NEWS OF THE DAY
From Across the Nation
_1 Pipeline challenges: A judge has combined lawsuits filed by four Sioux tribes over the Dakota Access pipeline, streamlining the drawnout legal battle over the $3.8 billion project to move North Dakota oil to a distribution point in Illinois. The neighboring Standing Rock and Cheyenne River tribes teamed up last summer in the main lawsuit against Texas-based pipeline developer Energy Transfer Partners and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the federal agency that granted pipeline permits at more than 200 water crossings, including the Missouri River. The Yankton Sioux also sued last summer, and the Oglala Sioux filed its own lawsuit last month.
_2 Power struggle: North Carolina judges issued partial victories Friday to both Republican legislators and new Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper over laws designed to undercut his powers. The judicial panel threw out laws approved two weeks before Cooper took office that limit his authority in carrying out elections and that give civil service job protections to hundreds of former Republican Gov. Pat McCrory’s political appointees. But a majority of the three judges also upheld the new law subjecting Cooper’s Cabinet secretaries to formal confirmation by a majority of the state Senate.
_3 Transgender lawsuit: The office of Nebraska’s attorney general filed a request to drop a 10-state lawsuit it led challenging the Obama administration’s guidance on locker room and bathroom use by transgender students. The guidance had directed schools to allow transgender students to use restrooms and locker rooms according to their expressed gender. Those who didn’t would have risked a loss of federal funding. Nebraska filed the challenge in July. It was joined by Arkansas, Kansas, Michigan, Montana, North Dakota, Ohio, South Carolina, South Dakota and Wyoming.
_4 Marines’ new brand: The Marine Corps is launching a new recruitment ad campaign meant to draw Millennials by showing Marines as not only strong warriors but good citizens. “Battles Won” is the name of the campaign that includes TV ads and online clips of Marines unloading “Toys for Tots” boxes and real video of a Marine veteran tackling an armed robber. The campaign has been in the works for months, but its release comes as the Marine Corps’ image has taken a beating amid an investigation into nude photos of female Marines posted without their consent on a private Facebook page used by Marines. The Marine Corp is trying to boost its numbers and recruit more women, and the new TV ads include clips of women in combat fatigues. _5 Robert E. Lee holiday: Arkansas lawmakers gave final approval Friday to legislation removing Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee from the holiday honoring slain civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. Once the bill is signed into law, Mississippi and Alabama will be the only states that honor Lee and King on the same day.