Nightly Brief

Your Wednesday night briefing from the staff of Courthouse News

Top CNS stories for today including Judge Brett Kavanaugh touting judicial independence as Senate Democrats grilled the Supreme Court nominee with pointed questions about subpoenaing the president; executives with Twitter and Facebook vow to better protect their platforms from foreign interference in future elections; Paul Manafort’s bid to divert his trial from Washington circles the drain as a federal judge skewered the basis that the ex-Trump campaign manager gave for seeking a change of venue; Boston City Councilor Ayanna Pressley will become Massachusetts’ first female black member of Congress after upsetting 10-term Democratic incumbent Michael Capuano in Tuesday night’s primary election; new research suggests early farmers who left the Mediterranean region to settle across Europe more than 9,000 years ago were fueled by a new and unlikely resource: cheese; Europe’s administrative branch says it will greenlight signature-gathering for a citizens’ initiative to end “inhumane treatment of farm animals” by banning the use of cages, and more.

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National

1.) Judge Brett Kavanaugh touted judicial independence Wednesday as Senate Democrats grilled the Supreme Court nominee with pointed questions about subpoenaing the president.

2.) Executives with Twitter and Facebook vowed on Wednesday to better protect their platforms from foreign interference in future elections, but conceded there are no shortage of challenges when it comes to rooting out the bad actors.

**3.) ** Paul Manafort’s bid to divert his trial from Washington circled the drain Wednesday as a federal judge skewered the basis that the ex-Trump campaign manager gave for seeking a change of venue.

**4.) ** A state court judge on Wednesday ordered that the name of an Independent candidate for Congress be struck from this year’s ballot after he concluded the effort to get her on it was fraught with “fraud, forgery and perjury.”

Regional

5.) Boston City Councilor Ayanna Pressley will become Massachusetts’ first female black member of Congress after upsetting 10-term Democratic incumbent Michael Capuano in Tuesday night’s primary election.

6.) Calling the National Collegiate Athletic Association a “cartel,” a San Francisco sports economist testified in a federal bench trial Tuesday that eliminating caps on how much compensation student athletes receive increases demand for college sports.

**7.) ** The Seventh Circuit heard oral arguments Wednesday in a case challenging Indiana’s law criminalizing the acquisition of aborted fetal tissue, but the three-judge panel repeatedly questioned whether the case didn’t better belong in state court.

8.) A Brownsville, Texas policeman fired four shots into an SUV during a late-night traffic stop, killing the driver as he tried to flee. Was the shooting justified? A Fifth Circuit panel took up the question Tuesday.

Science

9.) Early farmers who left the Mediterranean region to settle across Europe more than 9,000 years ago were fueled by a new and unlikely resource: cheese.

International

1o.) Europe’s administrative branch said Wednesday it will greenlight signature-gathering for a citizens’ initiative to end “inhumane treatment of farm animals” by banning the use of cages.