On Monday, the Supreme Court of the United States declined to hear Donald Trump’s appeal of the $5 million verdict in E. Jean Carroll’s sexual abuse and defamation case. All three of Trump’s own conservative appointees on the court let it stand. Not one dissent. Not one word.
Which means the jury’s verdict—that Donald Trump sexually abused and defamed E. Jean Carroll—is now, officially, the last word.
Carroll’s attorney Roberta Kaplan (who I worked alongside during our Time’s Up days) said it plainly: “Today’s Supreme Court decision affirms once and for all the jury’s unanimous verdict that President Donald J. Trump sexually assaulted and defamed E. Jean Carroll. His multiple efforts to appeal that verdict have all failed and today’s ruling ends his quest to avoid accountability for his actions.”
The President of the United States sexually assaulted a woman in a department store dressing room in the mid-1990s, then spent years calling her a liar, weaponizing his platform to destroy her credibility, and exhausting every legal avenue available to him to escape the consequences. He lost. Every single time, at every single level. And now, after four years of litigation across every level of the federal court system, He. Will. Pay.
This is not a witch hunt. This is a bill that’s past due. And it’s time to pay up.
We are living in a moment when women are being asked—again, still, always—to prove that what happened to them happened. To be credible enough, composed enough, likable enough for a jury to believe them. E. Jean Carroll was all of those things and more, and she STILL had to fight for nearly a decade to be heard. She is 80 years old. She has been called a liar by the most powerful man in the world, on a daily basis, in front of a global audience. Yet she was not deterred from getting justice.
That is not just courage. That is a kind of political act; the insistence that the truth exists, that it matters, and that no amount of money or power can make it disappear.
Trump’s response to Monday’s ruling was to post on Truth Social that the case was “fake” and that he had never met Carroll (eye roll), a claim the jury already considered and rejected. He vowed to “continue the fight against this Weaponization and Lawfare Case” with “all of my power and strength.”
He is the President of the United States. He is a adjudicated sexual abuser. Both of these things are true at the same time, and we are expected to simply hold that contradiction and move along?
Absolutely fucking not.
There is no version of accountability that looks like this—where a man assaults a woman, spends a decade denying it, loses in every court in the country, and then goes back to the Oval Office—that we should normalize or accept.
The question of whether Trump should resign is not a legal question anymore. It is a moral one. And the answer has been sitting there, in black and white, since a jury of his peers delivered it in 2023.
E. Jean Carroll told the truth. The courts confirmed it. The highest court in the land just let that confirmation stand.
Now what are we going to do about it?
The Supreme Court has spoken. The jury has spoken. Every court in this country has spoken. Now it’s your turn. Pick one from below and do it today:
Write this sentence by hand on a piece of paper: “An adjudicated sexual abuser is sitting in the Oval Office. I am not looking away.” Photograph it. Post it publicly. No caption needed. Just your handwriting and the truth, in public.
Write a physical letter to your senator—not an email, a letter. Before you make your demand, write one sentence—just one—about a woman you know who never got justice for the abuse she suffered. You don't have to name her. Just hold her in mind as you write and share any part of her story that feels safe or comfortable to do so. Then demand your senator say these words out loud, on the record: Donald Trump is an adjudicated sexual abuser and he should resign. Send it in her honor. Find your senator's mailing address at senate.gov.
Call the Capitol switchboard at 202-224-3121. Ask for your senator’s office. Say: “I’m calling to demand that Senator [name] publicly call for the president’s resignation in light of the Supreme Court’s Carroll ruling.” Offices count calls. Make them count yours.
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