This is your daily news rundown for Friday, Feb. 27. In this edition:
- The Justice Department is suing Utah for not providing voter registration databases
- Brigham Young University sent nine acceptance letters by mistake
- Hogle Zoo euthanized a newborn gorilla after it was injured in a troop conflict
The Justice Department is suing Utah to access voters’ private information
The Justice Department is suing Utah and four other states for refusing to hand over voter registration databases.
The Trump administration claims it needs complete voter lists — including private info like Social Security numbers, driver license data, and birth dates — to ensure transparency and security of elections.
Notably, the federal government doesn’t run elections, even national ones.
Utah Lt. Gov. Deidre Henderson said that neither state nor federal law entitles the Department of Justice to collect private information on voters in this way.
Utah, Oklahoma, Kentucky, West Virginia, and New Jersey are the current targets of lawsuits, but far from the first — last year, the administration sued 24 states and Washington, D.C. for not complying with their request. Four of those lawsuits have since been dismissed.
Brigham Young University sent nine acceptance letters by mistake
Getting a college acceptance letter can be a big moment for young students — but for nine people applying to Brigham Young University, those letters were sent by mistake.
The university’s director of admissions Chad Johnson said a systems error led to those students being told they were admitted to BYU when they were not.
He added that the admissions team was working to ensure this mistake didn’t occur in the future.
It’s not the first time BYU has had an error in acceptance letters — in 2024, the school’s College of Nursing mistakenly sent prospective students hundreds of both acceptance and rejection letters.
Hogle Zoo euthanized a newborn gorilla after it was injured in a ‘troop conflict’
Hogle Zoo has euthanized a newborn Western lowland gorilla after it was injured by other gorillas.
Just hours after the birth on Wednesday, a conflict within the gorilla troop occurred. The care team quickly assessed the newborn’s injuries and made the decision to humanely euthanize it.
The zoo said that conflict can occur in gorilla troops and a birth can bring rapid shifts within a group. However, they said this was a highly unusual outcome.
The gorillas are being closely monitored, especially the mother gorilla, and the zoo is also providing support for the zoo team as they mourn.
