National News at a Glance

Border Officials Suspend Handing Over Migrant Families to Prosecutors

The nation’s top border security official said Monday that his agency has temporarily stopped handing over migrant adults who cross the Mexican border with children to prosecutors, undercutting claims by other Trump administration officials that zero tolerance for illegal immigration is still in place. Kevin K. McAleenan, commissioner of Customs and Border Protection, said his agency and the Justice Department should agree on a policy “where adults who bring their kids across the border — who violate our laws and risk their lives at the border — can be prosecuted without an extended separation from their children.”

Teenage Boy Who Fled Shelter May Be on Way Home to Honduras

The 15-year-old boy from Honduras who climbed a fence and fled a migrant shelter appeared to be making his way back home via Mexico, a person familiar with the case said Monday. While his exact whereabouts was not known Monday, the boy’s exit from Casa Padre in South Texas, the largest migrant youth shelter in the country, raised new questions about the degree to which shelter operators and federal officials were monitoring and protecting young unauthorized immigrants. The nonprofit group that runs Casa Padre, Southwest Key Programs, is among many contractors that receive federal money to house and provide services for immigrant children.

Supreme Court Upholds Texas Voting Maps That Were Called Discriminatory

The Supreme Court on Monday largely upheld an array of congressional and state legislative districts in Texas, reversing trial court rulings that said the districts violated the Constitution and the Voting Rights Act by discriminating against voters on the basis of race. The vote was 5-4. Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr., writing for the majority, said the trial court had “committed a fundamental legal error” by requiring state officials to justify their use of voting maps that had been largely drawn by the trial court itself. In dissent, Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote that the majority opinion represented a dark day for voting rights.

Justices Send Gay Rights and Voting Cases Back to Lower Courts

The Supreme Court on Monday ordered a lower court to reconsider the case of a Washington state florist who had refused to create a floral arrangement for a same-sex wedding. The justices vacated a decision against the florist from the state Supreme Court and instructed it to take a fresh look at the dispute in light of this month’s ruling in a similar dispute involving a Colorado baker. The court also passed up an opportunity to take another look at whether the Constitution bars extreme partisan gerrymandering, returning a North Carolina case. The move followed two decisions last week that sidestepped the main issues in partisan gerrymandering cases from Wisconsin and Maryland.

White Woman Nicknamed ‘Permit Patty’ Regrets Confrontation Over Black Girl Selling Water

A white woman who in a widely shared video appeared to call the authorities on an 8-year-old black girl for “illegally selling water without a permit” claimed Monday that she had acted out of frustration, not racial animus. The woman, Alison Ettel, said she was at home in San Francisco when she was disrupted by the girl and her mother, Erin Austin, selling bottled water outside their apartment building. “I said, ‘Please, I’m trying to work, you’re screaming, you’re yelling,’” Ettel said in an interview that aired on NBC’s “Today.” Austin disputed that account, telling “Today” that she and Ettel had never discussed the noise.

Depression as a Side Effect

More than one-third of Americans take at least one prescription drug that lists depression as a potential side effect, a new study reports, and users of such drugs have higher rates of depression than those who don’t take such drugs. About 200 prescription drugs can cause depression. “It was both surprising and worrisome to see how many medications have depression or suicidal symptoms as a side effect, given the burden of depression and suicide rates in the country,” said Dima Mazen Qato, an assistant professor and pharmacist at the University of Illinois at Chicago, who was the lead author of the paper, published June 12 in JAMA.

Key Question for Judge in Weinstein Case: Can Other Accusers Testify?

Lawyers call them “prior bad acts” and one of the most important decisions facing the judge presiding over Harvey Weinstein’s trial will be whether to allow them into evidence. Dozens of women have accused the movie producer of sexual misconduct from unwanted touching to sexual assault over the past three decades and some of those accusations could have been the basis of a criminal case in New York had they been reported earlier, before the time limit expired under the state’s statute of limitations, law enforcement officials say. Weinstein has been indicted in connection with only two of those accusations.