Reuters US Domestic News Summary

Following is a summary of current US domestic news briefs. Supreme Court to hear insurers' bid for $12 billion in Obamacare money

The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday agreed to decide whether insurers can seek $12 billion from the federal government under a program set up by the Obamacare law aimed at encouraging them to offer medical coverage to previously uninsured Americans. The justices will hear an appeal by a group of insurers of a lower court's ruling that Congress had suspended the government's obligation to make such payments. The insurers have said that ruling, if allowed to stand, would let the government pull a "bait-and-switch" and withhold money the companies were promised. Judge allows Missouri's only abortion clinic to stay open for at least five more days

A Missouri judge ruled on Monday the state's only abortion clinic can remain open for at least five more days, but he ordered Planned Parenthood to take its fight against closure to a state arbiter. Missouri health officials on Friday refused to renew the St. Louis clinic's license on the grounds that it failed to meet their standards. Stanford proposes $3.4 billion housing plan in high-cost California area

Stanford University unveiled a $3.4 billion plan on Monday to build thousands of homes for students and staff to ease a local housing crunch, but some officials expressed concern the project would worsen problems such as street traffic. The prestigious university, which has played a key role in the development of Silicon Valley's technology sector, is seeking to build 2.3 million square feet of facilities on and around its campus in Santa Clara County over about two decades. Jury recommends death penalty in sledgehammer killings of California family: media

A Southern California jury on Monday recommended the death penalty for a man convicted this month of the 2010 sledgehammer killings of a family of four whose bodies were later found buried in the Mojave Desert, media reports said. A San Bernardino County Superior Court jury found Charles "Chase" Merritt, 62, guilty on June 10 of four counts of first-degree murder in the deaths of a former business associate, Joseph McStay, and his family. Denver man accused of wife's murder can use her life insurance to pay for defense

A Denver man accused of killing his wife can use more than $500,000 received from her life insurance policy to pay for the lawyers defending him against the murder charge, Colorado’s highest court ruled on Monday. The opinion by the Colorado Supreme Court overturned a probate judge's ruling that Robert Feldman, 55, who is charged with first-degree murder in the 2015 slaying of his wife, Stacy, was not entitled to the insurance proceeds because of the state's "slayer statute." Seven migrant deaths reported in 'extreme heat' at U.S. border

Authorities in Texas reported seven migrant deaths on Monday, including those of a woman, two babies and a toddler, showing the danger of extreme summer heat as Central American families surge across the U.S.-Mexico border. The woman and three children may have been dead for days before they were found by U.S. Border Patrol near the Rio Grande in South Texas on Sunday, according to a local law enforcement official, who asked not to be named. Jury convicts Illinois man of Chinese graduate student's kidnap-murder

An Illinois man who prosecutors described as obsessed with serial killers was found guilty on Monday of the kidnapping and decapitation murder of a Chinese graduate student two years ago and could now face the death penalty. A U.S. District Court jury in Peoria deliberated for less than two hours before convicting Brendt Christensen, 29, of all charges in the disappearance and death of Yingying Zhang, a 26-year-old student at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. U.S. relocates hundreds of migrant children from overcrowded border station

Nearly 250 migrant children have been relocated to children's shelters from an overcrowded Texas border patrol station where attorneys said they had been held for weeks in dirty conditions without adequate food and water. Evelyn Stauffer, a spokeswoman for the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), said 249 children from the facility at Clint, Texas were being transferred to shelters run by the agency by Tuesday. Supreme Court strikes down stiff firearms penalties

Conservative Justice Neil Gorsuch sided with the U.S. Supreme Court's four liberal members on Monday in striking down as unconstitutionally vague a law imposing stiff criminal sentences for people convicted of certain crimes involving firearms. In the 5-4 decision, the court ruled against President Donald Trump's administration in declaring that the federal law in question was written too vaguely and thus violated the U.S. Constitution's guarantee of due process. The court's four other conservative justices dissented, including Brett Kavanaugh, who like Gorsuch was appointed by Trump. Bernie Sanders calls for canceling $1.6 trillion in student loan debt

U.S. presidential contender Bernie Sanders proposed a plan on Monday to cancel $1.6 trillion in student loans and pay for it with a tax on Wall Street, elevating the issue in the 2020 debate and going beyond proposals from his Democratic White House rivals. Sanders, an independent U.S. senator from Vermont, said his plan would wipe out college debt for 45 million Americans and be funded with a tax on stock, bond and derivatives transactions that would raise about $2.2 trillion over 10 years.