Closing summary
A federal judge found Rudy Giuliani liable for defaming two Georgia election workers by spreading unfounded conspiracy theories about their work around the time of the 2020 election. While the exact monetary damages he will pay remain to be determined, the judge has already ordered Giuliani to cough up tens of thousands of dollars in attorney fee reimbursements and penalties in the case. Separately, another judge rejected a key part of former Donald Trump aide Peter Navarro’s defense against his indictment for contempt of Congress, and jury selection in his trial will begin next week.
Here’s what else went on today:
Top Senate Republican Mitch McConnell froze up during a press conference today, his second public health scare in as many months. The 81-year-old had sustained a concussion earlier this year that kept him away from Capitol Hill for weeks.
Sentencing for members of the Proud Boys militia group was delayed after a judge fell ill. The five defendants convicted on charges related to the January 6 insurrection will now be sentenced starting tomorrow.
Was Giuliani drunk when he was advising Trump around the time of his 2020 election defeat? Federal prosecutors reportedly want to know.
A Texas judge blocked a law passed by its Republican-dominated state government that would have blocked a host of local ordinances, including those mandating water breaks for some workers.
Trump is considering skipping his arraignment in the Georgia election subversion case next week, and instead opting to enter his plea in writing.
At the first debate of the Republican primary process last week, Florida governor Ron DeSantis sidestepped a pointed question from the moderators about his stance on abortion by telling the story of “Penny,” a woman who had survived an abortion.
“She survived multiple abortion attempts. She was left discarded in a pan. Fortunately, her grandmother saved her and brought her to a different hospital,” said DeSantis, who is placing a distant second in most polls to Donald Trump for the GOP’s presidential nomination.
The governor did not provide more details on Penny’s circumstances, but the Associated Press has partially unraveled the tale, which doesn’t quite line up with DeSantis’s recounting.
Here’s more from their story:
The woman is 67-year-old Miriam “Penny” Hopper, a Florida resident who has been told that she survived multiple abortion attempts when she was in the womb. The first, she said in an interview, was by her parents at home and the second by a local doctor who instructed a nurse to discard her in a bedpan after inducing her birth at just 23 weeks gestation.
Hopper said she learned through her father that her parents tried to end the pregnancy at home. There were complications, and they went to the hospital. As the story goes, the doctor did not hear a heartbeat, gave her a shot and instructed the nurse to discard the baby “dead or alive.”
Hopper said she was born and made a squeaky noise but was put on the back porch of the hospital. She said her grandmother discovered her there alive the following day, wrapped in a towel, and she was rushed to another hospital. Hopper was told she stayed there for three-and-a-half months and survived with the help of an incubator. Nurses nicknamed her “Penny” because of her copper-red hair.
“My parents had always told me all my life, ‘You’re a miracle to be alive,’” she said.
Hopper has used her story to partner with anti-abortion organizations nationwide. But doctors who reviewed the story said her birth did not appear to be an attempted abortion and questioned the accuracy of the presumed gestational age.
When Hopper was born in the 1950s, before major advances in care for premature infants, babies born at 23 weeks would have had very little chance of surviving. Even into the early part of this century, the generally accepted “edge of viability” remained around 24 weeks. A pregnancy is considered full-term at 39 to 40 weeks.
Several OB-GYNs said it appears the case was treated as a stillbirth after a doctor was not able to detect a heartbeat. Because the fetus was presumed dead, the procedure performed in the hospital would not be considered an abortion, said Leilah Zahedi-Spung, a maternal fetal medicine physician in Colorado.
A newspaper article documenting Hopper’s miraculous recovery in 1956, the year after her birth, also complicates the tale. The story in the Lakeland Ledger says doctors at a hospital in Wauchula “put forth greater efforts” in keeping the 1 pound, 11 ounce baby alive before she was escorted by police to a larger hospital. She was admitted and placed in an incubator.
“It sounds very much like they anticipated a stillbirth. And when she came out alive, they resuscitated that baby to the best of their abilities and then shipped her off to where she needed to be,” Zahedi-Spung said.
Another news article from The Tampa Tribune said “doctors advised incubation which was not available at Wauchula,” leading to her transfer.
Hopper disputes that doctors initially tried to save her: “I don’t think there was any effort really put forth.”
OB-GYNs who reviewed the details also raised questions about Hopper’s gestational age at birth, saying her recorded birth weight more likely matches a fetus several weeks further along, around 26 or 27 weeks. They said the lungs are not developed enough to breathe at 23 weeks without intense assistance, making it improbable such an infant could survive abandonment for hours outdoors.
