a hate crime that authorities allege the "Empire" actor staged. The lawsuit, which did not specify the amount of damages, was filed in Cook County Circuit Court over two weeks after prosecutors dismissed the criminal charges against Smollett alleging he fabricated the Jan. 29 attack. Oh, brother! NASA twins study shows how space changes the human body

An American astronaut experienced multiple biological changes in space but returned to normal - with some exceptions - after coming back to Earth, according to a study involving twin brothers that shed light on how space flight affects the human body. In research published on Thursday, scientists compared Scott Kelly to identical twin Mark Kelly after Scott spent 340 days in orbit on the International Space Station and Mark remained Earth-bound. Both are now retired as NASA astronauts, and Mark is running for a U.S. Senate seat in Arizona. 'Smart guy' Florida test taker to plead guilty in U.S. college admissions scandal

A former counselor at a Florida private school is expected to plead guilty on Friday to secretly taking college placement tests for the children of wealthy parents as part of the largest admissions fraud scheme uncovered in U.S. history. Mark Riddell, 36, faces charges stemming from his role in the scheme that prosecutors said allowed wealthy parents including the actresses Felicity Huffman and Lori Loughlin to use cheating and bribes to help their children secure spots at universities like Yale, Georgetown and the University of Southern California. F-words and T-shirts: U.S. Supreme Court weighs foul language trademarks

In the staid world of the U.S. Supreme Court, where decorum and etiquette are prized and silence is enforced by court police, the F-word could create quite a stir. Yet that expletive and others will be the focus on Monday when the nine justices hear arguments in a free-speech case brought by Los Angeles-based clothing designer Erik Brunetti. His streetwear brand "FUCT" - which sounds like, but is spelled differently than, a profanity - was denied a trademark by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. A new 'bomb cyclone' blizzard hits U.S. Plains and Midwest

A "bomb cyclone" blizzard, the second in a month, hit the Rockies on Wednesday and spun into the U.S. Plains and Midwest, bringing fears of more flooding in areas still recovering from last month's deluge. Warm spring temperatures on Tuesday, upwards of 80 degrees Fahrenheit in Denver, gave way to frigid 20s, heavy snow, gale-force winds and life-threatening conditions, the National Weather Service said.