Nightly Brief

Top CNS stories for today including Virginia Governor Ralph Northam met quietly with top officials in his cabinet as pressure mounts for the Democrat to resign over blackface admissions; Defense attorneys brought a federal complaint on behalf of the 1,600 Brooklyn inmates left in bitter cold because of a week-long delay to a power outage; French President Emmanuel Macron is expected to ask the French electorate to vote in a May referendum to quell public unrest and a wave of protests, and more.

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National

This image shows a page of Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam’s 1984 yearbook from Eastern Virginia Medical School. The page shows a picture, at right, of a person in blackface and another wearing a Ku Klux Klan hood next to different pictures of the governor. It's unclear who the people in the picture are, but the rest of the page is filled with pictures of Northam and lists his undergraduate alma mater and other information about him.

1.) Besieged by criticism over blackface admissions, Virginia Governor Ralph Northam met quietly with top officials in his cabinet Monday morning as pressure mounts for the Democrat to resign.

2.) The D.C. Circuit vacated an order by the Federal Communications Commission limiting federal subsidies for wireless providers bringing service to tribal lands, finding it unfairly impacted access and affordability for Native Americans.

Vehicles make their way westbound on Interstate 80 across the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge as seen from Treasure Island in San Francisco on Dec. 10, 2015. (AP Photo/Ben Margot, File)

3.) Finding that the class improved allegations he had previously found wanting, a federal judge advanced a lawsuit that accuses Mercedes-Benz of misleading consumers about its line of clean diesel cars.

Regional

4.) Criticizing the week-long delay to a power outage at Brooklyn’s Metropolitan Detention Center, defense attorneys brought a federal complaint Monday on behalf of the 1,600 inmates left in bitter cold this weekend.

An election official checks a voter's photo identification at an early voting site in Austin, Texas, in 2014. (AP Photo/Eric Gay, File)

5.) Harsh criticism is mounting against Texas Republicans’ announcement of 95,000 registered voters possibly not being citizens, as a group of naturalized citizens filed a lawsuit claiming voter suppression while county officials quickly ruled out 20,000 of the names.

6.) Spurring claims of environmental racism, Louisiana granted a permit allowing a Taiwanese single-use plastics manufacturer once named the worst polluter in the world to build a new plant in a mostly black community known as “Cancer Alley.”

FILE - In this Oct. 5, 2018, file photo, the U. S. Supreme Court building stands quietly before dawn in Washington. The Constitution says you can’t be tried twice for the same offense. And yet Terance Gamble is sitting in prison today because he was prosecuted separately by Alabama and the federal government for having a gun after an earlier robbery conviction. he Supreme Court is considering Gamble’s case Thursday, Dec. 6, and the outcome could have a spillover effect on the investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 election. (AP Photo/J. David Ake, File)

7.) The Supreme Court is temporarily keeping a Louisiana law regulating abortion clinics on hold.

International

Protesters hold a banner against the use of high-velocity rubber ball launchers for crowd control (LBD) during the yellow vests demonstration Saturday, Feb. 2, 2019 in Paris. France's yellow vest protesters are taking to the streets to keep pressure on French President Emmanuel Macron's government and denounce the high number of people injured in demonstrations that they consider as the result of police violence.. (AP Photo/Francois Mori)

8.) Vying to quell public unrest and a wave of protests, French President Emmanuel Macron is expected to ask the French electorate to vote in a May referendum.

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