Good morning.
The last witness in E Jean Carroll’s civil lawsuit accusing Donald Trump of rape and defamation gave evidence yesterday, ending the evidentiary stage of the trial, which is expected to go to the jury in New York early next week.
After both sides rested their cases, the judge, Lewis Kaplan, kept open the possibility of a late appearance in court by the former US president when he set a deadline of 5pm New York time on Sunday for Trump to submit a request to reopen the hearing. The judge did not say if he would grant it.
Earlier on Thursday, Trump said during a visit to Ireland that he was “going to go back” to confront Carroll in court. However, his lawyer, Joe Tacopina, told the judge the former president had waived his right to testify and was not expected to appear.
On Wednesday the defense team said its only other witness, a technical expert, was too sick to testify. That meant the jury of three women and six men has heard testimony only from Carroll’s witnesses – and Trump’s legal team has been limited to trying to discredit it.
What might Carroll be entitled to if she wins? Among the final witnesses was Ashlee Humphreys, a social media expert, who said if the jurors find in favor of Carroll she would be entitled to up to $2.7m for reputational damage alone after Trump accused her of lying when she alleged that he raped her in a Bergdorf Goodman department store dressing room in 1996.
Who else testified? The jury also heard from one of Carroll’s close friends, Carol Martin, who said the advice columnist visited her within two days of the alleged attack. She described Carroll as “clearly agitated, anxious”. Asked what she made of Carroll’s claim that Trump attacked her, Martin said: “I believed it then and I believe it today.”
Fears grow in North Carolina as ultra-extreme Republican eyes governor’s mansion
To Mark Robinson, gay and transgender people are “filth”, homosexuality is an abominable sin, and the transgender movement is “demonic” and “full of the spirit of the antichrist”.
Muslim Americans, meanwhile, are “invaders”, and Robinson is not afraid to dabble in antisemitism: in his mind an international cabal of Jewish financiers make up a modern-day “four horsemen of the apocalypse”, who rule the banks in “every single country”.
Lots of people have offensive and conspiracy-minded beliefs. But not all of them are running, as Robinson is, to be governor of North Carolina. And to people who do not share Robinson’s views, the problem is that it looks like he could win – furthering the Republican party’s years-long lunge to what was previously rightwing fringe politics.
“Mark Robinson would be the most extreme gubernatorial candidate but also governor that we have ever seen in our history,” said Anderson Clayton, the chair of the North Carolina Democratic party.
What would it mean if he is elected? The risk Robinson would pose if elected in November 2024 is real – polling is scarce at this stage but experts believe the race between Robinson and Josh Stein, his expected Democratic opponent, is tight. Republicans control the state house and senate, and the GOP expanded its lead in last year’s elections.
Proud Boys: four found guilty of seditious conspiracy over Capitol attack
Four members of the Proud Boys extremist group, including its former leader Enrique Tarrio, were yesterday convicted of seditious conspiracy for their roles in planning and leading the January 6 Capitol attack, in a desperate effort to keep Donald Trump in power after his 2020 election defeat.
The verdicts handed down in a federal court in Washington marked a significant victory for the justice department in the last of its seditious conspiracy cases related to the January 6 attack. Prosecutors previously secured convictions against members of the Oath Keepers, another far-right group.
Seditious conspiracy is rarely used but became the central charge against the Proud Boys defendants after the FBI identified them as playing crucial roles in helping storm the Capitol in an effort to interrupt and stop the congressional certification of electoral results.
“Evidence presented at trial detailed the extent of the violence at the Capitol on January 6 and the central role these defendants played setting into motion the unlawful events of that day,” the attorney general, Merrick Garland, later said at a news conference at the justice department headquarters.
What happened in the trial? Trump played an outsized role in the trial, given the reverence the Proud Boys accorded the former president. In closing arguments, the prosecution said they acted as “Donald Trump’s army” to “keep their preferred leader in power” after rejecting Joe Biden’s victory.
In other news …
A 21-year-old former student has been arrested after a spate of stabbings, two fatal, in the California college town of Davis, authorities have said. Carlos Dominguez was arrested in connection with three attacks after being detained on Wednesday, according to the local police chief, Darren Pytel.
The White House has dismissed as “ludicrous” claims by Russia that Washington orchestrated drone strikes on Moscow, saying the US was not involved in the attack and accusing Russia of lying. John Kirby, the US national security council spokesperson, said the US was still gathering evidence on the attack.
A suspect has been arrested after at least eight people were killed and 13 injured in the second mass shooting in Serbia in as many days. The man – who has been identified only by his initials, UB – was detained near the city of Kragujevac, the interior ministry said.
Lawyers for Kari Lake were fined $2,000 yesterday by the Arizona supreme court in their unsuccessful challenge of her defeat in the governor’s race last year. The Arizona high court found no evidence of the failed gubernatorial candidate’s claim of 35,000 fraudulent votes in election.
Stat of the day: Child marriage in decline – but will take 300 years to eliminate
The number of child marriages is declining worldwide but at too slow a pace for any hope of eliminating the practice this century, the UN children’s agency has said. In a report, Unicef tentatively welcomed the reduction but warned it was nowhere close to meeting its sustainable development goal of ridding the world of the practice by 2030. “The good news is that child marriage has been declining all over the world,” said Claudia Cappa, the lead author of the report. “In the past 10 years, the percentage of child marriages has dropped from 23% to 19% [of all marriages]. However, this isn’t fast enough to achieve the goal of eliminating child marriage by 2030, with more than 12 million girls under 18 still getting married every year. So, if things don’t change, we’ll need around 300 more years to eliminate child marriage completely.”
Don’t miss this: 90 years since the first Tampax, why aren’t there better menstrual products?
The first pads for periods were developed in the 1880s. Tampons and menstrual cups were introduced in the 1930s, with the first modern tampon designed by Tampax patented in 1931 (although makeshift tampons made from rags or reeds had been in use for millennia). Why are there still so few good options available? Emma Cihanowyz, a student activist at Penn State who campaigns for free sanitary products in all campus bathrooms, chalks the lack of innovation up to what one of her professors, the gender studies academic Jillian Wood, calls the menstrual concealment imperative. Girls are conditioned to view their periods as dirty and shameful, the theory goes, so they grow into adults who believe menstruation should be a private, silent experience. Essentially, people take what they can get and shut up about it.
Climate check: In Cancer Alley, US chemical firms mount campaign against grassroots organizers
After residents of America’s so-called Cancer Alley in Louisiana put a national spotlight on their fight for a healthy environment, the state’s economic interests and petrochemical giants are backing the creation of a new “sustainability council” to counter grassroots activists, documents show. In recent years, the activists have successfully fought construction of two multibillion-dollar plastics facilities and what would have been the nation’s largest methanol plant. The growing concerns have caught the attention of the Environmental Protection Agency, which this year sued a manufacturer of neoprene in the state for not doing enough to reduce its cancer-causing air emissions.
The sustainability council, according to documents shared with Floodlight, says the opposition comes from a “small universe of vocal industry opponents” who have caught the media’s attention and are creating an echo chamber of misinformation.
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