Ahead of a civil trial in New York on Monday, a judge announced that former Republican vice-presidential nominee Sarah Palin tested positive this week for COVID-19. This is the second time she has tested positive for COVID and she is not vaccinated.

"Ms. Palin has tested positive for coronavirus. She is of course unvaccinated,” said U.S. District Court Judge Jed Rakoff.

"Since she has apparently tested positive three times, I'm going to assume that she's positive."

Palin has a defamation trial with the New York Times, suing the publication over an editorial she claims had falsely linked her to a mass shooting in Tucson, Arizona.

The new trial will be delayed until Feb. 3.

Palin, 57, tested positive for COVID in March 2021. In December 2021, she had told an audience in Arizona at “Turning Point USA’s AmericaFest" that, "it will be over my dead body that I'll have to get a shot.”

The defamation trial is for accusations that the Times and former editor James Bennet damaged Palin’s reputation for publishing an opinion piece that claimed she had incited the 2011 shooting of former Rep. Gabby Giffords.

The Times made a connection between an advertisement from Palin's political action committee and the shooting.

"Before the shooting, Sarah Palin’s political action committee circulated a map that showed the targeted electoral districts of Ms. Giffords and 19 other Democrats under stylized crosshairs. But in that case no connection to the shooting was ever established," the editorial read.

The Times later corrected the editorial and apologized for it.

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