Pay Up, Trump
Plus: Biden's last-minute Ukraine cash surge, Tennessee age-verification law blocked, Kentucky man killed by cop who showed up at wrong house, and more…
Trump can't dodge damages payment. Donald Trump is still on the hook for a $5 million payment to writer E. Jean Carroll, who accused Trump of sexually assaulting and defaming her in a civil suit against the former and future president.
In 2023, a jury found Trump liable for sexual abuse and defamation and awarded Carroll $5 million in damages. (The jury did not find Trump liable for rape, an allegation Carroll also levied at Trump.) The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit has upheld that judgment.
Trump's appeal argued that the lower court should not have allowed testimony by two women other than Carroll who say Trump sexually assaulted them and should not have allowed the jury to hear the Access Hollywood video in which Trump made his now infamous "grab them by the pussy" comment.
"We conclude that Mr. Trump has not demonstrated that the district court erred in any of the challenged rulings. Further, he has not carried his burden to show that any claimed error or combination of claimed errors affected his substantial rights as required to warrant a new trial," the ruling said.
Trump maintains that the alleged 1996 rape in a Bergdorf Goodman department store never happened and that the case is part of a politicized witch hunt against him. "The American People have re-elected President Trump with an overwhelming mandate, and they demand an immediate end to the political weaponization of our justice system and a swift dismissal of all of the Witch Hunts, including the Democrat-funded Carroll Hoax, which will continue to be appealed," Steven Cheung, a spokesperson for Trump, said in a statement yesterday.
Carroll was also awarded $83 million in a separate defamation case, this one revolving around comments Trump made about Carroll when he was president. Trump is also appealing that case.
Biden's last-minute Ukraine cash surge. The Biden administration "is sending nearly $2.5 billion in security assistance to Ukraine, as the Biden administration continues to rush military aid to Kyiv in the weeks before President-elect Donald J. Trump takes office," The New York Times reports.
"I've directed my administration to continue surging as much assistance to Ukraine as quickly as possible, including drawing down older U.S. equipment for Ukraine, rapidly delivering it to the battlefield and then revitalizing the U.S. defense industrial base to modernize and replenish our stockpiles with new weapons," President Joe Biden said in a Monday statement.
This comes in addition to the $3.4 billion in budget aid to Ukraine that the Treasury Department has just released. Those billions mark "the final disbursement of funds appropriated under the bipartisan Ukraine Security Supplemental Appropriations Act, 2024."
Meanwhile, Trump is trying to end the war between Ukraine and Russia—which has now been going on for almost three years—through his purported powers of negotiation. It's not going well.
While Russia has yet to receive any official proposals from Trump, "we are not happy, of course, with the proposals made by members of the Trump team to postpone Ukraine's admission to NATO for 20 years and to station British and European peacekeeping forces in Ukraine," said Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov in response to leaks of Trump's alleged proposals.
Free the nipple: A federal judge has blocked Tennessee's Protect Tennessee Minors Act from going into effect, calling the measure unconstitutional. The law, which was supposed to take effect tomorrow, would have required age verification for adult websites. "The First Amendment is not shy in its protective sweep," wrote Judge Sheryl H. Lipman in an order granting a request for a preliminary injunction against the law.
"To be sure, freedom of speech is not absolute. But the door preventing the state from intruding into this area 'must be kept tightly closed and opened only the slightest crack necessary' to promote state interests," wrote Lipman. "Based on the record at this stage, it appears that Tennessee has wedged its foot in the door farther than the Constitution will likely tolerate."
"The Protect Tennessee Minors Act stands in a graveyard full of similar content-based
restrictions at the state and federal level that lived—and died—before it," Lipman noted.
Many of those proposed restrictions have been challenged by the Free Speech Coalition, an adult-industry trade group that brought this lawsuit. "We applaud the Court's decision," said Free Speech Coalition Executive Director Alison Boden in a statement. "This is a deeply flawed law that put website operators at risk of criminal prosecution for something a [sic] trivial as a mention of the human nipple."
Kentucky man killed by cop who accidentally showed up at his house. A 63-year-old man was killed in Kentucky when police serving a warrant to someone else accidentally went to his house instead.
Officers with the London City Police in Laurel County, Kentucky, "mistakenly went to the wrong address while attempting to serve a search warrant," reports Local 12 Cincinnati. One of them ended up killing Douglas Harless, a resident of the house they mistakenly showed up at.
As usual with such situations—and how insane and terrible that there is a "usual" with such situations—the police seem to be trying to absolve themselves of wrongdoing by claiming that Harless pointed a gun at them. But pointing a gun at people who appear to be breaking into your house isn't exactly an unreasonable response.
Kentucky State Police are investigating and have not yet released body cam footage from the shooting.
Scenes from Ohio: The Columbus Dispatch remembers Ohio's Playboy Club, which at the time of its 1982 opening was one of eight Playboy Clubs in the country. Then-Coumbus Mayor Tom Moody reportedly said, in 1983, that "the development of the Playboy Club in Columbus is good for this city. I expect to use my honorary key; I expect to take my wife there." It's hard to imagine a politician daring to say something like that today! Of course, not everyone was so welcoming:
…the Columbus Playboy Club did meet with opposition from others who cited family values and anti-pornography campaigns as reasons to stop the club from opening. Some feminist groups organized against the club as well. In January 1983, feminist activists threw plastic bags full of red paint against the building and posted a 3-foot sign declaring that the Playboy Foundation "offers women to the public as products not as humans."
Despite the pushback, others beyond Mayor Moody were excited for the club to open. National Bunny Director Harriet Bassler reported receiving more than 3,000 applications from Columbus-area women hopeful to don the iconic satin suit, bunny ears and cotton tail. Ultimately, 30 women made the cut to become the club's Bunnies.
Quick Hits
• Yikes: Letting an inebriated customer go back to their hotel room could apparently be grounds for negligent homicide charges in Argentina. Staff at Buenos Aires' Casa Sur Palermo Hotel who let One Direction's Liam Payne go back to his hotel room while inebriated by the "consumption of various substances" are being criminally charged after Payne fell from his hotel room balcony and died.
• Yikes again: The Biden administration's "$42 billion expansion of broadband internet service has yet to connect a single household," reports Politico.
• You've heard of the manosphere and incels. But are you acquainted with "dark feminine" influencers?
• The Atlantic tackles the left's conundrum on the question of trans women in female sports.
• Are we in for a QAnon resurgence?
• "Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton (R) took initial steps to sue video sharing app TikTok Inc., hiring Cooper & Kirk PLLC to represent the state, with the firm's partners billing $3,780 per hour if they win," reports Bloomberg Law.
