Trump plans his fraud trial return during gag order appeal: Latest

In Ohio, Youngstown State University students, faculty, alumni, and community members were outraged to find out that Republican US Rep Bill Johnson — who has no background in education of any kind — was offered the contract to be the university’s new president with only two hours notice and without any public input.

Johnson, who joined spurious 2020 challenges to attempt to invalidate millions of votes in that year’s presidential election, has previously invoked right-wing grievances against “cancel culture” and “indoctrination” on college campuses. University donors are now looking for the exits.

The Independent’s Graig Graziosi reports:

An appeals court judge has rejected Donald Trump’s request for a swift appeal of his gag order in his New York fraud trial, meaning that the former president will have to make his case before a full panel of judges.

His attorneys will have a chance to argue before a full appeals court on Monday.

Last week, another appeals court allowed the gag order to stand, after court filings revealed the wave of abusive messages and credible death threats to Judge Arthur Engoron and his staff.

Trump then immediately attacked the judge’s wife.

Donald Trump hasn’t been inside New York State Supreme Court since his testimony last month in a fraud trial that could imperil his family’s real estate empire.

He is reportedly expected to return to Judge Arthur Engoron’s courtroom on Thursday.

Trump also will testify again, this time as the final witness for the defence, a week from today.

Eric Trump will testify for a second time this week on Wednesday.

Former US Rep Liz Cheney has warned that there is “no question” Trump would leave office if he is elected next year.

NBC’s Savannah Guthrie on Today on Monday asked Ms Cheney whether Trump would “try to stay in power forever,” if elected.

“Absolutely. He’s already done it once,” she said.

Perhaps somewhat unsurprisingly, given the history of Donald Trump and his bullying of Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, the former president wrote on Truth Social early Monday morning that Floridians should actually “blame” the state’s governor for Florida State’s exclusion from the upcoming playoff series set to begin on 1 January.

Trump sees the criminal indictments and civil cases against him as part of a Democratic conspiracy that is “weaponising” the federal government to keep him away from the White House, and he appears ready to do the same to his political opponents if he’s elected.

The leading candidate for the 2024 Republican nomination for president is giving his supporters permission to dehumanise and degrade his political opponents as he does, priming their acceptance of political violence against the “other” side, while absolving them of responsibility for it, according to urgent warnings from scholars and legal analysts.

Four candidates for the GOP’s nomination for president have qualified to appear at the next primary debate scheduled for Wednesday night.

Trump is among them, but he won’t be there, as usual. Ron DeSantis, Nikki Haley and Vivek Ramaswamy will be the only three candidates on the stage.

Trump’s call to his supporters to “guard” and “watch” ballot counting in cities with large Black populations has raised alarms among elections officials and voting rights advocates bracing for more threats to elections fuelled by his bogus narrative of widespread fraud.

“The most important part of what’s coming up is to guard the vote, and you should go into Detroit, and you should go into Philadelphia, and you should go into some of these places – Atlanta – and you should go into some of these places, and we gotta watch those votes when they come in,” he told supporters in Iowa on Saturday.

He then falsely claimed that ballots are “shoved around in wheelbarrows and dumped on the floor”.

The president of the NAACP Legal Defense & Educational Fund called his comments “lawless intimidation,” and a grim reminder of 2020.

Democratic officials and Joe Biden are leaping on Donald Trump’s revived threats to dismantle the Affordable Care Act.

The Independent’s Eric Garcia writes:

Donald Trump’s attorneys in his fraud trial in New York are asking another appeals court this afternoon to allow the state’s highest court to weigh in on the fate of a gag order in the case.

Oral arguments will begin this afternoon following a request for an expedited review of their appeal, after a state appellate court allowed Judge Arthur Engoron’s gag order to stand last week.