Top Eight

Your Wednesday night briefing from the staff of Courthouse News

Top eight CNS stories for today including the Senate acquitted President Donald Trump of two articles of impeachment; The yearly U.S. trade deficit shrank for the first time in six years; The European Union’s foreign affairs chief condemned a pro-Israeli plan for the Middle East pushed by President Trump, and more.

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National

1.) Save for one astonishing defection, Republicans cemented what Democrats long suspected would be the preordained conclusion of the Senate proceedings on Thursday: a speedy acquittal without witness testimony to further stain President Donald Trump’s legacy as the third impeached commander-in-chief in U.S. history.

2.) The overall U.S. trade deficit shrank in 2019 for the first time in six years as imports fell faster than exports, including crude oil imports.

3.) The Native American tribe that joined with the Pilgrims for the first Thanksgiving in 1621 asked the First Circuit on Wednesday for permission to offer more modern-day hospitality at a $1 billion casino resort.

International

4.) The European Union’s foreign affairs chief is condemning a pro-Israeli plan pushed by President Donald Trump in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

5.) Irish voters go to the polls Saturday with the possibility of a major upset by Sinn Féin, a center-left nationalist party affiliated with the Irish Republican Army during the Troubles and now campaigning to unify Ireland in the wake of Brexit.

6.) Advocates with a global human rights organization say at least 138 Salvadorans who were deported from the U.S. since 2013 were killed after returning to their home country, while more than 70 faced sexual violence, beatings, torture or other harm at the hands of gangs and even police.

Regional

7.) Renouncing laws that criminalized people for being gay, California Governor Gavin Newsom posthumously pardoned a prominent black civil rights leader and introduced a new clemency process for those convicted under discriminatory LGBTQ laws.

8.) An unusually heavy winter storm dumped inches of snow across parts of Texas and Oklahoma on Wednesday, closing schools and creating treacherous travel conditions across the region.

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