Trump Completely Melts Down Over New Gag Order in Hush Money Trial

Donald Trump’s gag order in his hush-money trial has been expanded after he repeatedly attacked the judge’s daughter, and the former president has responded to the decision with shame and humility.

Nah, just kidding.

On Truth Social Tuesday morning, Trump complained that the expanded gag order was unfair, that the case against him shouldn’t have been brought, and that Judge Juan Merchan should be recused with the case thrown out. And for good measure, he called the whole thing “ELECTION INTERFERENCE at its worst!”

Trump was slapped with a gag order last week prohibiting him from talking publicly about jurors, witnesses, prosecutors, court staff, and the family members of the last two. The gag order was expanded Monday night to include the family members of the court and the judge’s family.

The expanded terms of the gag order still allow Trump to talk about the judge and Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, but it’s anyone’s guess as to whether the former president will limit his insults and criticism to just those two. He’s already proven he can’t abide by other gag orders in the past, and was even hit with a $5,000* fine for violating the order in his bank fraud trial.

Trump is on trial for allegedly using his former lawyer and fixer Michael Cohen to cover up an affair with adult film actress Stormy Daniels before the 2016 presidential election, and faces 34 felony counts for falsifying business records with the intent to further an underlying crime. The trial is scheduled to begin on April 15 with jury selection.

Can the former president keep his mouth shut until then?

*This article originally misstated the amount Trump was fined for violating the gag order.

Donald Trump doesn’t seem to have much success at keeping his mouth shut. A gag order issued last week by Judge Juan Merchan in the former president’s hush-money trial couldn’t stop Trump from attacking the judge’s daughter on Truth Social, not once but at least twice.

Now Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg wants to make that gag order even stronger. In a court filing Monday, Bragg said that Trump’s “dangerous, violent, and reprehensible rhetoric fundamentally threatens the integrity of these proceedings.” He urged Merchan to reiterate that attacks on the family of court staff, as well that of the district attorney, are prohibited.

“There is no constitutional right to target the family of this Court, let alone on the blatant falsehoods that have served as the flimsiest pretexts” for Trump’s attacks, Bragg stated in the filing.

Trump’s initial gag order last week was only the latest in a stream of judicial reprimands on his speech. In October, Judge Arthur Engoron issued a gag order in Trump’s bank fraud trial after he attacked the judge’s principal law clerk in the case. Trump was later fined $15,000 for violating the order.

Judge Tanya Chutkan, who is presiding over Trump’s D.C. trial for election interference, slapped him with a gag order in March after Trump attacked her family.

Right-wing activists and lawmakers have targeted Merchan’s daughter since last year, after Trump’s initial indictment in the hush-money case. Several far-right personalities, including Marjorie Taylor Greene, took issue with the fact that Merchan’s daughter worked at one time for Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign, claiming it was proof that Trump’s arrest and indictment were a political witch hunt.

Donald Trump’s businesses don’t have the best of track records: Trump Steaks, Trump Airlines, and several of his casinos have gone out of business.

And now, things aren’t looking good for Trump Media & Technology Group, the parent company of his personal social media platform Truth Social. The company’s Securities and Exchange Commission filings, released Monday, show just $4.1 million in revenue—and a staggering loss of more than $58 million.

Within hours of the filings being released, the news of the company’s losses led the stock price to drop by more than 20 percent in midday trading, with its market value standing at more than $6 billion, just a little more than Trump Media’s value when it debuted on the stock market last week.

And the worst may not be over. The company “expects to continue to incur operating losses and negative cash flows from operating activities for the foreseeable future, as it works to expand its user base, attracting more platform partners and advertisers,” the filing states.

The filing also included a note from an independent accounting firm, Colorado-based BF Borgers CPA PC, warning that Trump Media’s “operating losses raise substantial doubt about its ability to continue as a going concern.”

Trump Media completed a merger two weeks ago with Digital World Acquisition Corporation, a move that was expected to bring a financial windfall to the former president. However, Trump won’t be able to count on this deal just yet to help pay down his many legal bills.

He’ll have to wait six months to legally sell his 72 million shares in the company. Experts have warned, however, that the stock’s value can’t be counted on. It will be subject to how strong an individual investor considers Trump’s name.

A radical six-week abortion ban has automatically taken effect in Florida, thanks to a decision on Monday from the Florida Supreme Court—but there’s still a glimmer of hope.

Since Roe v. Wade was overturned, Florida has allowed abortion up to 15 weeks, making the state a major hub for people seeking abortions in the South. Governor Ron DeSantis signed a new law in April 2023 that would ban abortion after six weeks, before most people even know they are pregnant. That law was put on hold while the state Supreme Court heard a legal challenge against the 15-week ban.

The court ruled Monday to uphold the 15-week ban. As a result, the more radical six-week ban will automatically go into effect. The ruling, which touched on the “right to privacy,” overturns decades of legal precedent. The Florida state Constitution already has explicit privacy protections.

Abortion rights advocates in Florida, though, are hopeful they can win back abortion protections. The high court on Monday also approved a 2024 ballot initiative that would enshrine abortion rights in the state constitution, after hearing arguments for and against the referendum in February. Florida voters will decide whether to protect abortion when they go to the polls this November.

For now, as the six-week ban goes into effect, abortion access will effectively be wiped out throughout the Southern United States. North Carolina Republicans last year forced through a law banning abortion at 12 weeks, and South Carolina Republicans passed a law banning the procedure at six. All three states had become abortion havens in the South after the fall of Roe.

Five of the seven justices on Florida’s Supreme Court were appointed by DeSantis, and two had clear conflicts of interest. Justice Charles Canady is married to Republican state Representative Jennifer Canady, who co-sponsored the six-week ban. He refused to recuse himself from the case. Another justice, Meredith Sasso, is married to DeSantis loyalist Michael Sasso.

There is a strong chance Florida’s abortion referendum will succeed, though. The abortion rights group Floridians Protecting Freedom, which organized the ballot initiative, gathered nearly one million verified signatures to petition for the vote, far more than the minimum required. And many of those signatories were Republican voters.

Forget a MAGA takeover in 2024; some conservatives are already looking for ways to get Donald Trump back into the White House four years from now—for a third term.

A feature story in The American Conservative insisted last week that Trump shouldn’t be beholden to the details of the U.S. Constitution, arguing that a win in November could open up the GOP presidential nominee to the possibility of running for another, consecutive term, if the nation repeals the Twenty-Second Amendment.

The amendment, which was ratified in 1951, states that “no person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice, and no person who has held the office of President, or acted as President, for more than two years of a term to which some other person was elected President shall be elected to the office of the President more than once.”

But clearly, Trump is such a unique prospect that the authors of the amendment couldn’t have foreseen the allure of a far-right candidate with a frenetic base. So why not just do away with it?

“As the primary season has shown us, the Republicans have not moved on from Trump—yet the Twenty-second Amendment works to constrain their enthusiasm by prohibiting them from rewarding Trump with re-election four years from now,” American Conservative contributor Peter Tonguette wrote last week.

“The case of Donald Trump, however, makes an even more forceful ethical argument against the Twenty-second Amendment and for its repeal: If a man who once was president returns, after a series of years, to stand again for the office and proves so popular as to earn a second nonconsecutive term—as Trump seems bound to do—to deny him the right to run for a second consecutive term cuts against basic fair play,” Tonguette continued.

“If, by 2028, voters feel Trump has done a poor job, they can pick another candidate; but if they feel he has delivered on his promises, why should they be denied the freedom to choose him once more?”

And, of course, pay no heed to the fact that Trump has promised to be a dictator “on day one,” or his increasingly frequent examples of his cognitive decline. It’s all fair game if it helps secure another four years under the most extreme conservative demagogue in recent history.