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Nightly Brief

Top CNS stories for today including Democrats signaled support for a short-term funding bill that will keep the government running until mid-February; Outgoing House Speaker Paul Ryan touched on a mixed record of accomplishments in his farewell speech; A federal judge slammed efforts by the Trump administration to quickly deport immigrants seeking asylum, and more.

/ December 19, 2018

Your Wednesday night briefing from the staff of Courthouse News

Top CNS stories for today including Democrats signaled support for a short-term funding bill that will keep the government running until mid-February; Outgoing House Speaker Paul Ryan touched on a mixed record of accomplishments in his farewell speech; A federal judge slammed efforts by the Trump administration to quickly deport immigrants seeking asylum, and more.

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National

FILE - This Oct. 1, 2018, file photo, shows the Capitol at sunrise in Washington. Republicans have begun to concede defeat in the evolving fight to preserve the House majority. The party’s candidates may not go quietly, but from Arizona to Colorado to Iowa, the GOP’s most powerful players are shifting resources away from vulnerable Republican House candidates deemed too far gone and toward those thought to have a better chance of political survival. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite, File)

1.) With the president backing down on his demand for a $5 billion carve out in the budget for his border wall, Democrats signaled support Wednesday for a short-term funding bill that will keep the government running until mid-February.

FILE - IN this Nov. 29, 2018, file photo, House Speaker Paul Ryan of Wis., listens during a reception to unveil his portrait on Capitol Hill in Washington. Ryan is bemoaning America’s “broken politics” in a farewell speech in which he calls Washington’s failure to overhaul costly federal benefit programs “our greatest unfinished business.” (AP Photo/Susan Walsh, File)

2.) Outgoing House Speaker Paul Ryan, a Republican from Wisconsin, gave his farewell address Wednesday at the Library of Congress, touching on a mixed record of accomplishments as his party prepares to give up control of the House to Democrats next month.

Children and adults gathered around bags of donated toys and clothes in a makeshift camp where Central Americans wait for their asylum cases to be heard by the United States. (Bianca Bruno/CNS)

3.) Drawing cheers Wednesday from the ACLU, the same judge who castigated Michael Flynn in open court as a national disgrace slammed efforts by the Trump administration to quickly deport immigrants seeking asylum. 

The offices of Cambridge Analytica in central London were photographed here on March 20, 2018, after it was announced that Britain's information commissioner Elizabeth Denham is pursuing a warrant to search the company's computer servers. Denham said she is using all her legal powers to investigate Facebook and political campaign consultants Cambridge Analytica over the alleged misuse of millions of people's data. Cambridge Analytica said it is committed to helping the U.K. investigation. (Kirsty O'Connor/PA via AP)

4.) Describing how the Cambridge Analytica scandal laid bare Facebook’s profound betrayal of its users, the attorney general for the District of Columbia hit the social media giant with a demand Wednesday for civil penalties and restitution.

International

Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi speaks on his cellphone at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, on Jan. 29, 2011. Saud Al-Mojeb, Saudi Arabia’s top prosecutor, is recommending the death penalty for five suspects charged with ordering and carrying out the killing of Saudi writer Jamal Khashoggi. Al-Mojeb told a press conference in Riyadh Thursday, Nov. 15, 2018, that Khashoggi’s killers had been planning the operation since September 29, three days before he was killed inside the kingdom’s consulate in Istanbul. (AP Photo/Virginia Mayo, File)

5.) In a year when Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi’s gruesome murder inspired Time Magazine to honor fallen reporters as “The Guardians,” press freedom monitors are having trouble keeping count of the dead.

6.) Europe’s highest court Wednesday said it alone can rule on a decision by the European Central Bank to bar media mogul and former Italian Premier Silvio Berlusconi from owning a large stake in an Italian bank due to his conviction for tax fraud.

File - This Jan. 17, 2017, file photo shows a Facebook logo being displayed in a start-up companies gathering at Paris' Station F, in Paris. A former employee of a Trump-affiliated data-mining firm says it used algorithms that "took fake news to the next level" using data inappropriately obtained from Facebook. (AP Photo/Thibault Camus, File)

7.) Saying websites make a strategic business decision when they adopt a Facebook “like” button, an EU magistrate recommended Wednesday that they share responsibility with Facebook for the data collection that ensues.

Science

An adult Eretmoptera murphyi, a species of midge. (Roger Key)

8.) Of all the non-native insect species found in Antarctica, scientists said Wednesday a nonbiting species of midge presents the biggest risk to the continent’s terrestrial ecosystems.

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