Weekend Report: What's going on?

Giuliani must pay $148 million in defamation suit. MAGA senators engage in Islamaphobic grilling of Muslim court nominee. Florida sex scandal is destroying Moms for Liberty.

Rudy Giuliani, one of Donald Trump’s top lieutenants in promoting the Big Lie, will have to pay Georgia election workers Ruby Freeman and Shay Moss $148 million in damages for slandering them and engaging in defamation. Will they see any of the money? And did Trump’s henchmen (and henchwomen) now get the message? At least one of Trump's staunchest cheerleaders in Congress did not, calling for an investigation of the judge—simply because the judge gave a speech condemning the January 6th attack on the Capitol by Trump and his supporters!

In a grotesque scene, Trump loyalists in the Senate viciously grilled President Biden’s nominee for a federal appeal court, who happens to be Muslim—a historic first for an appeals court—as they demanded to know his beliefs on 9/11 and Palestinian liberation. It was nothing but unadulterated Islamophobia, and it shows the hate at the heart of the GOP.

And the fallout from the Florida sex scandal in which the GOP chairman, Christian Zielger, was accused of rape by a woman his wife, Moms of Liberty co-founder Bridget Ziegler, admitted to having consensual with, continues for the extremist Moms for Liberty as the group reels and faces more losses.