Editor’s Note: This listicle is part of a weekly series by The Ball State Daily News summarizing five stories from across the United States. All summaries are based on stories published by The Associated Press.
Congress working on the impeachment inquiry during recess, winners of the 2019 Nobel Prize in economics, the shooting of a woman at her home by a police officer in Texas, California’s power shutoffs and the citizenship question in the 2020 census make up this week’s five national stories.
What’s next in the impeachment inquiry as Congress returns?
Congress is returning from a two-week recess Tuesday, but three House committees investigating impeachment worked through the break, issuing multiple subpoenas and holding depositions with State Department officials relevant to the inquiry. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif) has said she wants the committees to work “expeditiously” as Democrats gather evidence and prepare to make a final decision on whether to vote to impeach the president.
Read more: Trump impeachment inquiry
3 economists who study poverty win Nobel Prize
Two researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a third from Harvard University won the 2019 Nobel Prize in economics Monday for groundbreaking research into what works and what doesn’t in the fight to reduce global poverty. The award went to MIT’s Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo and Harvard’s Michael Kremer. The 46-year-old Duflo is the youngest person ever to win the prize and only the second woman, after Elinor Ostrom in 2009.
Read more: Nobel Prizes
Latest deadly police shooting raises questions about tactics
While most non-emergency calls asking to check on someone’s home prove uneventful, a few, like one over the weekend in Fort Worth, Texas, end up with someone getting killed by police. Experts in law enforcement training and tactics say there are many questions raised by the shooting of 28-year-old Atatiana Jefferson, shot at her home by a bullet fired through a window by an officer responding to a call in the middle of the night about her front door being open.
Read more: Shot at home
Do California power shutoffs work? Hard to know, experts say
Millions of Californians spent part of the week in the dark in an unprecedented effort to prevent another devastating wildfire. It was the fifth time Pacific Gas & Electric Co. preemptively cut the power but by far the largest to date in the utility’s effort to prevent a deadly wildfire sparked by its power lines. Experts say it’s hard to know what might have happened had the power stayed on or if the utility’s proactive shutoffs are to thank for California’s mild fire season this year.
Read more: Wildfires
Census Bureau seeks state data, including citizenship info
The U.S. Census Bureau is asking states for drivers’ license records that typically include citizenship data and has made a request for information on recipients of government assistance. This comes amid President Donald Trump’s efforts to make citizenship a key aspect of federal information-gathering in the run-up to the 2020 Census, despite this year’s U.S. Supreme Court ruling that a specific citizenship question can’t be included in the 2020 Census questionnaire.
Read more: Census 2020