How Appealing



Wednesday, December 17, 2025

“Appeals court hands Trump a win over D.C. National Guard deployment; Judges wrote in a preliminary order that the National Guard can stay for now and that the Trump administration is likely to succeed in its appeal of a lower-court ruling”: Jenny Gathright of The Washington Post has this report.

Kyle Cheney and Josh Gerstein of Politico report that “Appeals court clears way for Trump to keep National Guard on DC streets; But the 3-judge panel cast doubt on Guard deployments in ‘non-consenting’ states.”

Zoe Tillman of Bloomberg News reports that “Trump’s DC Troop Deployment Allowed for Now by Appeals Court.”

And Ryan Knappenberger of Courthouse News Service reports that “DC Circuit rules Trump’s National Guard deployment can continue for now; The three-judge panel determined that the president has a ‘unique power’ over D.C. as a federal district created by Congress rather than a constitutionally sovereign entity like the 50 states.”

You can access today’s order of a unanimous three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, and the opinions accompanying it, at this link.

Posted at 9:58 PM by Howard Bashman



“Indicted SCOTUSblog Publisher Tom Goldstein Wins Motion Suppressing Evidence; Criminal defense attorneys for indicted SCOTUSblog publisher Tom Goldstein filed a successful pretrial motion preventing federal prosecutors from alleging Goldstein employed sham employees at his now-defunct litigation boutique, Goldstein & Russell, to reduce his 2018 tax liability in violation of criminal tax evasion statutes”: Sulaiman Abdur-Rahman of The National Law Journal has this report.

You can access here and here last Friday’s orders of the U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland. And yesterday that court issued this opinion in support of those orders.

Posted at 9:52 PM by Howard Bashman



“Ghislaine Maxwell Asks a Judge to Throw Out Her Sex-Abuse Conviction; Ms. Maxwell, who conspired with Jeffrey Epstein in a sex-trafficking scheme, argued that she had been denied a fair trial”: Benjamin Weiser of The New York Times has this report.

And Josh Russell of Courthouse News Service has a report headlined “Representing herself, Ghislaine Maxwell pushes to overturn Epstein sex trafficking conviction; Maxwell’s request for an evidentiary hearing on new exculpatory evidence may hamper the scheduled release of tranches of grand jury documents from her and Epstein’s respective investigations, expected to be made public later this week.”

You can view the pro se filing at this link.

Posted at 9:44 PM by Howard Bashman



“Trump Told by Alan Dershowitz Constitutionality of Third Term Is Unclear; Trump’s former lawyer presented him with his forthcoming book that concludes the Constitution is ambiguous on the question”: Brian Schwartz of The Wall Street Journal has this report.

Posted at 8:16 PM by Howard Bashman