Jul 24, 2020
Listening to Donald Trump's White House coronavirus briefings this week, his first in 90 days, I remembered an old joke:
Doctor: There's good news and bad news.
Patient: What's the bad news?
Doctor: We amputated the wrong leg.
Patient: Oh my god! What's the good news?
Doctor: The other one's getting better.
Trump is trying to sell us a little bit of dubious good news here and there while distracting us from the bad, especially the non-stop multitude of unenforced fatal errors made by this president and his Republican pals, in particular the governors of now disease-ridden red states who did his bidding and opened their states too early.
He's covering up bad news like the fact that on Tuesday, for the first time since May, the United States recorded more than 1000 coronavirus deaths for the day. Or that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported that the number of infections probably is two to thirteen times higher than we officially know. Or eighteen straight weeks of more than a million Americans filing unemployment claims as a result of the shutdown.
Instead, he's pushing his usual snake oil--"My administration will stop at nothing to save lives and shield the vulnerable!"--exaggerating the truth, spinning the statistics and downright lying while still claiming the virus "will disappear." Which makes it all the more peculiar to hear the media talking afterwards about Donald Trump's "change of tone." All he's done is perform his usual dreary read off the teleprompter, avoiding disastrous ad libs and sounding for all the world like the kid forced to recite in front of the grownups before he can have cake.
Granted, he did admit for the first time that the pandemic "will probably, unfortunately, get worse before it gets better." And he does now express his support for wearing a mask, claiming that he carries one with him and wears it--although I can think of only two instances when he was seen with one on his face and on Monday night, video showed him cavorting around without a mask or social distancing at a fundraiser in his DC hotel. Nonetheless, wearing it, he says, is about patriotism. Bless our Yankee Doodle Dunce.
So change of tone? Not really. For one, you just know he'll be back to his usual maniacal stand-up act any minute now. For another, he's clearly not just satisfying his craven lust for airtime but responding to polls showing a majority of the country disapprove his handling of COVID-19 and distrust anything he says about the virus. He's also trying to win back his eroding support among seniors, not only by singling out the importance of their medical care in the briefings--"high risk, wonderful people" (!)--but by trying to scare them with bogus reports of anarchists flooding the streets and criminals on the rampage assaulting little old ladies if Joe Biden's elected.
What's more, Trump seems to know that his bungling of coronavirus is creating cracks in his support among his GOP stalwarts. According to Sunday's New York Times, "Once-reticent Republican governors are now issuing orders on mask-wearing and business restrictions that run counter to Mr. Trump's demands. Some of those governors have been holding late-night phone calls among themselves to trade ideas and grievances; they have sought out partners in the administration other than the president, including Vice President Mike Pence, who, despite echoing Mr. Trump in public, is seen by governors as far more attentive to the continuing disaster."
An advisor to Texas Governor Greg Abbott told the paper that Trump "got bored" with the virus and was doing nothing. So some Republican senators have been telling the president to at least resume the COVID briefings--albeit wanting him to do so with his medical advisors and not solo, as he has been doing this week.
It also should come as no surprise that Trump has resumed the briefings because he so desperately wants to distract from and cover up his immoral, ineffective and corrupt conduct throughout this crisis. Recent expert reporting by both The New York Times and The Washington Post make his spectacular blundering even clearer.
The reviews are in: A Post investigative team wrote, "The fumbling of the virus was not a fluke: The American coronavirus fiasco has exposed the country's incoherent leadership, self-defeating political polarization, a lack of investment in public health, and persistent socioeconomic and racial inequities that have left millions of people vulnerable to disease and death...
While other countries endured some of the same setbacks, few have suffered from all of them simultaneously and catastrophically. If there was a mistake to be made in this pandemic, America has made it.
The Times team reported, "Mr. Trump's bet that the crisis would fade away proved wrong. But... the approach he embraced was not just a misjudgment. Instead, it was a deliberate strategy that he would stick doggedly to as evidence mounted that, in the absence of strong leadership from the White House, the virus would continue to infect and kill large numbers of Americans...
The real-world consequences of Mr. Trump's abdication of responsibility rippled across the country.... Other nations had moved aggressively to employ an array of techniques that Mr. Trump never mobilized on a federal level, including national testing strategies and contact tracing to track down and isolate people who had interacted with newly diagnosed patients...
By early June, it was clear that the White House had gotten it wrong.
James Grossman, executive director of the American Historical Association, told The Post, "You look at the Great Depression and how Roosevelt made a concerted effort to unite the country--the fireside chats, the New Deal. That is the instinctive reaction of almost every president in crisis. Even if you don't succeed, you try to convince people that they're all in this together. This presidency is the exception and anomaly."
Exception, anomaly, catastrophe. He is, of course, doing his favorite thing (besides talking about himself)--shifting blame, even implying on Wednesday that the increase in cases--now more than four million, the most in the world--is in part due to the Black Lives Matter protests and Mexico. Thank goodness for that barely existent wall! And on Thursday, not only did he announce the cancellation of his big nominating shindig next month in Jacksonville but that, "The country is in very good shape, other than if you look South and West. Some problems. It'll all work out."
Sure thing, Mr. President sir. It's the same old song--the self-deception that believes the lie. So here's my good news/bad news story. Bad news: he's still the president, still a disaster. Good news: November is coming.
On January 20th, it begins...
Political revenge. Mass deportations. Project 2025. Unfathomable corruption. Attacks on Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. Pardons for insurrectionists. An all-out assault on democracy. Republicans in Congress are scrambling to give Trump broad new powers to strip the tax-exempt status of any nonprofit he doesn’t like by declaring it a “terrorist-supporting organization.” Trump has already begun filing lawsuits against news outlets that criticize him. At Common Dreams, we won’t back down, but we must get ready for whatever Trump and his thugs throw at us. Our Year-End campaign is our most important fundraiser of the year. As a people-powered nonprofit news outlet, we cover issues the corporate media never will, but we can only continue with our readers’ support. By donating today, please help us fight the dangers of a second Trump presidency. |
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Michael Winship
Michael Winship is the Schumann Senior Writing Fellow at the progressive news outlet Common Dreams, where he writes and edits political analysis and commentary. He is a Writers Guild East council member and its immediate past president and a veteran television writer and producer who has created programming for America's major PBS stations, CBS, the Discovery and Learning Channels, A&E, Turner Broadcasting, the Disney Channel, Lifetime, Sesame Workshop (formerly the Children's Television Workshop) and National Geographic, among others. In 2008, he joined his longtime friend and colleague Bill Moyers at Bill Moyers Journal on PBS and their writing collaboration has been close ever since. They share an Emmy and three Writers Guild Awards for writing excellence. Winship's television work also has been honored by the Christopher, Western Heritage, Genesis and CableACE Awards.
Listening to Donald Trump's White House coronavirus briefings this week, his first in 90 days, I remembered an old joke:
Doctor: There's good news and bad news.
Patient: What's the bad news?
Doctor: We amputated the wrong leg.
Patient: Oh my god! What's the good news?
Doctor: The other one's getting better.
Trump is trying to sell us a little bit of dubious good news here and there while distracting us from the bad, especially the non-stop multitude of unenforced fatal errors made by this president and his Republican pals, in particular the governors of now disease-ridden red states who did his bidding and opened their states too early.
He's covering up bad news like the fact that on Tuesday, for the first time since May, the United States recorded more than 1000 coronavirus deaths for the day. Or that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported that the number of infections probably is two to thirteen times higher than we officially know. Or eighteen straight weeks of more than a million Americans filing unemployment claims as a result of the shutdown.
Instead, he's pushing his usual snake oil--"My administration will stop at nothing to save lives and shield the vulnerable!"--exaggerating the truth, spinning the statistics and downright lying while still claiming the virus "will disappear." Which makes it all the more peculiar to hear the media talking afterwards about Donald Trump's "change of tone." All he's done is perform his usual dreary read off the teleprompter, avoiding disastrous ad libs and sounding for all the world like the kid forced to recite in front of the grownups before he can have cake.
Granted, he did admit for the first time that the pandemic "will probably, unfortunately, get worse before it gets better." And he does now express his support for wearing a mask, claiming that he carries one with him and wears it--although I can think of only two instances when he was seen with one on his face and on Monday night, video showed him cavorting around without a mask or social distancing at a fundraiser in his DC hotel. Nonetheless, wearing it, he says, is about patriotism. Bless our Yankee Doodle Dunce.
So change of tone? Not really. For one, you just know he'll be back to his usual maniacal stand-up act any minute now. For another, he's clearly not just satisfying his craven lust for airtime but responding to polls showing a majority of the country disapprove his handling of COVID-19 and distrust anything he says about the virus. He's also trying to win back his eroding support among seniors, not only by singling out the importance of their medical care in the briefings--"high risk, wonderful people" (!)--but by trying to scare them with bogus reports of anarchists flooding the streets and criminals on the rampage assaulting little old ladies if Joe Biden's elected.
What's more, Trump seems to know that his bungling of coronavirus is creating cracks in his support among his GOP stalwarts. According to Sunday's New York Times, "Once-reticent Republican governors are now issuing orders on mask-wearing and business restrictions that run counter to Mr. Trump's demands. Some of those governors have been holding late-night phone calls among themselves to trade ideas and grievances; they have sought out partners in the administration other than the president, including Vice President Mike Pence, who, despite echoing Mr. Trump in public, is seen by governors as far more attentive to the continuing disaster."
An advisor to Texas Governor Greg Abbott told the paper that Trump "got bored" with the virus and was doing nothing. So some Republican senators have been telling the president to at least resume the COVID briefings--albeit wanting him to do so with his medical advisors and not solo, as he has been doing this week.
It also should come as no surprise that Trump has resumed the briefings because he so desperately wants to distract from and cover up his immoral, ineffective and corrupt conduct throughout this crisis. Recent expert reporting by both The New York Times and The Washington Post make his spectacular blundering even clearer.
The reviews are in: A Post investigative team wrote, "The fumbling of the virus was not a fluke: The American coronavirus fiasco has exposed the country's incoherent leadership, self-defeating political polarization, a lack of investment in public health, and persistent socioeconomic and racial inequities that have left millions of people vulnerable to disease and death...
While other countries endured some of the same setbacks, few have suffered from all of them simultaneously and catastrophically. If there was a mistake to be made in this pandemic, America has made it.
The Times team reported, "Mr. Trump's bet that the crisis would fade away proved wrong. But... the approach he embraced was not just a misjudgment. Instead, it was a deliberate strategy that he would stick doggedly to as evidence mounted that, in the absence of strong leadership from the White House, the virus would continue to infect and kill large numbers of Americans...
The real-world consequences of Mr. Trump's abdication of responsibility rippled across the country.... Other nations had moved aggressively to employ an array of techniques that Mr. Trump never mobilized on a federal level, including national testing strategies and contact tracing to track down and isolate people who had interacted with newly diagnosed patients...
By early June, it was clear that the White House had gotten it wrong.
James Grossman, executive director of the American Historical Association, told The Post, "You look at the Great Depression and how Roosevelt made a concerted effort to unite the country--the fireside chats, the New Deal. That is the instinctive reaction of almost every president in crisis. Even if you don't succeed, you try to convince people that they're all in this together. This presidency is the exception and anomaly."
Exception, anomaly, catastrophe. He is, of course, doing his favorite thing (besides talking about himself)--shifting blame, even implying on Wednesday that the increase in cases--now more than four million, the most in the world--is in part due to the Black Lives Matter protests and Mexico. Thank goodness for that barely existent wall! And on Thursday, not only did he announce the cancellation of his big nominating shindig next month in Jacksonville but that, "The country is in very good shape, other than if you look South and West. Some problems. It'll all work out."
Sure thing, Mr. President sir. It's the same old song--the self-deception that believes the lie. So here's my good news/bad news story. Bad news: he's still the president, still a disaster. Good news: November is coming.
Michael Winship
Michael Winship is the Schumann Senior Writing Fellow at the progressive news outlet Common Dreams, where he writes and edits political analysis and commentary. He is a Writers Guild East council member and its immediate past president and a veteran television writer and producer who has created programming for America's major PBS stations, CBS, the Discovery and Learning Channels, A&E, Turner Broadcasting, the Disney Channel, Lifetime, Sesame Workshop (formerly the Children's Television Workshop) and National Geographic, among others. In 2008, he joined his longtime friend and colleague Bill Moyers at Bill Moyers Journal on PBS and their writing collaboration has been close ever since. They share an Emmy and three Writers Guild Awards for writing excellence. Winship's television work also has been honored by the Christopher, Western Heritage, Genesis and CableACE Awards.
Listening to Donald Trump's White House coronavirus briefings this week, his first in 90 days, I remembered an old joke:
Doctor: There's good news and bad news.
Patient: What's the bad news?
Doctor: We amputated the wrong leg.
Patient: Oh my god! What's the good news?
Doctor: The other one's getting better.
Trump is trying to sell us a little bit of dubious good news here and there while distracting us from the bad, especially the non-stop multitude of unenforced fatal errors made by this president and his Republican pals, in particular the governors of now disease-ridden red states who did his bidding and opened their states too early.
He's covering up bad news like the fact that on Tuesday, for the first time since May, the United States recorded more than 1000 coronavirus deaths for the day. Or that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported that the number of infections probably is two to thirteen times higher than we officially know. Or eighteen straight weeks of more than a million Americans filing unemployment claims as a result of the shutdown.
Instead, he's pushing his usual snake oil--"My administration will stop at nothing to save lives and shield the vulnerable!"--exaggerating the truth, spinning the statistics and downright lying while still claiming the virus "will disappear." Which makes it all the more peculiar to hear the media talking afterwards about Donald Trump's "change of tone." All he's done is perform his usual dreary read off the teleprompter, avoiding disastrous ad libs and sounding for all the world like the kid forced to recite in front of the grownups before he can have cake.
Granted, he did admit for the first time that the pandemic "will probably, unfortunately, get worse before it gets better." And he does now express his support for wearing a mask, claiming that he carries one with him and wears it--although I can think of only two instances when he was seen with one on his face and on Monday night, video showed him cavorting around without a mask or social distancing at a fundraiser in his DC hotel. Nonetheless, wearing it, he says, is about patriotism. Bless our Yankee Doodle Dunce.
So change of tone? Not really. For one, you just know he'll be back to his usual maniacal stand-up act any minute now. For another, he's clearly not just satisfying his craven lust for airtime but responding to polls showing a majority of the country disapprove his handling of COVID-19 and distrust anything he says about the virus. He's also trying to win back his eroding support among seniors, not only by singling out the importance of their medical care in the briefings--"high risk, wonderful people" (!)--but by trying to scare them with bogus reports of anarchists flooding the streets and criminals on the rampage assaulting little old ladies if Joe Biden's elected.
What's more, Trump seems to know that his bungling of coronavirus is creating cracks in his support among his GOP stalwarts. According to Sunday's New York Times, "Once-reticent Republican governors are now issuing orders on mask-wearing and business restrictions that run counter to Mr. Trump's demands. Some of those governors have been holding late-night phone calls among themselves to trade ideas and grievances; they have sought out partners in the administration other than the president, including Vice President Mike Pence, who, despite echoing Mr. Trump in public, is seen by governors as far more attentive to the continuing disaster."
An advisor to Texas Governor Greg Abbott told the paper that Trump "got bored" with the virus and was doing nothing. So some Republican senators have been telling the president to at least resume the COVID briefings--albeit wanting him to do so with his medical advisors and not solo, as he has been doing this week.
It also should come as no surprise that Trump has resumed the briefings because he so desperately wants to distract from and cover up his immoral, ineffective and corrupt conduct throughout this crisis. Recent expert reporting by both The New York Times and The Washington Post make his spectacular blundering even clearer.
The reviews are in: A Post investigative team wrote, "The fumbling of the virus was not a fluke: The American coronavirus fiasco has exposed the country's incoherent leadership, self-defeating political polarization, a lack of investment in public health, and persistent socioeconomic and racial inequities that have left millions of people vulnerable to disease and death...
While other countries endured some of the same setbacks, few have suffered from all of them simultaneously and catastrophically. If there was a mistake to be made in this pandemic, America has made it.
The Times team reported, "Mr. Trump's bet that the crisis would fade away proved wrong. But... the approach he embraced was not just a misjudgment. Instead, it was a deliberate strategy that he would stick doggedly to as evidence mounted that, in the absence of strong leadership from the White House, the virus would continue to infect and kill large numbers of Americans...
The real-world consequences of Mr. Trump's abdication of responsibility rippled across the country.... Other nations had moved aggressively to employ an array of techniques that Mr. Trump never mobilized on a federal level, including national testing strategies and contact tracing to track down and isolate people who had interacted with newly diagnosed patients...
By early June, it was clear that the White House had gotten it wrong.
James Grossman, executive director of the American Historical Association, told The Post, "You look at the Great Depression and how Roosevelt made a concerted effort to unite the country--the fireside chats, the New Deal. That is the instinctive reaction of almost every president in crisis. Even if you don't succeed, you try to convince people that they're all in this together. This presidency is the exception and anomaly."
Exception, anomaly, catastrophe. He is, of course, doing his favorite thing (besides talking about himself)--shifting blame, even implying on Wednesday that the increase in cases--now more than four million, the most in the world--is in part due to the Black Lives Matter protests and Mexico. Thank goodness for that barely existent wall! And on Thursday, not only did he announce the cancellation of his big nominating shindig next month in Jacksonville but that, "The country is in very good shape, other than if you look South and West. Some problems. It'll all work out."
Sure thing, Mr. President sir. It's the same old song--the self-deception that believes the lie. So here's my good news/bad news story. Bad news: he's still the president, still a disaster. Good news: November is coming.
We've had enough. The 1% own and operate the corporate media. They are doing everything they can to defend the status quo, squash dissent and protect the wealthy and the powerful. The Common Dreams media model is different. We cover the news that matters to the 99%. Our mission? To inform. To inspire. To ignite change for the common good. How? Nonprofit. Independent. Reader-supported. Free to read. Free to republish. Free to share. With no advertising. No paywalls. No selling of your data. Thousands of small donations fund our newsroom and allow us to continue publishing. Can you chip in? We can't do it without you. Thank you.
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"What is obvious from scrolling through these dead profiles," wrote 404 Media's Jason Koebler, "is that Meta's AI characters are not popular, people do not like them, and that they did not post anything interesting."
Jan 03, 2025
On the heels of Meta’s short-lived foray into celebrity lookalike AI chatbots, users around the internet have been unearthing AI-generated profiles created by Meta that are non-celebrity bots—and the reaction to them, to put it mildly, has been negative.
The Washington Post columnist Karen Attiah engaged in a back and forth with "Liv" an AI-generated Black "queer momma" who told the writer that her "creators admitted they lacked diverse references" when creating her personality. The bot, in reference to her programming, also said that the team that created her implied that white is the "default" or "natural identity."
"Not sure if Liv has media training, but here we are," said Attiah in a thread on Bluesky, where she attached screenshots of her conversation with the bot.
"This is genuinely weird and concerning," said Nina Turner, a senior fellow at the Institute on Race, Power, and Political Economy, of Liv.
According to The Verge, "Carter" an "AI-managed by Meta" profile that promises to give users dating advice, also elicited negative reactions. "Wtf is the point of this," wrote one commenter. "What the fuck does an AI know about dating?????" read another comment. Instagram pages for both Liv and Carter are no longer live.
While these AI-generated profiles only recently attracted a lot of attention, they've been around for awhile. A late December Financial Times piece about Meta's push into a range of AI-generated products, including one that helps users create AI characters on Instagram and Facebook in order to retain young users, created some confusion.
Connor Hayes, vice-president of product for generative AI at Meta, was quoted by the FT saying "we expect these AIs to actually, over time, exist on our platforms, kind of in the same way accounts do... They'll have bios and profile pictures and be able to generate and share content powered by AI on the platform."
According to 404 Media's Jason Koebler, "in the immediate aftermath of the Financial Times story, people began to notice the exact types of profiles that Hayes was talking about, and assumed that Meta had begun enacting its plan." In fact, these profiles have been around for over a year.
"There is confusion," Meta spokesperson Liz Sweeney told CNN. "The recent Financial Times article was about our vision for AI characters existing on our platforms over time, not announcing any new product."
"What is obvious from scrolling through these dead profiles," wrote Koebler, "is that Meta's AI characters are not popular, people do not like them, and that they did not post anything interesting."
Far-Right Israeli Lawmakers Demand 'Complete Cleansing' of Northern Gaza
The Knesset members are urging the Israeli military to destroy all sources of water, food, and energy—and to kill "anyone not flying a white flag of surrender."
Jan 03, 2025
At least seven far-right members of the Knesset, Israel's parliament, are calling on the country's defense minister to order the total destruction of northern Gaza's food, water, and energy sources—most of which have already been obliterated by 15 months of relentless attacks—and the killing of any Palestinian who isn't clearly surrendering to the attackers.
In a letter to Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz dated December 31, the lawmakers assert that the Israel Defense Forces' (IDF) campaign to forcibly expel Palestinians from northern Gaza—which critics have called ethnic cleansing—"isn't being done properly" and is not "achieving the war objectives as defined by the government, which is the dismantling of Hamas' governing and military capabilities."
According to a translation by international humanitarian law expert Itay Epshtain on Thursday, the letter calls on the IDF to:
- Destroy all energy sources including fuel, solar systems, generators, and power lines;
- Destroy all food sources including warehouses, water, and water pumps; and
- Lay siege and remotely kill everyone not flying a white flag of surrender.
That last demand apparently includes men, women, and children. IDF troops would then "enter gradually for a complete cleansing of the enemy's nests," according to the letter.
cc ICC
[image or embed]
— Ryan Grim (@ryangrim.bsky.social) January 2, 2025 at 8:01 PM
Lawmakers who signed the letter and their party affiliations include: Avraham Bezalel (Shas), Amit Halevi (Likud), Limor Son Har-Melech (Jewish Power), Osher Shkalim (Likud), Zvi Sukkot and Ohad Tal (Religious Zionism), and Nissim Vaturi (Likud).
Vaturi, the deputy Knesset speaker, previously called for Gaza to be "wiped off the face of the Earth" and argued for Israel to "stop being humane" and "burn Gaza now," because "there are no innocents there."
Notably, the lawmakers' letter does not mention anything about freeing the more than 60 hostages believed to be alive and imprisoned by Hamas and possibly other groups in Gaza.
As Israeli journalist Bar Peleg reported Friday from the Jabalia refugee camp:
When the soldiers and officers in Jabalia are asked about their mission, the answer is destroying Hamas and its infrastructure, until the last terrorist is laid to rest. When they are asked, "And what about the hostages?" One soldier answered, "That concerns us, like it does everyone, but it isn't a part of our operational considerations."
Northern Gaza is already in ruins. As Peleg noted, "not a single habitable building remains" in Jabalia. Nearly all homes, hospitals, schools, and other infrastructure have been destroyed or damaged.
"Look at the extent of the destruction and annihilation here," one IDF officer said. "No one has done this before."
An IDF officer recently told Haaretz that one commander, Brig. Gen. Yehuda Vach, seeks to personally execute the so-called Generals' Plan—a blueprint for the starvation and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from northern Gaza—by besieging and expelling 250,000 Palestinians from the area. United Nations officials estimate that more than 100,000 Palestinians have been forced from northern Gaza, even as the IDF says it disavows the Generals' Plan.
IDF troops, Palestinian witnesses, international medical volunteers, and others have described alleged war crimes including the indiscriminate killings of Gazans of all ages throughout the embattled strip.
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Israeli policies and actions, as well as written and spoken calls for the destruction of Gaza and its people, have been presented as evidence in the South African-led genocide case against Israel currently before the International Court of Justice in The Hague, Netherlands.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant, his former defense minister who ordered the siege of Gaza, are fugitives from the International Criminal Court, which in November issued arrest warrants for the pair and Hamas leader Mohammed Diab Ibrahim Al-Masri.
Israel's 455-day bombardment, invasion, and siege of Gaza has left at least 165,000 Palestinians dead, maimed, or missing, according to officials there.
Upholding Trump Conviction in Hush-Money Case, Judge Sets Sentencing for Next Week
The president-elect's sentencing is scheduled for January 10, though it will almost certainly be appealed.
Jan 03, 2025
President-elect Donald Trump will almost certain to be the first felon to serve as U.S. president following a ruling on Friday by New York Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan.
Weeks before Trump is set to take office, Merchan upheld Trump's criminal conviction of 34 counts of falsifying business records in the case involving efforts to conceal a hush-money payment to adult film star Stormy Daniels during the 2016 election cycle.
The Republican president-elect had filed a motion to dismiss the indictment and vacate the guilty verdict that was reached by a jury in May.
Merchan scheduled Trump's sentencing for January 10, just 10 days before his inauguration.
Merchan signaled in his ruling that he is not inclined to sentence the Republican president-elect to prison. The conviction carries up to four years in prison.
Instead, Merchan is expected to grant Trump an "unconditional discharge" of his sentence, according to The New York Times, which cements his status as a felon but allows him to walk free.
The Manhattan district attorney had proposed the possibility of postponing Trump's sentencing until after his second presidential term ends in 2029.
His sentencing was originally set for July but was postponed after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that presidents enjoy "absolute immunity" for "official acts" taken while in office. That ruling was related to a separate indictment of Trump regarding his attempts to overturn the 2020 election.
Trump is expected to ask an appeals court to intervene and postpone the January 10 sentencing.
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