US News Roundup: 2020 census-related cases; Trump's political war and more

Following is a summary of current US domestic news briefs.

Department of Justice shakes up team handling 2020 census-related cases

A new team of Civil Division lawyers at the Department of Justice will take over handling 2020 census-related cases, a spokeswoman for the agency said on Sunday, a shake-up that came as President Donald Trump pushes to include a contentious citizenship question in the decennial population survey. Spokeswoman Kerri Kupec did not give a reason for the change, but an official at the DOJ said the new team would be a mix of career and political appointees, including lawyers who work in the consumer protection branch.

U.S. financier Epstein expected to be charged in sex trafficking case -source

Federal prosecutors in New York on Monday are expected to announce charges against financier Jeffrey Epstein related to sex trafficking of underage girls, a source familiar with the matter said, more than a decade after he avoided similar charges in Florida in a plea deal. Epstein, 66, was arrested on Saturday night and could appear in federal court later on Monday to hear the charges. His lawyer, Jack Goldberger, has said Epstein will plead not guilty.

In losing legal battles over census, Trump may win political war

The Trump administration has few realistic options to get a citizenship question onto next year's census, but by keeping the issue in the public eye it could still trigger an undercount of residents in Democratic-leaning areas, legal and political experts told Reuters. Constant media coverage linking citizenship and census forms could scare undocumented immigrants away from responding and rally U.S. President Donald Trump's base to participate, they said. That, in turn, would help redraw voting districts across the country in favor of his Republican party, encouraging the president to pursue a legal battle that he has little chance of winning.

Starbucks apologizes to police after six officers were asked to leave Arizona store

Starbucks Corp on Sunday apologized after an employee at one of its stores in Tempe, Arizona asked six police officers to leave or move out of a customer's line of sight, triggering social media backlash. The officers had visited the store on July 4 and had paid for the drinks, before one company employee approached them about a customer not feeling safe because of the police presence, the Tempe Officers Association said on Twitter.

U.N.'s Bachelet 'appalled' at U.S. treatment of migrants and refugees

U.N. human rights chief Michelle Bachelet is "appalled" at the conditions in which the United States is keeping detained migrants and refugees, including children, her office said in a statement on Monday. "As a pediatrician, but also as a mother and a former head of state, I am deeply shocked that children are forced to sleep on the floor in overcrowded facilities, without access to adequate healthcare or food, and with poor sanitation conditions," the statement quoted Bachelet as saying.

Florida blast rocks shopping center, 21 hurt; ruptured gas line eyed

An explosion obliterated a vacant restaurant at a shopping center in South Florida on Saturday, injuring at least 21 people and showering the parking lot with debris. Firefighters found a ruptured natural gas line, but authorities said the cause of the explosion in Plantation, Florida, about six miles west of Fort Lauderdale, was still under investigation.

U.S. to seek death penalty for murder of Chinese grad student

U.S. prosecutors were expected on Monday to argue that an Illinois man who kidnapped, raped and murdered a Chinese graduate student two years ago should be executed. A jury in U.S. District Court in Peoria, Illinois, found Brendt Christensen, 29, guilty last month of the abduction and murder of Yingying Zhang, a 26-year-old student at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Border agency knew of troubling Facebook posts in 2016: acting secretary

U.S. Department of Homeland Security officials knew in 2016 about a private Facebook group where border agents posted racist and misogynistic comments, acting DHS Secretary Kevin McAleenan said on Sunday. McAleenan said on ABC's "This Week" that he had been told about an allegation in 2016 "that was investigated, followed up on, and that discipline was meted out on an agent that made an offensive post on that website."

Biden apologizes for touting past work with segregationist senators

Seeking to put to rest a weeks-old controversy that has dogged his campaign for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination, Joe Biden apologized on Saturday for touting his past record of working civilly with segregationists serving in the U.S. Senate in the 1970s. Biden, who served as vice president under the first black U.S. president Barack Obama, had until now pointedly resisted apologizing for the remarks he made on June 18 that had drawn criticism from Democratic rivals, exposing racial and generational tensions among the candidates.

California desert braces for aftershocks from major 7.1 quake

Emergency officials in Southern California's high desert braced for strong, potentially dangerous aftershocks from a major earthquake that damaged buildings, ruptured gas lines and sparked numerous fires near the quake's remote epicenter. The powerful magnitude 7.1 tremor rocked the Mojave Desert town of Ridgecrest near Death Valley National Park as darkness fell on Friday night, jolting the area with eight times more force than a 6.4 quake that had struck the same area 34 hours earlier.