Good morning, Broadsheet readers! The Bay Area’s WNBA team unveils its new name, Nobel Prize-winning writer Alice Munro has died at 92, and E. Jean Carroll and Robbie Kaplan share how they defeated Donald Trump—twice. Have a wonderful Wednesday!
– ‘I won.’ Can anything take down Donald Trump? The former president—in court over his hush-money payment to Stormy Daniels—is the Republican nominee for president despite a host of criminal and civil cases swirling around him. And yet, the two women who won against him in court—twice—say he won’t make it back to the Oval Office.
“I don’t care if he’s the nominee,” E. Jean Carroll, who sued Trump for sexual assault, won, and then emerged victorious in a $83.3 million defamation lawsuit against him earlier this year, told me last night. “He’s not going to win.”
Carroll and her attorney, Robbie Kaplan (known for arguing for same-sex marriage in front of the Supreme Court, one stop on a long resume), joined me for a conversation at Fortune‘s Most Powerful Women dinner in New York. While Carroll says she thinks the American people see Trump’s true character, Kaplan takes a more measured approach. “The one thing that can bring him down are the votes of the American people in the next election,” Kaplan says. “I don’t think short of that anything can or will.”
Carroll first shared her story publicly in 2019 of being assaulted by Trump in a Bergdorf Goodman dressing room in the 1990s. Since then, she’s dealt with an onslaught of insults—from Trump himself, who lost the defamation suit as a result—and from others online. But Carroll says the hatred she’s received isn’t so different from what any woman experiences on the internet.
“Every woman in this room has people saying terrible things on X, on Instagram. We all get, ‘You’re ugly, you’re old, you’re shriveled. You don’t deserve this, you’re pathetic, you’re hideous,’” she says. “I am not unusual. Every woman in this room knows exactly what I’m talking about.”
Meanwhile, Harvey Weinstein’s New York conviction has been overturned and abortion rights are under attack. “It’s just a blip in the road,” Carroll says.
“We’re upset,” she adds. “But it doesn’t stop us.”
You can read more about my interview with Carroll and Kaplan here.
Emma Hinchliffe
[email protected]
The Broadsheet is Fortune’s newsletter for and about the world’s most powerful women. Today’s edition was curated by Joseph Abrams. Subscribe here.
ALSO IN THE HEADLINES
- ‘Warrior women.’ The WNBA affiliate of the NBA's Golden State Warriors that will debut in 2025 will be named the Golden State Valkyries, a mythological allusion to a “host of warrior women who are fearless and unwavering.” In other WNBA news, a new ad campaign by Kim Kardashian's Skims features current and former players, and Las Vegas Aces star A'ja Wilson announced that she's creating a signature shoe with Nike.
- Remembering a literary master. Writer Alice Munro has died at the age of 92, according to her publisher. Munro won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2013 for a career's worth of masterful and critically-acclaimed short stories. New York Times
- Stopping the search. Google has made it harder for users to find sexually explicit deepfakes following months of public outcry. The new policies haven’t removed deepfakes from the search engine completely, but overall traffic to the two most popular deepfake sites has decreased significantly across all search engines (including Google) since April. Bloomberg
- Call volume. Nearly 20% of abortions performed in the final months of 2023 were done via abortion medication received in the mail after a remote consultation, new research finds. The method has accommodated those displaced by state abortion bans but could be in jeopardy as the Supreme Court decides whether to limit access to mifepristone, the most commonly prescribed abortion drug. CNN
- Fast-track. A program designed to identify and train promising female drivers for Formula 1 competition selected its first group of six teenagers this week. The More than Equal initiative connects young female drivers with support from high-profile coaches and racing personnel to ensure that young women have an equal shot at success in the sport. The Guardian
MOVERS AND SHAKERS: Pamela Drucker Mann is stepping down as global chief revenue officer at Condé Nast. Cityblock promoted Cath Anderson to chief communications officer. Inspired Capital promoted Charlotte Ross to partner.
ON MY RADAR
Olivia Munn on the future of her family Vogue
The childcare cliff that wasn't Vox
I thought I’d always mourn the kids I didn’t have. Then I became an aunt Romper
PARTING WORDS
“Like so many things in life, it can sometimes feel like a blessing and sometimes like a curse. But either way, it always helps to talk about it.”
— Jessica Biel, actress and author of A Kids Book About Periods, on changing the stigma around menstruation
