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Shea Stevens
Live from NPR News in Washington, I'm Shea Stevens. Congressional lawmakers have less than 24 hours to approve a temporary budget plan to continue government spending. A bipartisan proposal and a Republican alternative have both been rejected. Republican U.S. senator John Cornyn of Texas says it's time to start over.
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Jamie Raskin
I'm waiting for Speaker Johnson's plan C.
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Shea Stevens
Maryland Democratic Congressman Jamie Raskin says the bipartisan proposal should not have been scuttled.
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Unnamed Republican Colleague
It's just shameful that they allowed Elon Musk, who now everybody's calling President Musk, to blow this deal up. I heard one Republican colleague say, now it's President Musk and J.D. vance as Vice president. Where does that leave Donald Trump, the president elect?
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Shea Stevens
A partial government shutdown looms at midnight if lawmakers fail to resolve their differences by then. House Republicans are insisting that they're taking a stand against wasteful spending. But Margaret Barthell from member station WAMU reports that a shutdown has its own costs.
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Margaret Barthell
When the government shuts down, many federal workers are told to stop doing their jobs. Some, like air traffic controllers and parts of the defense industry, still work but don't get on time. Paychecks. A law passed in 2019 requires back pay for all the roughly 2 million federal employees across the country after a shutdown ends. Virginia Senator Tim Kaine, a Democrat, says that makes shutting down the government a bad fiscal decision.
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Jamie Raskin
There's no reason to shut government down, lock employees out of their office, tell them they can't help their fellow Americans, and then give them a paycheck anyway.
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Margaret Barthell
Kaine said he hopes congressional leaders can make a deal before midnight on Friday. For NPR News, I'm Margaret Barthell in Arlington, Virginia.
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Shea Stevens
The Georgia appeals court has removed Atlanta area prosecutor Fani Willis from the election interference case against President elect Donald Trump and more than a dozen co defendants. The case had already been delayed because of controversy over Willis personal relationship with a prosecutor she hired. She says she'll ask the Georgia Supreme Court to review the matter. 25 people have been executed in the United States this year, about the same as last year. As NPR's Martin Costi reports, the death penalty is being applied in only a narrow slice of the nation.
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Robin Maher
In its annual report, the Death Penalty Information center found that only four states accounted for three quarters of all executions this year, those states are Texas, Alabama, Oklahoma and Missouri. The center's executive director, Robin Maher, says that has made the death penalty less of a national issue.
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Martin Costi
The death penalty is now a local story, one that plays out according to local laws and at the direction of local officials. So for the residents in a few active states, the death penalty may be an occasional headline. But for most of the rest of the country, the death penalty even on their radar.
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Robin Maher
This is the 10th year in a row that the total number of people executed by the states has been below 30. Martin Costi, NPR News.
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Shea Stevens
You're listening to NPR. A winter weather advisory remains in effect for parts of the nation's upper Midwest. A powerful weather system is dumping heavy snow, ice, gusty winds and bitter cold on parts of Minnesota and North Dakota. The Twin Cities could receive up to 7 inches of snow before it's over. Meanwhile, the National Weather Service says that another storm will bring light to moderate snowfall to the Northeast into Saturday. Google Calendar is used by more than half a billion people to organize their busy lives. But NPR's Jenna McLaughlin reports that it's also an attractive target by cybercriminals.
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Jenna McLaughlin
Israeli cybersecurity firm Check Point has uncovered a new scam where attackers send realistic fake Google Calendar invites to trick victims into giving up sensitive personal information. Check Point researchers say They've tracked over 4,000 of these fake calendar invitations over just four weeks. The malicious campaign has impacted around 300 brands so far. In this particular scam, attackers are modifying emails to make it look like users are getting an invitation to an event via Google Calendar. The features that make the calendar user friendly and interoperable with Gmail can make it vulnerable to this kind of attack. To prevent compromise, Check Point encourages users to deploy multi factor authentication and take a second look at invitations, particularly any you weren't expecting. Jen McLaughlin, NPR News.
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Shea Stevens
Amazon says that a strike by its union workers will not impact deliveries over the holidays. Workers set up pickets at seven Amazon facilities early Thursday because the online retailer did not meet a Sunday deadline for contract talks. This is NPR News.
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