Trump sentencing live updates: President-elect to attend sentencing virtually
(Photo by Justin Lane-Pool/Getty Images)
(NEW YORK) — President-elect Donald Trump is scheduled to be sentenced in his New York hush money case after a jury in May convicted him on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records related to a hush money payment made to adult film actress Stormy Daniels in order to boost his electoral prospects in the 2016 presidential election.
Judge Juan Merchan has signaled his intention to sentence Trump to an “unconditional discharge” — allowing Trump to avoid prison, fines or probation — out of respect for the principle of presidential immunity, which takes effect on Jan. 20 once Trump becomes president.
Trump, who has maintained his innocence throughout the case, has blasted the prosecution as politically motivated.
Trump to be sentenced after SCOTUS fails to halt hearing
President-elect Donald Trump will appear virtually from his Mar-a-Lago estate when he is sentenced this morning in a New York courtroom, after the Supreme Court rejected his eleventh-hour bid to block his sentencing from taking place.
Trump had asked the nation’s highest court to halt his criminal sentencing on the grounds that he was entitled to immunity as president-elect.
In a Thursday night ruling, Chief Justice John Roberts and Trump-appointee Amy Coney Barrett joined the court’s three liberal justices to deny Trump the relief he sought, while Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh indicated they would have granted Trump’s request to halt his sentencing.
(NEW YORK) — Once millions of Americans living in the Northern U.S. have had their fill of turkey, sides and pie, they could be treated with a dazzling event that could light up the night’s sky.
A geomagnetic storm watch has been issued by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Space Weather Prediction Center, meaning the northern lights — or aurora borealis — could be visible from parts of the U.S. over the Thanksgiving holiday weekend.
A G1, or minor, geomagnetic storm watch was issued for Thursday, while a G2, or moderate, geomagnetic storm watch was issued for Friday. NOAA’s space weather predictors calculated the timing of a coronal mass ejection associated with a filament eruption that took place on Sunday. A five-level scale is used to measure geomagnetic storms.
A coronal mass ejection is a burst of plasma and magnetic field that erupts from the sun’s corona — essentially a huge cloud of charged particles ejected into space at high speeds.
This event could also be brighter because the geomagnetic activity has a Kp index of 5, according to NOAA.
The geomagnetic storm could also have minor impacts on radios, satellites, GPS and power grids, according to NOAA.
What are the northern lights
The term northern lights refers to the natural display of pink and green hues in the sky that occurs when charged particles from a coronal mass ejection interact with Earth’s magnetic field — resulting in a geometric storm.
The auroras are normally seen closer to the North Pole but can be seen closer to the equator depending on the strength of the geomagnetic storm. However, the farther south you go, the more red the lights will appear rather than the usual green curtains because the curvature of the Earth causes the particles to interact higher in the atmosphere, where oxygen is less plentiful, resulting in a more reddish hue, according to the National Park Service.
Where the northern lights could be visible
Northern and upper Midwest states from New York to Idaho could be treated to the northern lights, according to the Space Weather Prediction Center’s experimental aurora view line, which predicts the intensity and location of the aurora borealis in North America.
States like Washington, Montana, the Dakotas, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan and Maine could see potential auroras as well.
The geomagnetic storm could bring an encore display of the northern lights to New York City, where auroras were visible last month.
In some cities, the aurora may be visible low on the horizon, according to the Geophysical Institute at the University of Alaska at Fairbanks.
How to see the northern lights
The hours before and after midnight, when the night sky is the darkest, are the best time to see the auroras, according to NOAA.
Taking a picture with a smartphone camera may also reveal hints of the aurora that are not visible to the naked eye, Shawn Dahl, coordinator for NOAA’s Space Weather Prediction Center, told ABC News last month.
Getting away from light pollution, and even the bright light of a full moon, will also enhance the viewing experience
Dahl also reminded star-gazers to keep their eyes dark-adapted and avoid constant interactions with the bright screens of their cell phones.
In addition, a citizen science platform called Aurorasaurus allows people to sign up for alerts that an aurora may be visible in their area
Why northern lights events will be more common over the next year
For the next year or more, the likelihood of seeing the northern lights, also known as the aurora borealis, will increase as Earth remains in the solar maximum of Solar Cycle 25.
The peak of the current solar cycle occurs one every 11 years, when more sunspots with the intense magnetic activity are expected, according to NOAA.
(NEW YORK) — An on-duty United States Postal Service (USPS) worker was stabbed and killed inside of a deli in the Harlem neighborhood of New York City on Thursday afternoon after a “verbal dispute,” according to the New York Police Department (NYPD).
Officers responded to the deli at 168 Lenox Avenue and found the victim, whom they identified as 36-year-old Ray Hodges, with multiple stab wounds to his stomach, torso, arms, back and neck.
Hodges was taken to a local hospital and later pronounced dead, according to the NYPD.
The NYPD did not specify the nature of the verbal dispute in response to an ABC News request for comment.
Jaia Cruz, 24, was later taken into custody and charged with second-degree murder, according to police.
“The Postal Inspection Service can confirm that on January 2, 2025, a United States Postal Service letter carrier, assigned to Manhattan, was the victim of a homicide. The suspect was apprehended and is currently in custody,” the United States Postal Inspection Service (USPIS) said in a statement. The USPIS statement did not confirm the identity of the victim.
“USPIS takes matters involving the safety and wellbeing of postal service employees as a top priority. We are working diligently with the New York City Police Department on this investigation,” the USPIS statement continued.
The USPIS statement also urged anyone with additional information about the attack to contact them at 1-877-876-2455.
(NEW YORK) — Meta, the parent company of Facebook, announced plans Tuesday to replace fact-checkers with a user-based system known as “community notes.”
Fact-checkers who were put in place in the wake of Donald Trump’s 2016 election have proven to be “too politically biased” and have destroyed “more trust than they’ve created,” particularly in the United States, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in a video posted by the company.
“The recent elections also feel like a cultural tipping point towards once again prioritizing speech,” Zuckerberg added.
The policy shift will make the platform more generally permissive toward user posts, especially on some controversial subjects such as immigration and gender, the company said. Zuckerberg also acknowledged that the change may mean “we’re going to catch less bad stuff.”
The decision will impact content moderation on Meta-owned platforms Facebook, Instagram and Threads, which count nearly 4 billion users worldwide.
Critics of the move said it reflected a partisan effort to align Meta with President-elect Trump, who has repeatedly criticized the company for alleged anti-conservative bias. Proponents, meanwhile, praised the decision as a sign of renewed emphasis on free speech rather than content policing.
Experts who spoke to ABC News said it’s difficult to know exactly what motivated the company, but they said both explanations are plausible.
Meta may view the decision as an opportunity to jettison a policy targeted by conservatives and curry favor with Trump, while shifting the company toward a permissive stance on speech that Zuckerberg has previously avowed, the experts said.
“Zuckerberg knew he’d have a fight on his hands to change the basic tenets of Facebook,” Eric Goldman, a professor at Santa Clara University School of Law who studies content moderation, told ABC News. “The question is: Why now?”
Meta did not immediately respond to ABC News’ request for comment.
Meta launched the fact-checking program in the heat of intense scrutiny leveled at the company regarding the spread of misinformation on the platform during the 2016 presidential campaign.
The initiative came under criticism from prominent Republicans, including Trump, who accused the company of anti-conservative bias in its evaluation of user posts.
Tension between Meta and Trump intensified in early 2021, when the company banned Trump’s accounts from its platforms in the aftermath of the Jan. 6 insurrection at the Capitol. At the time, Zuckerberg called the risks of allowing Trump on the platform “simply too great.”
In recent years, however, the social media platforms have shifted toward a conservative-friendly, laissez-faire approach to speech, Sol Messing, a research associate professor at New York University’s Center for Social Media and Politics and a former research scientist at Facebook, told ABC News.
Billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk acquired then-Twitter, now X, in October 2022, moving soon afterward to weaken the platform’s content moderation rules and emphasize a “community notes” approach. Last year, Meta reinstated Trump’s accounts.
“There’s been a shift rightward in terms of attitudes toward free speech in Silicon Valley and perhaps this decision is part of that,” Messing added.
Lately, Meta and Zuckerberg have appeared to warm toward Trump. Meta donated $1 million to Trump’s inauguration last month, after having foregone a donation to Trump’s inauguration in 2017.
On Monday, Meta appointed Ultimate Fighting Championship CEO Dana White, a Trump ally, to the company’s board of directors. The move came days after Meta named former Republican lobbyist Joel Kaplan as its new chief global affairs officer.
“It’s very difficult to ignore this [fact-checking] announcement in terms of the timing of those moves, as well,” Messing said, noting other potential reasons for the move such as cost-cutting or skepticism about the role of experts in policing content.
For his part, Trump appears to believe he influenced the policy change. When asked at a press conference at Mar-a-Lago on Tuesday whether Meta’s new content moderation policy came in response to his previous criticism of the company, Trump said, “Probably.”
Still, there is reason to believe the policy change brings Meta’s content moderation approach into closer alignment with views previously expressed by Zuckerberg, some experts said.
In a blog post on Tuesday, Meta referred to a graduation speech delivered by Zuckerberg at Georgetown University in 2019 in which he advocated for loose restrictions on speech.
“Some people believe giving more people a voice is driving division rather than bringing us together. More people across the spectrum believe that achieving the political outcomes they think matter is more important than every person having a voice. I think that’s dangerous,” Zuckerberg said at the time.
Goldman, of Santa Clara University, said Zuckerberg may be seizing upon Trump-era opposition toward content moderation.
“It’s plausible that Zuckerberg all along has felt Facebook was doing too much content moderation, and he has finally decided to express that view more forcefully,” Goldman said. “It’s not a new view for Zuckerberg to be questioning the value of content moderation.”
