Sister Jean Dolores Schmidt, a lovable, quick-witted nun who became a national phenomenon for her relentless support of the Loyola Chicago University basketball team during its magical Final Four run in 2018, died Thursday, the school said. She was 106.
Sister Jean, as she was known, was 98 during Loyola’s March Madness splash. Her ever-present smile and the sparkle in her eyes were trademarks as she cheered on an unheralded underdog team that notched upset after upset before falling in the semifinals.
After each victory, she was pushed onto the court in her wheelchair and Loyola players and coaches swarmed to her, believing Sister Jean had somehow authored divine intervention.
“Just to have her around and her presence and her aura, when you see her, it’s just like the world is just great because of her spirit and her faith in us and Loyola basketball,” Loyola guard Marques Townes said at the time.
“At the end of the prayer I always ask God to be sure that the scoreboard indicates that the Ramblers have the big W,” she told the Chicago Tribune. “God always hears but maybe he thinks it’s better for us to do the ‘L’ instead of the ‘W,’ and we have to accept that.”
Sister Jean lived on the top floor of Regis Hall, a campus dormitory that housed mostly freshmen. She’d broken her left hip during a fall a few months before the March Madness run, necessitating the wheelchair. But once she recovered, the barely 5-foot-tall firebrand was plenty mobile in her Loyola maroon Nikes.
She compiled scouting reports on opponents and hand-delivered them to the coaching staff. She sent encouraging emails to players and coaches after games, celebrating or consoling them depending on the outcome.
“If I had a down game or didn’t help the team like I thought I could,” Loyola star forward Donte Ingram said at the time, “she’d be like, ‘Keep your head up. They were out to get you tonight, but you still found ways to pull through.’ Just stuff like that.”
Sister Jean could also be quick with a joke. And she was hardly self-effacing. Told that the National Bobblehead Hall of Fame and Museum sold a record number of Sister Jean statuettes, she cracked during a special media breakout session at the Final Four, “I’m not saying this in a proud fashion, but I think the company could retire when they’re finished making my bobbleheads.”
Even the Covid shutdown couldn’t dampen her spirit. In 2021 at age 102, Sister Jean traveled to Indianapolis and watched Loyola upset top-seeded Illinois 71-58 to earn a berth in that year’s Sweet 16. The Ramblers players waved to her in the stands after the game.
“It was a great moment,” Sister Jean told reporters. “We just held our own the whole time. At the end, to see the scoreboard said the W belonged to Loyola, that whole game was just so thrilling.”
Dolores Bertha Schmidt was born in San Francisco on Aug. 21, 1919, the oldest of three children. She felt a calling to become a nun in the third grade, and after high school joined a convent in Dubuque, Iowa.
After taking her vows, she returned to California and became an elementary school teacher, first at St. Bernard School in Glassell Park before moving in 1946 to St. Charles Borromeo School in North Hollywood, where she also coached several sports including basketball. She earned a bachelor’s degree from Mount St. Mary’s College in L.A. in 1949.
“At noon, during lunch on the playground, I would have the boys play the girls,” she told the Athletic. “I told them, ‘I know you have to hold back because you play full court, but we need to make our girls strong.’ And they did make them strong.”
Among her students were Cardinal Roger Mahony, who served as archbishop of Los Angeles from 1985 to 2011, Father Thomas Rausch, chairman of the theology department at Loyola Marymount, and Sister Mary Milligan, who became the first U.S.-born general superior of the Religious of the Sacred Heart of Mary.
Sister Jean earned a master’s degree from Loyola Marymount University in L.A. in 1961 and took a teaching position in Chicago at Mundelein College, a school near Loyola that was all women at the time. She later served as dean.
Mundelein merged with Loyola in 1991 and within a few years Sister Jean became a team chaplain, a position she held until earlier this year.
“In many roles at Loyola over the course of more than 60 years, Sister Jean was an invaluable source of wisdom and grace for generations of students, faculty, and staff,” Loyola President Mark C. Reed said in a statement. “While we feel grief and a sense of loss, there is great joy in her legacy. Her presence was a profound blessing for our entire community and her spirit abides in thousands of lives. In her honor, we can aspire to share with others the love and compassion Sister Jean shared with us.”
Asked about her legacy, Sister Jean told the Chicago Tribune she hoped to be remembered as someone who served others.
“The legacy I want is that I helped people and I was not afraid to give my time to people and teach them to be positive about what happens and that they can do good for other people,” she said. “And being willing to take a risk. People might say, ‘Why didn’t I do that?’ Well, just go ahead and try it — as long as it doesn’t hurt anybody.”
British number two Katie Boulter, appearing in the BJK Cup for the seventh year, brings some much-needed experience to Anne Keothavong’s side.
She won her singles match against Germany in April’s qualifying event but lost in the singles against the Netherlands, before she and Jodie Burrage teamed up to win the decisive doubles match and clinch Britain’s finals place.
It has, however, been a mixed 2025 for Boulter.
She missed some tournaments early in the year with a foot injury before claiming a maiden clay title at a WTA 125 event in Paris.
A second-round defeat at the first women’s Queen’s event for 52 years was part of a difficult grass-court season, and Boulter relinquished her two-year reign as British number one to Raducanu as a result.
She achieved a fourth career win against a top-10 player – defeating Paula Badosa in the Wimbledon first round – but lost to lucky loser Solana Sierra in the next.
Boulter did not make it past the second round at any of the four Grand Slams, admitting at Wimbledon that her “moment might not come”.
But Boulter has often highlighted her love of competing for her country, with the BJK Cup bringing out the best in her.
That was in evidence against Japan on Thursday as she dropped just three games in a straight-set win over Moyuka Uchijima to secure Britain’s semi-final spot.
As “Madame Web” star Sydney Sweeney remains mum on allegations of promoting eugenics via her American Eagle advertisement, she has seemingly stirred up even more support from far-right figures after recently gaining the favor of President Trump.
A black-and-yellow banner covering a billboard on the 91 Freeway in Corona boldly states: “Proud Boys Love Sydney Sweeney,” according to a photo that one Corona resident shared with ABC7.
The banner, which uses the neo-fascist group‘s signature colors, also references the hot-button American Eagle ad. “She has the best blue genes,” the banner says. Note “genes,” not “jeans.” It’s worth remembering that President Trump during a 2020 presidential debate ordered the Proud Boys to “stand back and stand by” when pressed about condemning right-wing violent extremists.
It’s unclear who put up the banner bearing the far-right group’s name, according to ABC7.
A representative for Sweeney did not immediately respond to The Times’ request for comment on Friday.
Earlier this month, jeans retailer American Eagle dropped a string of commercials for its latest campaign featuring the “Euphoria” star. In one advertisement, the Emmy-nominated actor who is blond says, “Genes are passed down from parents to offspring, often determining traits like hair color, personality and even eye color. My jeans are blue,” she says.
Posters for the American Eagle campaign also featured the totally innovative, never-before-seen wordplay on “jeans” and genes.” A slogan reads, “Sydney Sweeney has great genes,” with the final word crossed out and replaced with “jeans.”
Sweeney, who seems to have a penchant for odd marketing opportunities, and the ads quickly faced criticism on social media, with users alleging the campaign leaned into the language of eugenics. Eugenics is a discredited practice that essentially touted the idea of improving the human race through selective breeding. It gained traction in the early 20th century and was used as a justification for Hitler’s Nazi Germany to wipe out millions of Jewish people, and U.S. authorities to forcibly sterilize more than 60,000 people in California and more than 30 other states.
In an attempt to quell the ire, American Eagle posted a statement stating that its campaign “is and always was about the jeans.”
Sweeney and the American Eagle campaign notably found support among the conservative crowd — it wasn’t the first time for the 27-year-old “Immaculate” actor. Days after the ad dropped, public records revealing her most recent voter registration history resurfaced, unveiling she registered as a Republican in June 2024. Trump found that irresistible to post about on his Truth Social platform.
“Sydney Sweeney, a registered Republican, has the ‘HOTTEST’ ad out there. It’s for American Eagle, and the jeans are ‘flying off the shelves.’ Go get ‘em Sydney!” he posted Monday. In an earlier version of his post, Trump misspelled the actor’s name as “Sidney Sweeney.”
He also used the post to diss brands he claimed used “woke” marketing, including Jaguar and Bud Light. Trump also couldn’t resist throwing shade at pop star Taylor Swift, who openly endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris during the 2024 presidential election.
Amid the fashion fracas and social media discourse, it seems neither Sweeney nor American Eagle had anything to lose.
Sweeney shrugged off her latest bout of controversy last week as she was spotted doing karaoke with some “Euphoria” co-stars in Santa Monica. She also hit the red carpet on Monday to promote her latest film, “Americana,” from writer-director Tony Tost.
American Eagle, on the other hand, saw its stock surge this week.
Thanks to a lazy pun that’s as uninspired as the jeans it’s meant to sell, a series of American Eagle Outfitters ads starring 27-year-old actor Sydney Sweeney have sparked a culture war.
In one of several videos associated with the retailer’s campaign, the accomplished performer who also happens to be a blond bombshell says, “Genes are passed down from parents to offspring, often determining traits like hair color, personality and even eye color. My jeans are blue,” she says, as the camera pans from her blue denim outfit to her blue eyes.
In another video, Sweeney defaces an American Eagle billboard that reads “Sydney Sweeney has great jeans,” crossing out the word “jeans” and replacing it with “genes.”
Jeans. Genes. Get it? Of course you do. It’s as basic as it gets. But that didn’t stop folks from assigning incredible complexity to the ads.
American Eagle Outfitters is accused of leaning into the language of eugenics to sell its mall wear. Eugenics is the absurd and bigoted theory that the human race can be perfected (i.e. made more Caucasian) through selective breeding. Eugenics gained traction in the early 20th century, most notably in Nazi Germany, where Hitler sought to create a master Aryan race, perpetrating unspeakable atrocities including the Holocaust.
Now there’s an argument across social media: Did Sweeney and the retailer play fast and loose with eugenics to sell jeans? Or is it just another distraction from a much scarier reality that “the great replacement theory” — a touchstone conspiracy among white supremacists that an “inferior” non-white population will displace them — is driving American policy and state-sanctioned actions? I pick Option 2.
Sleuthing for hidden white-power messaging in an otherwise playful commercial is easier than contending with the militarized xenophobia right in front of us. It’s happening on our streets, where immigrants with no criminal record are being kidnapped, then locked up and, in many cases, deported with no due process.
Too heavy? Let’s get back to the jeans/genes (again, who thought this pun was clever?). Commentary about the ad has proliferated across social media, where lefties, MAGAs and nondenominational Sweeney haters are chiming in, calling the ad a “Nazi dog whistle,” an excuse for a “woke freak out,” more evidence that “Western ideals of beauty” still dominate, and indisputable proof that Sweeney should remain a perennial target for those who still can’t separate the actor from the insufferable characters she played so well on “Euphoria” and “White Lotus.”
The American Eagle Outfitters’ fall campaign features “the Sydney Jean,” which was created in partnership with Sweeney, and revenue from sales of the jeans will be donated to the Crisis Text Line. According to its website, it’s a “nonjudgmental organization that champions mental well-being and aims to support people of every race, ethnicity, political affiliation, religion, age, sexual orientation, gender identity, disability, socioeconomic status, and other backgrounds.”
Hardly Third Reich fare.
Yet the clothing line’s ad has been called “regressive” and racist, and one critic wrote in Slate: “These days, a blond, blue-eyed white woman being held up as the exemplar of ‘great genes’ is a concept that maybe shouldn’t have made it past the copywriters room.”
Never missing a chance to complain about complainers, White House communications manager Steven Cheung posted: “Cancel culture run amok. This warped, moronic and dense liberal thinking is a big reason why Americans voted the way they did in 2024. They’re tired of this bull—.” Former Fox News host Megyn Kelly took the opportunity to troll the opposition when she wrote Tuesday on X, “I love how the leftist meltdown over the Sydney Sweeney ad has only resulted in a beautiful white blonde girl with blue eyes getting 1000x the exposure for her ‘good genes.’”
American Eagle posted on Instagram Friday that it stands by its campaign. “‘Sydney Sweeney has great jeans’ is and always was about the jeans. Her jeans. Her story,” said the statement. “We’ll continue to celebrate how everyone wears their AE jeans with confidence, their way. Great jeans look good on everyone.”
It’s not the first time Sweeney’s actions have been used as fodder in a culture war. Her 2024 hosting gig on “SNL” included a sketch where she was dressed as a Hooters waitress, complete with ample cleavage. The skit satirized her standing as a sex symbol. MAGA bros saw it as the end of woke because Sweeney is “hot” and she made a joke about her boobs. Yes, even that was politicized.
So now that I’ve spent all this space explaining the unnecessary freak-out over a jeans ad, can we focus on a campaign that should spur just as much, if not more, condemnation?
The Department of Homeland Security has been posting images on its X account with captions that the father of eugenics, Sir Francis Galton, would have approved. On July 23, the DHS posted an image of a 19th century painting titled “American Progress” depicting Manifest Destiny, the religious belief that it was the right and duty of the United States to expand from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean. The DHS caption (with its curious usage of uppercase letters): “A Heritage to be proud of, a Homeland worth Defending.” If you aren’t Indigenous, of course.
A week or so before that, “A Prayer for a New Life,” artist Morgan Weistling’s westward-expansion-era scene featuring a white family in a covered wagon making their way across golden plains. The DHS shared the image with the caption, “Remember your Homeland’s Heritage.” Aside from getting the name of the painting wrong, they inferred that this was the heritage we all share. There was no footnote for First Lady Melania Trump, Sen. Marco Rubio, Trump advisor Stephen Miller, Vice President JD Vance’s wife, Usha, SCOTUS’ Clarence Thomas and millions more whose American origin story doesn’t resemble “Little House on the Prairie.” So can we freak out about that, instead?
Apparently not, because now armchair Nazi hunters are pivoting to a Dunkin’ Donuts ad featuring “The Summer I Turned Pretty” star Gavin Casalegno, who delivers a tongue-in-cheek monologue about his role as the “king of summer.”
“Look, I didn’t ask to be the king of summer, it just kinda happened,” he says. “This tan? Genetics.”
The second in an occasional series of profiles on Southern California athletes who have flourished in their post-playing careers.
The expansion Los Angeles Angels were just 5 months old in September 1961 when the team called up three minor leaguers who would come to define the fledgling franchise’s early years.
Jim Fregosi, a teenage shortstop, would go on to make six All-Star teams and win a Gold Glove. Right-hander Dean Chance, who turned 20 that summer, would win Rookie of the Year and Cy Young awards and lead the American League in wins, ERA, shutouts and innings pitched. And Buck Rodgers would catch for nine big league seasons before managing at the minor and major league level for the Angels.
But only Dan Ardell, a light-hitting first baseman who was called up with them, would do something that had never been done before on Sept. 20 against the Detroit Tigers. In his first big league plate appearance, Ardell blooped a single to right field, only to see pinch-runner Ken McBride get caught rounding second base to end the game.
“I’m the only one to only get one hit. And the one hit was a walk-off loss,” he said. “Not easy to do.”
There were few witnesses since many in the crowd of 3,116 at Detroit’s Tiger Stadium had left long before the ninth inning. Ardell would appear in six more games, four as a pinch-runner, and make six more plate appearances without a hit, striking out twice, walking once and dropping down a sacrifice bunt to finish with a .250 lifetime batting average.
It wasn’t good enough to get him a plaque in the Hall of Fame but you can still find him listed there, alongside the other 20,964 men who have played in the majors.
“It’s a very low number,” Ardell said, acknowledging the accomplishment. “Very low.”
Yet more than six decades later, Ardell looks back on his month with the Angels with neither delight nor disappointment. He has gone on to live a rich life, one that has included well-paying jobs in banking and asset management, a 41-year marriage that produced four children and six grandchildren, and absolutely no regrets about a baseball career that was so short it’s remembered mostly for a teammate’s base-running blunder.
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1.Jim Fregosi during a game in Anaheim in 1965.(Transcendental Graphics / Getty Images)2.Dean Chance won a Cy Young Award with the Angels.(Associated Press)3.Rich Rollins of the Minnesota Twins swings and misses as Angels catcher Buck Rodgers catches the pitch in a 1962 game. All three players were called up to the Angels in September 1961 along with Dan Ardell, whose career only lasted seven games.(Hy Peskin Archive / Getty Images)
“I never had a desire to be a major league ballplayer,” said Ardell, a retired real estate executive who made $1,250 for his big league cameo. “I loved playing baseball, but once I started playing professionally, I was bored. I was disinterested.”
In fact, the bookish Ardell probably never should have been there at all. But after winning the College World Series as a sophomore at USC, he accepted a $37,500 bonus to leave school five semesters short of a degree to sign with the Angels.
Still, he hedged his bets just the same.
“They wanted to give me $35,000 and I said I need $37,500 because that would give me the $500 a semester [tuition] at ‘SC that I needed,” Ardell said.
The newly born Angels had just two minor league teams, so Ardell was sent to the Dodgers’ Class D farm club in Artesia, N.M. His manager was Spider Jorgensen, whose big league debut in 1947 had been somewhat overshadowed by teammate Jackie Robinson, who broke baseball’s color line that day. Since Jorgensen’s equipment never made it to the ballpark, he played third base that day using an infielder’s glove he borrowed from Robinson.
The team Jorgensen managed went 48-78 and finished last, 29½ games out of first in the Sophomore League — so bad that Sports Illustrated came to New Mexico to document its mediocrity. Ardell finished that first season with more strikeouts (32) than hits (30) in 125 at-bats, but he was big, left-handed and played first base — three attributes that were enough to get him a trial with an Angels team that entered September 30 games behind the league-leading Yankees.
“I basically played second string at ‘SC,” Ardell said. “So I go from second string to Class D ball — which wasn’t as good as our ‘SC team — to the big leagues all within 60 days. At age 20, it was an incredible roller coaster.”
It was a ride he quickly tired off. He didn’t drink and he was about to get married, so the frat house atmosphere of a professional baseball team wasn’t one he partook of. After three more minor league seasons, he retired at 23.
“I learned a lot about myself,” he said of those three mostly unhappy summers.
It wasn’t that he couldn’t do it. It was that he didn’t want to do it. Being a big league ballplayer may have been some kids’ dream, but it wasn’t his.
“I got no satisfaction out of it. And I was bored,” he said. “It just wasn’t that interesting to me once I had to make my living doing it.
“If you don’t love what you’re doing, if you don’t appreciate and like what you’re doing, it becomes hard work.”
At 84, Ardell has an easy smile and a quick, self-deprecating wit he employs often. He’s still at his playing weight of 190 pounds, but he says he’s lost 2 inches off a frame that once rose to 6-foot-2. And he no longer moves with the speed or grace that allowed him to steal seven bases in his first minor league season.
There is no memorabilia, no remnants of his short-lived career in his hillside home in Laguna Beach’s Bluebird Canyon, about a half-mile from the Pacific Ocean. He gave his gloves away during a garage sale shortly after he quit playing and a grandson took down the few pictures he had hung on the wall.
After retiring with a .252 average and 45 home runs in 389 minor league games, Ardell went back to college, then studied real estate, working for Union Bank and Wells Fargo. He eventually started a real estate asset management company with his twin brother Dave, an equally talented baseball player who played at UCLA, where he was the team captain.
After retiring with a .252 average and 45 home runs in 389 minor league games, Dan Ardell returned to school at USC, then studied real estate, working for Union Bank and Wells Fargo.
(Robert Gauthier/Los Angeles Times)
That anyone remembers he played at all is both flattering and befuddling for Ardell, who receives about a dozen autograph requests in the mail each year.
“I mean, how do they even know my address?” he asked.
Still, he answers every letter. Some fans send old photos or baseball cards that are necessarily homemade since Ardell never got a Topps bubblegum card of his own.
“In those days anybody who signed a bonus, Topps would sign,” he said. “So they came to Artesia, where I was playing, and said ‘we want to give you a Topps card. And we’ll pay you five bucks’.
“I said, ‘I think I need 10.’ So I’m the only only major leaguer who never had a Topps card.”
Which isn’t to say Ardell has no mementos from his career. A fastball he didn’t see on a poorly lit field in San José slipped under the bill of his batting helmet and struck him flush in the head one night.
“I woke up the next day. You could see the seam where the baseball hit. I still have a dent,” he said with a chuckle, pointing to a spot in the center of his forehead.
It wasn’t until three decades after he walked away from the game that Ardell came to appreciate what he had accomplished — and only then after marrying Jean Hastings, who would shortly become a nationally recognized baseball academic and writer.
Ardell and Hastings — a Brooklyn native who had always been a baseball fanatic — were living in the same Orange County neighborhood when a mutual friend suggested they go out on a date.
“She had just read ‘Ball Four,’” Ardell said, referencing Jim Bouton’s book about the raunchy, less-seemly side of baseball. “So she said no, baseball players are to look at, they’re not to touch.”
Dan Ardell says he receives about a dozen autograph requests in the mail each year, with some fans sending old photos or homemade baseball cards since Ardell never got a Topps card of his own. “I mean, how do they even know my address?” he said.
(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)
She went on the date anyway, then married Ardell a couple of years later in 1981. Jean, 79, died in 2022 after a short, ferocious battle with leukemia, but in the more than 40 years she spent with Ardell, she slowly rekindled his love for a game he had all but forgotten.
They went to conferences and symposiums, where Jean spoke on the magic and the poetry of baseball. They visited the Hall of Fame, traveled to Arizona for spring training and attended countless Angels games, watching on TV the ones they couldn’t attend in person.
“It was definitely part of her,” grandson Garrett Tyler said.
Jean not only helped Ardell put his baseball career into perspective, she helped put his life in perspective. Shortly after they married, “I decided to have a mission statement,” Ardell said. “And my mission statement was to make a difference in the lives of others.”
“Ten years later,” he added “I changed it to make a positive difference.”
He saw that desire at work in Jean, a political liberal who, in addition to her baseball writing, also worked with a nonprofit called Braver Angels that seeks to bridge the political divide by bringing Democrats and Republicans together. It was a philosophy she lived by marrying Ardell, a lifelong Republican who cast his first presidential vote for Barry Goldwater but later drove a car sporting a “Republicans for Obama” bumper sticker.
Ardell was already working with Opportunity International, a global nonprofit that alleviates generational poverty by microfinancing community projects both in Southern California and abroad. But now the bridge that he and Jean built became apparent through the difference being made — not only in those affected communities, but in his own soul as well.
Tyler said he grew up playing catch with his grandfather, who attended all his Little League games. But it was his grandmother who told him about Ardell’s professional career.
“He was always a little bit reluctant to talk about it. My grandma was the one that kind of opened him up,” said Tyler, 25, who followed his grandparents into baseball, where he works as manager of concessions for the Amarillo Sod Poodles, the double A affiliate of the Arizona Diamondbacks.
“I’ve talked to him a lot about that. He told me that he just didn’t have the confidence. He knew that he was good, but I don’t think he really understood it. I don’t know if he necessarily misses it or feels like he missed out. I think he was more appreciative of the journey that it took him on and how he’s evolved into a different love for baseball.”
As he has grown older, Tyler said that’s the part of his grandfather’s journey that has stuck with him; the mission statement part that says it’s not about the destination or the accomplishments, but about the influence you have on those you meet along the way.
In that way, he said, Ardell’s short career is now having an outsized influence.
Tyler mentions a friend who is basically playing for free, stranded below the longest rung of the minor league ladder. But he still puts on a uniform every day.
“He plays for the love of the game and just because it’s all he knows,” Tyler said. “One of the things that Dan asks me that I ask my friend is, ‘do you like what you’re doing?’ And at that point it’s not about your career longevity or how much money you’re making.
“As long as you’re happy playing and you’re making ends meet, then go for it.”
Ardell wasn’t happy playing, so he walked away. Three decades later with the love and support of a wife who saw baseball not as a sport but as a metaphor for life, as a game where the goal is to get home safely, Ardell began to understand the magic, too.
His one month in the majors led him to a career prosperous enough that he could help others, one that still fills his mailbox with letters from fans and one that has given him the wisdom to counsel other 23-year-olds to keep putting on the uniform as long as it fits.
Make a positive difference in the lives of others.
“It was a very inconsequential part of my life that was very consequential to other people,” Ardell said of his one month in the majors.
June 13 (UPI) — The United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit on Friday rejected President Donald Trump‘s attempt to get a retrial of the civil sexual abuse and defamation liability verdict against him in the E. Jean Carroll case.
The appeals court had already rejected an appeal of the verdict in December. The court voted 8-2 Friday to refuse Trump’s effort to overturn the verdict and retry the case.
Lawyers for Carroll said in a statement, “E. Jean Carroll is very pleased with today’s decision. Although President Trump continues to try every possible maneuver to challenge the findings of two separate juries, those efforts have failed. He remains liable for sexual assault and defamation.”
Trump’s lawyers then sought a retrial, petitioning to have the full appeals rule on it in what’s known en banc.
The court’s Friday ruling written by Judge Myrna Perez said of Trump’s effort, “Simply re-litigating a case is not an appropriate use of the en banc procedure.”
She added, “In those rare instances in which a case warrants our collective consideration, it is almost always because it involves a question of exceptional importance or a conflict between the panel’s opinion and appellate precedent.”
Perez said of Trump’s earlier rejected appeal of the verdict, “Defendant-Appellant appealed a civil judgment against him for sexual assault and defamation, challenging several of the district court’s evidentiary rulings. For the reasons discussed at length in its unanimous opinion, the panel, on which I sat, found no reversible abuse of discretion.”
Trump denies sexually assaulting Carroll and defaming her.
A statement from a spokesperson for Trump’s legal team said, “The American People are supporting President Trump in historic numbers, 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.”
Trump-appointed Circuit Judges Steven J. Menashi and Michael Park dissented.
“I would rehear the case en banc to “maintain uniformity of the court’s decisions” and to resolve these important questions in line with longstanding principles,” Menashi wrote.
Writer Carroll won a $83.3 million defamation judgement against Trump, as well as a civil verdict, that he sexually abused her.
The jury in that case found Trump liable for battery and defamation in Carroll’s sexual abuse lawsuit. She alleged in that suit that Trump sexually abused her in a New York City department store.
