National News at a Glance

Trump Set To Tilt Court As Kennedy Retires

Justice Anthony M. Kennedy announced Wednesday that he would retire this summer, setting in motion a furious fight over the future of the Supreme Court and giving President Donald Trump the chance to put a conservative stamp on the American legal system for generations. Kennedy, 81, has been a critical swing vote on the sharply polarized court for nearly three decades as he embraced liberal views on gay rights, abortion and the death penalty but helped conservatives trim voting rights, block gun control measures and unleash campaign spending by corporations.

House Rejects Immigration Overhaul Despite Trump’s Late Plea

The House resoundingly rejected a far-reaching immigration overhaul Wednesday, despite a last-minute plea from President Donald Trump, as internal divisions in the Republican ranks continued to hobble legislative efforts to protect young immigrants in the country illegally. The 121-301 vote was an embarrassment to both Trump and House Republican leaders who had spent weeks trying to bring together Republican hard-liners and immigration moderates. Republicans in the House are now likely to turn their focus to narrower legislation that would seek to keep migrant families together at the border, an issue that senators are also looking to address.

Officer Who Killed Antwon Rose Is Charged With Criminal Homicide

A police officer in East Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, was charged with criminal homicide on Wednesday in the fatal shooting last week of Antwon Rose II, 17. Officer Michael Rosfeld, 30, turned himself in to the authorities around 7 a.m. and was booked into a jail in Allegheny County. He was arraigned about an hour later and released after posting $250,000 bail. The Allegheny County district attorney, Stephen A. Zappala Jr., said that Rosfeld had failed basic police procedures in the moments before Rose was shot, gave statements to investigators that were contradicted by witnesses and had a troubling employment history with other police departments.

Charlottesville Car Attack Suspect Indicted on Federal Hate-Crimes Charges

James Alex Fields Jr., the suspect in the death of a woman who was mowed down along with others by a car last summer at a counterprotest to a white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, was indicted Wednesday on federal hate crime charges. The charges stood in contrast to President Donald Trump’s refusal to condemn white supremacists and neo-Nazis after the woman, Heather Heyer, was fatally struck. “Today’s indictment should send a clear message to every would-be criminal in America that we aggressively prosecute violent crimes of hate that threaten the core principles of our nation,” Attorney General Jeff Sessions said in a statement Wednesday.

Joe Jackson, Domineering Father of a Musical Dynasty, Dies at 89

Joe Jackson, the domineering father and manager who molded his sons into the immensely popular Jackson 5 and helped launch his son Michael and his daughter Janet on explosive solo careers before alienating all of them because of his abusive behavior, has died in Las Vegas. He was 89. The celebrity news website TMZ said he died Wednesday morning. Jackson had been hospitalized with terminal cancer, according to news reports. A crane operator and an unsuccessful rhythm-and-blues musician, Jackson was struggling to provide for his wife, Katherine, and their children in the mid-1960s when he discovered his sons’ budding talents and began pushing them into the music business.

Genealogists Turn to Cousins’ DNA and Family Trees to Crack Five More Cold Cases

When the Golden State Killer case was cracked in April with the help of a genealogist and an open-source ancestry site, many wondered if this was the new frontier of criminal investigations. This week all signs point to yes. In the past eight days alone, genealogical sleuthing techniques that are old to a handful of genealogists but new to most law enforcement have led to arrests in Washington state and Pennsylvania and unearthed a lead in a 37-year-old homicide in Texas. All three cases were revived when crime scene DNA was uploaded to GEDMatch, the same open-source ancestry site used in the Golden State killer case.

NASA Again Delays Launch of Troubled Webb Telescope; Cost Estimate Rises to $9.7 Billion

In a blow to NASA’s prestige and its budget, America’s next great space telescope has been postponed again. NASA announced Wednesday that the James Webb Space Telescope, once scheduled to be launched into orbit around the sun this fall, will take three more years and $1 billion more to complete. A report delivered to NASA by an independent review board estimated that the cost of the troubled Webb telescope would now be $9.66 billion, and that it would not be ready to launch until March 30, 2021.