Reuters US Domestic News Summary

Following is a summary of current US domestic news briefs.

U.S. lawmaker Walorski, two staffers die in Indiana car crash

U.S. Congresswoman Jackie Walorski and two members of her staff died on Wednesday when the vehicle they were traveling in collided head-on with a car that veered into their lane, police in Indiana and her office said. Walorski, 58, a Republican who represented Indiana's 2nd congressional district in the U.S. House of Representatives, was mourned by President Joe Biden and her colleagues in Congress as an honorable public servant who strived to work across party lines to deliver for her constituents. The White House said it would fly flags at half-staff in her memory.

U.S. Justice Department sues Trump adviser Navarro over White House records

The U.S. Department of Justice on Wednesday sued Peter Navarro, an adviser to former President Donald Trump, seeking emails from his time in the White House that he has refused to return without a grant of immunity. The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., centers on Navarro's use of a personal ProtonMail for some official White House business.

White House frustrated as Washington mayor seeks troops to help handle migrants

Thousands of migrants bused to Washington in recent months by Republican governors of states on the U.S.-Mexico border have caused tensions between the White House and the Democratic mayor of the U.S. capital city, four U.S. officials told Reuters. Last week, Washington Mayor Muriel Bowser called on President Joe Biden, a fellow Democrat, to mobilize the National Guard to provide aid and shelter for migrants arriving after long trips from Texas and Arizona. White House officials and Washington-area volunteers helping migrants are voicing frustration, saying the aid is unnecessary and the request, which became public last week, plays into the hands of Biden's Republican critics.

U.S. regulators defend requiring more data on monkeypox drug

As U.S. monkeypox cases rise, U.S. health agencies in a medical journal article published on Wednesday defended their decision to require human trial data to show that SIGA Technologies' experimental drug TPOXX is safe and effective to treat the virus. U.S. agencies have been under pressure to ease access to the drug, which is being distributed by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) under a special "compassionate use" access that requires doctors to request it from the agency or their health department and enroll each patient in a study.

Biden signs abortion order, says Republicans clueless about women's power

President Joe Biden said on Wednesday the Supreme Court and Republicans are clueless about the power of American women as he signed a second executive order aimed at protecting abortion rights. The order asks the federal health department to consider allowing Medicaid funds to be used to help facilitate out of state travel for abortions. Like Biden's first order signed in July, it is meant to address the recent Supreme Court decision to end the nationwide constitutional right to abortion.

Sandy Hook parents seek to stop InfoWars bankruptcy payments to Alex Jones

Parents of children killed in the 2012 Sandy Hook school massacre urged a U.S. bankruptcy judge on Wednesday not to allow the parent company of far-right website InfoWars to send any money to its founder, conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, or his companies until they have an opportunity to get to the bottom of InfoWars' finances. As a jury deliberates in Austin, Texas, over how much Jones must pay two parents for his false claims that the deadly shooting was a hoax, families of Sandy Hook victims who have sued Jones for defamation in that trial and others who have sued in Connecticut warned a bankruptcy judge in Houston that Jones might continue to pull assets from InfoWars parent company Free Speech Systems LLC while using its bankruptcy case to avoid paying court judgments in the defamation cases.

Tyson Foods ignoring subpoena for meat price gouging probe, NY attorney general says

Tyson Foods Inc, one of the largest U.S. meat producers, is refusing to comply with a subpoena for a civil probe into possible price gouging during the COVID-19 pandemic, New York's attorney general said on Wednesday. Letitia James, the attorney general, asked a state judge in Manhattan to require Tyson to turn over materials including contractual terms, prices, and profit margins for its sales of meat to New York retailers from December 2019 to April 2022.

U.S. Senate panel seeks legislative path to avoid repeat of Jan. 6 violence

A U.S. Senate panel on Wednesday took up proposals to reform federal election law, aiming to avoid a repeat of the violence of Jan. 6, 2021, when Donald Trump supporters stormed the Capitol in an effort to overturn his election defeat. The Senate Rules Committee is reviewing two legislative proposals to craft a bill to reform the 1887 Electoral Count Act, which the former president and his allies sought to use to overturn his 2020 election loss to President Joe Biden.

'End this nightmare,' Sandy Hook parents' lawyer tells jurors in Alex Jones defamation trial

Jurors in the Alex Jones defamation trial began deliberations on Wednesday after a lawyer for a child killed in the Sandy Hook massacre said they should "end this nightmare" and force the U.S. conspiracy theorist to pay them $150 million for falsely claiming the shooting was a hoax. Jones, founder of the Infowars radio show and webcast, is on trial in Texas to determine how much he and his company, Free Speech Systems LLC, must pay for spreading falsehoods about the killing of 20 children and six staff at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, on Dec. 14, 2012.

FBI returns electronic devices to former Trump attorney Giuliani -lawyer

FBI agents recently returned the cell phones and other electronic devices they had seized from Donald Trump's former attorney Rudy Giuliani, in a possible sign the investigation into whether he failed to register as a foreign agent of Ukraine could be winding down, his attorney said on Wednesday. Robert Costello, Giuliani's lawyer, told Reuters he has not been officially notified yet whether federal prosecutors in Manhattan are closing the investigation.

(This story has not been edited by Devdiscourse staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)