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Defend Our Country Digest

Defend Our Country Digest — January 30, 2024

By January 30, 2024No Comments

Driving the Day

Must Read Stories

Jury orders Trump to pay $83 million to E. Jean Carroll in civil defamation trial

  • New York Times: $83 Million Verdict Renews Spotlight on Trump’s Finances: “He did not go to jail and has not lost his grip on the race for the Republican presidential nomination, but a jury’s verdict in a civil defamation trial last week nonetheless hit Donald J. Trump where it hurts: his wallet. The jury’s decision to award $83.3 million to E. Jean Carroll came at an inopportune moment for the former president, who might soon face another large penalty from a civil fraud case brought by the New York attorney general, Letitia James. Mr. Trump and his family business are bracing for the judge in that case to impose a punishment in the coming weeks that could reach hundreds of millions of dollars. Together, the judgments might deliver a punishing one-two punch to the former president, a financial threat unlike any he has experienced in decades.”
  • NPR: Jury orders Trump to pay $83 million for defaming columnist E. Jean Carroll: “A New York jury on Friday ordered former President Donald Trump to pay a total of $83.3 million to E. Jean Carroll for ruining her credibility as an advice columnist when he called her a liar after she accused him of sexual assault. The jury awarded Carroll $65 million in punitive damages, $11 million for the damage to her reputation, and another $7.3 million. Trump is almost certain to appeal the verdict. Despite the size of the penalty, the verdict was not unexpected. Judge Lewis Kaplan ruled even before the trial that Trump had in fact defamed Carroll. The jury only had to decide how much Trump owed her — not if he was liable. This is the second time Trump has been ordered to pay Carroll; last year he was mandated by a jury to pay $5 million for a separate instance of defamation.”

Reagan-appointed judge condemns Republican’s attempts to rewrite the history of the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol

  • New York Times: Republican-Appointed Judge Denounces Republican Distortions of Jan. 6: “A Republican-appointed judge on Thursday denounced as “shameless” the attempts by prominent Republican politicians to recast the Jan. 6 riot in a positive light, including by portraying the Trump supporters who sacked Congress as having done nothing wrong and by calling those convicted of crimes political prisoners or hostages. ‘In my 37 years on the bench, I cannot recall a time when such meritless justifications of criminal activity have gone mainstream,’ wrote Judge Royce C. Lamberth of the Federal District Court in Washington. ‘I have been dismayed to see distortions and outright falsehoods seep into the public consciousness.’ The remarks, made in a seven-page filing that Judge Lamberth described as notes for what he had said on Thursday at a resentencing hearing for a Jan. 6 rioter, amounted to a scathing and extraordinary broadside against a vast web of conspiracy theories and falsehoods about the Capitol attack that have permeated the right.”
  • MSNBC: Reagan-appointed judge slams GOP’s ‘preposterous’ Jan. 6 rhetoric: “Just six months after the Jan. 6 attack, one of the earlier criminal cases involved a 49-year-old Indiana woman who pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor count of demonstrating inside the Capitol. When it came time for sentencing, U.S. District Judge Royce C. Lamberth, a prominent Reagan-appointed jurist, took the opportunity to comment on Republican efforts to rewrite the history of the insurrectionist violence. ‘I’m especially troubled by the accounts of some members of Congress that January 6 was just a day of tourists walking through the Capitol,’ Lamberth said in June 2021. ‘I don’t know what planet they were on. … This was not a peaceful demonstration. It was not an accident that it turned violent; it was intended to halt the very functioning of our government.’”

In The States

NORTH CAROLINA: Federal judge declines to block N.C. Senate map in racial gerrymandering case

  • NC Newsline: Federal judge denies Black voters’ request to throw out new Senate districts in northeastern NC: “A federal District Court judge has denied two Black voters’ request to stop the use of new Senate districts in northeastern North Carolina under the claim that they dilute Black voting power. The voters are appealing U.S. District Court Judge James C. Dever III’s order to the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals. Rodney D. Pierce, a social science teacher who lives in Halifax County, and Martin County resident Moses Mathews filed the suit in November, claiming that the legislature ignored the history of racially polarized voting in northeastern North Carolina, federal law, and a state Supreme Court opinion to draw Senate districts in eastern North Carolina that dilute Black votes, NC Newsline reported. (Pierce is running in a Democratic primary for a state House district.)”
  • Courthouse News Service: Challenged North Carolina Senate map cleared for use in 2024 elections: “A judge sided with North Carolina Republicans on Friday and declined to block Senate election maps that have been challenged as racially gerrymandered. The lawsuit, filed by two Black voters, argued the new maps enacted in October 2023 diluted their votes because they were moved to majority-white districts in an area where voting is racially polarized. Two other election map lawsuits have also been filed, one claiming congressional maps disregard traditional voting principles and another — the most comprehensive to date — claiming that congressional, state Senate, and House maps break up minority districts and dilute Black votes. In a 69-page order, U.S. District Judge James Dever III denied the plaintiffs’ request for a preliminary injunction to redraft Senate election maps in northeastern North Carolina.”

OHIO: Republican Attorney General Dave Yost rejected a second version of an expansive voting rights amendment

  • Associated Press: Ohio attorney general rejects voting-rights coalition’s ballot petition for a 2nd time: “A coalition of voting-rights groups is vowing to fight on after Ohio Republican Attorney General Dave Yost issued his second rejection Thursday of petition language it has submitted for a proposed constitutional amendment. Yost found the amendment’s title — ‘Ohio Voters Bill of Rights’ — was ‘highly misleading and misrepresentative’ of the measure’s contents, even as he acknowledged that his office had previously certified identical language. It certified a Nursing Facility Patients’ Bill of Rights in 2021 and another Ohio Voters Bill of Rights in 2014. The Ohio Voters Bill of Rights calls for enshrining the right for all Ohioans to vote safely and securely in the state constitution. The proposed amendment includes automatic voter registration, same-day voter registration, and expanded early voting options and locations.”

MICHIGAN: Detroit redistricting map drafts move on to the next stage

  • Bridge Michigan: Detroit redistricting map drafts move on to next stage: “This week, members of the Michigan Citizens Independent Redistricting Commission agreed to send 14 different configurations of Detroit-area legislative districts to their attorneys for further review on whether their efforts comply with the federal Voting Rights Act. The map drafts are the culmination of weeks of marathon mapping sessions and reflect ongoing divisions among commissioners at odds over how best to meet the court’s demands. Up to this point, commissioners have been relying solely on population, geographic, and political data to draw the maps, avoiding racial data entirely. During the mapping process, some commissioners have favored limiting the changes as much as possible to the seven districts deemed unconstitutional. Others are seeking more substantial changes to the entire metro region, citing the need for a new strategy to meet Detroiters’ needs. The group must agree to a final map by March 1, and following review by plaintiffs and court-appointed experts, the court will approve a new slate of metro Detroit House districts by March 29.

What Experts Are Saying

Norm Eisen on X(Twitter): “The E Jean Carroll verdict suggests incarceration is a very real possibility when Trump faces his next NY jury. That moment is coming in the 2016 Election interference case & fast.”

Marc Elias, on Wisconsin’s ongoing Voting Rights fight, for Democracy Docket: “As a result of a critical judicial election, there is now a newly minted progressive majority on the state Supreme Court. Already the new Wisconsin Supreme Court has struck down the state’s heavily gerrymandered legislative maps. Recently, a motion to reopen a challenge to the state’s congressional maps was filed in the high court. With the 2024 elections only months away, the focus has turned to the Badger State’s voting laws. Pro-voting groups have already notched some early victories. Voters with disabilities who are physically unable to return their absentee ballots won the right to have a person of their choice do it for them. A right-wing effort to prevent the counting of absentee ballots cast by members of the military failed. Most recently, a court affirmed the widespread availability of early, in-person absentee voting.”

Gregg Barak for Salon: “To paraphrase Trump: nobody was injured here or there were no harms to speak of. Of course, that is pure fiction or nonsense as the summary judgment has already been declared, and the final verdict will be revalidated in the next couple of days when Trump and the company find themselves liable for at least $300 million. Trump’s fraudulent business dealings involved in this civil case, like using other people’s money vis-à-vis deceitfully acquired lower interest rates along with tax evasion, are consistent with the former president’s modus operandi and shed light on some of the other ways in which the 45th president’s appointments of free marketers and deregulators facilitated financial looting on a much grander scale. The GOP’s $1.9 trillion tax break for the wealthy, signed by Trump, is perhaps the most infamous example.”

Headlines

Extremism

Forbes: Far-Right Extremist Arrested After 4 Years Of Social Media DIY Chemical Weapons Tutorials, FBI Alleges

The Guardian: ‘Every noise makes you jumpy’: US election workers confront threats and abuse with resilience training

York Dispatch: GOP war on voting rights continues

Trump investigations and cases

Associated Press: Supreme Court is urged to rule Trump is ineligible to be president again because of the Jan. 6 riot

The Hill: Trump targets New York judge, AG as civil fraud case verdict looms

Associated Press: Taking away Trump’s business empire would stand alone under New York fraud law

January 6 and the 2020 Elections

The Hill: Cheney recirculates Stefanik’s Jan. 6 statement after she reportedly deletes it

Opinion

Washington Post: Jennifer Rubin: Judges rebuke lawless MAGA Republicans. We need more of the same.

Washington Post: Ruth Marcus: A federal judge is fed up with those defending the Jan. 6 rioters.

In the States

Insider NJ: Turner Positions the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Act in the Senate