The 19th

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Here are the things that we did, read, watched, listened to and wore that brought us joy in 2024.

As of Thursday afternoon, the two chambers of Congress had yet to come up with a new plan to keep the government open. Here’s what happens if Congress can’t pass a spending plan and the government shuts down:

On Thursday, the Georgia Court of Appeals ruled that Fani Willis must be removed from prosecuting the case she brought against President-elect Donald Trump that charged him with trying to overturn the 2020 election results in Georgia. Willis, the Fulton County District Attorney, had been under scrutiny for having a romantic relationship with a special prosecutor named Nathan Wade whom she had appointed for the criminal case against Trump and more than a dozen of his allies. A lawyer for a defendant in the case filed a motion alleging that Willis was financially benefitting from the arrangement. But in March, a Georgia State judge ruled that while that relationship had an “appearance of impropriety” Willis did not have a conflict of interest and could proceed with the case. Thursday's decision, which came after an appeal from Trump’s legal team, puts the last criminal case against Trump up in the air. Legal experts previously told NBC News that the chances of finding another prosecutor to take up the case are slim due to its complexity. Willis’ office said they will appeal the decision to the State Supreme Court. The 19th previously spoke with legal scholars and experts about the efforts to remove Willis from the case who highlighted both the real implications of her decision to engage in a romantic relationship with Wade but also the way that race and gender may have played into the scrutiny faced by Willis, who is Black. “You can think about how certain groups of people are given grace for things that are far worse and have bigger consequential impact. That part, for me, just tells us that Black women are still viewed in our society as people who don’t have access to full humanity,” Nadia Brown, a professor of government and director of women’s and gender studies at Georgetown University told The 19th in March. ✍️: Jessica Kutz, climate and sustainability reporter 📸: David Walter Banks/Washington Post/Getty Images

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More than 300 Moms Demand Action volunteers ran for office and won, and more than 200 of them were in state and local office, including school boards.

The U.S. government has agreed to pay nearly $116 million to settle lawsuits with 103 women who claimed they were sexually harassed and assaulted while incarcerated in a federal prison in Northern California. Sexual assault was so common at the Federal Correction Institution in Dublin, Calif., that the prison became known among the women incarcerated there as “the rape club.” An investigation by The Associated Press, published in 2021, exposed a rampant culture of abuse at the prison. When women did speak out, they were often retaliated against, including being placed in solitary confinement. Some of the women were undocumented, making them easy targets of abuse because they were likely to be deported after serving their sentences. As President Joe Biden grants clemency in his final days of office, some of the women who were abused are asking for their sentences to be commuted altogether, both as a form of justice and so that they can seek mental health services. In April, the Federal Bureau of Prisons announced that it was temporarily closing the facility and moving women to other prisons. Earlier this month, the bureau decided to close the prison permanently. So far, at least seven prison officials, including the prison’s warden, have either pleaded guilty or been convicted for the abuse they committed, according to The New York Times. At least 20 other employees are on leave and under investigation. A 2022 report by the United States Senate Subcommittee on Investigations found that Bureau of Prison employees sexually abused women in two-thirds of facilities that hold women between 2012 and 2022. Compounding their trauma is the fact that around 50 percent of women incarcerated have been abused prior to entering prison, according to research by The U.S. The Commission on Civil Rights. They are also significantly more likely to be abused while incarcerated than men. ✍️: Jessica Kutz, climate and sustainability reporter 📸: Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times via Getty Images

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The push to preserve and expand abortion access in states where it’s protected often collides with ideological and health care divides between urban and rural residents. From KFF Health News:

Democrats are looking to their wins in state legislatures as a bright spot from November’s otherwise-disappointing election results — wins they say will be the basis for their anti-Trump “firewall.”