Politics
Trump loses latest round of gag order appeal in hush money case at New York’s top court
Donald Trump lost the latest round of his gag order appeal in New Yorkthis time at the state’s Court of Appeals. The rejection of the Republican presidential nominee’s appeal was on the list of motions decided by the top court on Thursday.
Judge Juan Merchan had partially terminated the order after the former president was found guilty in May on all 34 counts of falsifying business records in the first degree. With the trial over, Merchan ended the order’s restrictions related to trial witnesses and the jury, but he kept them in place for speech targeting Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s staff, court staff, their family members as well as family members of Bragg and Merchan.
The intermediate state appeals court last month rejected Trump’s argument that the trial’s conclusion warranted terminating the order completely prior to sentencing. “The fair administration of justice necessarily includes sentencing,” the appeals court wroteciting the limited nature of the remaining order and noting that “threats received by District Attorney staff after the jury verdict continued to pose a significant and imminent threat.”
Trump succeeded last week in getting Merchan to postpone the sentencing until after November’s presidential election. When it comes to the remaining gag order, that means it stays in place for that much longer, with Thursday’s rejection potentially being the final word on the matter. It’s unclear if Trump will seek to appeal further to the U.S. Supreme Court, which gave him broad criminal immunity in the July 1 ruling that led to his New York sentencing being postponed.
Merchant”https://www.nycourts.gov/LegacyPDFS/press/pdfs/PeoplevDJT-Letter-Adjournment-Dec9-6-24.pdf” target=”_blank”> is slated to decide on Nov. 12 whether Trump’s Manhattan verdicts can stand in the face of the immunity decision. If they can, then Merchan said sentencing will proceed Nov. 26, though Trump’s lawyers have signaled that they will seek to immediately appeal any adverse ruling prior to sentencing, so that latest delayed Nov. 26 date could be pushed back further.
Subscribe to theDeadline: Legal Newsletterfor updates and expert analysis on the top legal stories. The newsletter will return to its regular weekly schedule when the Supreme Court’s next term kicks off in October.
Jordan Rubin is the Deadline: Legal Blog writer. He was a prosecutor for the New York County District Attorney’s Office in Manhattan and is the author of “Bizarro,” a book about the secret war on synthetic drugs. Before he joined BLN, he was a legal reporter for Bloomberg Law.
The U.S. delegation in Seattle includes HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Energy Secretary Chris Wright, according to a FIFA official, along with White House FIFA World Cup Task Force czar Andrew Giuliani. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin and Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy were among those who attended the U.S.’ first match, against Paraguay.
Britain wouldn’t have its latest likely next prime minister if not for soccer.
Andy Burnham, the former Greater Manchester mayor elected to the U.K. Parliament in a closely-watched by-election on Thursday, is expected to oust Prime Minister Keir Starmer as Labour Party leader in a matter of weeks. The sport propelled his political rise.
The pivotal moment of Burnham’s long political career came in 2009, when he was the Cabinet minister for culture, media and sport under then-PM Gordon Brown. Burnham was asked to return to his native Liverpool for a memorial commemorating the Hillsborough Disaster.
The 1989 event remains Britain’s worst-ever sporting catastrophe. Almost 100 Liverpool fans were crushed to death at a cup game in South Yorkshire, following a series of disastrous crowd control errors by police chiefs and stadium staff.
The horror of the day was compounded in the immediate aftermath, when police sought to cover up their mistakes by falsely blaming drunken Liverpool fans for the crush. The lies were amplified by a willing national media and allowed to linger for years; the city grieved and demanded justice. Bereaved families campaigned for years. But no one listened, and no one was held accountable.
Born in Liverpool and steeped in soccer culture, Burnham knew all this as he headed to the memorial at Liverpool’s Anfield stadium 20 years later. He was well aware how a young government envoy would be greeted by the crowd, still raging at the injustice two decades on. But to his credit, he went anyway — and was met with a wall of heckles, chants and protest songs from the part of Anfield, known as the Kop, where the team’s loudest supporters congregate. (The video of his halting, shattered-looking appearance is well worth watching.)
Burnham — until then a typical career politician in Westminster — has described the day as a seminal moment. He returned to Cabinet and demanded a new inquiry into Hillsborough. Three years later its report revealed every claim made by the justice campaigners — of police failures and a scandalous cover-up — had been true. The government was forced to apologize.
Burnham was widely praised for his role in exposing the truth about Hillsborough. But more significant in his ultimate rise to power would be the shift in his own psyche. “I always say that I took my first steps out of Westminster on 15 April 2009 when I walked out to face the Kop,” he wrote in his memoir, “Head North,” penned with close friend (and Hillsborough survivor) Steve Rotheram. “Things were never the same after that day.”
Burnham says his experiences dealing with the Hillsborough justice campaign shaped his view of the Westminster political machine, as an arrogant and failing institution which ignores English regions outside of London. Eight years later he would quit Westminster altogether to become a mayor in his native northwest.
Fast-forward to 2026, and Burnham finds himself in an enviable position — an experienced politician able to cast himself as a political outsider ready to take on the Westminster elites. (While Starmer supports the North London-based champions Arsenal, Burnham is a season ticket holder at his beloved Everton F.C., and is regularly photographed jogging in a vintage Everton jersey.) It’s a familiar narrative which chimes with disgruntled voters everywhere.
Read Jack’s Blue Light News Magazine profile of Andy Burnham here and Blue Light News’s full coverage of the Makerfield by-election and its unfolding fallout here.
Who’s not here at Seattle’s Lumen Field for the Pacific Rim face-off between the United States and Australia?
If they’re following the match, the two countries’ elected heads — President Donald Trump and Prime Minister Anthony Albanese — are doing so from afar.
- Kennedy and Wright cheer on US
- The politician who kicked his way to power
- The US-Australia face-off that isn’t happening
- The soccer boss in Mark Carney’s ear
- Vance says US allows more than dozen ships through to Iranian ports
- Regulators back Trump plan to speed power to energy-hungry AI data centers
- The accidental American
- The Americans who want to see Australia do well
- Steil pushes bill to ban lawmakers from political prediction markets
- Australian media are launching a MAGA counterpress
-
Politics1 year agoFormer ‘Squad’ members launching ‘Bowman and Bush’ YouTube show
-
The Dictatorship1 year agoLuigi Mangione acknowledges public support in first official statement since arrest
-
Politics1 year agoFormer Kentucky AG Daniel Cameron launches Senate bid
-
Uncategorized2 years ago
Bob Good to step down as Freedom Caucus chair this week
-
The Dictatorship1 year agoPete Hegseth’s tenure at the Pentagon goes from bad to worse
-
The Josh Fourrier Show2 years agoDOOMSDAY: Trump won, now what?
-
Politics1 year agoBlue Light News’s Editorial Director Ryan Hutchins speaks at Blue Light News’s 2025 Governors Summit
-
The Dictatorship9 months agoMike Johnson sums up the GOP’s arrogant position on military occupation with two words