Tracy Mumford

Now, three quick updates from Washington.

At the Supreme Court this morning, the justices will hear back-to-back cases involving transgender athletes, the first time the court has formally taken on that specific issue.

The cases will test the constitutionality of state laws in West Virginia and Idaho that only allow students to participate in sports based on their sex assigned at birth, though rulings could have implications for 25 other states with similar laws.

At the court, lawyers for the athletes will make the case that the laws violate the Constitution's equal protection guarantee, while lawyers for the states and the Trump administration will argue that the participation of trans female athletes undermines the years-long effort to increase opportunities for women in sports.

Also…

In a seismic shift at the Environmental Protection Agency, officials plan to overhaul how they set rules on air pollution.

For decades, the EPA justified clean air rules around ozone and fine particulates by calculating the cost of their impact on people's health, taking into account things like days of lost work to asthma attacks.

Now, under the Trump administration, the agency will only take into account how much it would cost a business to follow any regulations.

The EPA says it will still be considering human health, even if it's not explicitly in its cost-benefit calculations.

But the change could make it easier to repeal limits on pollutants from things like power plants and oil refineries.

And The Times has learned that the U.S.

used a secret plane painted to look like a civilian aircraft and armed with hidden weapons when it carried out its first strike on a boat carrying alleged drug traffickers back in September.

Trump has claimed the U.S.

is in an armed conflict with drug cartels, justifying the strikes.

But use of that plane could constitute a war crime.

Under the laws of war, combatants are prohibited from pretending to be civilians to trick adversaries into dropping their guard, a crime known as perfidy.

The U.S.

military also killed two survivors of that initial strike in what military law experts say could be another war crime.

In a statement, the White House said the strike was, quote, "...fully consistent with the law of armed conflict."

In Iran, witnesses say the government is carrying out a brutal crackdown on the protests that have been rocking the country.