Trump to be sentenced over hush money conviction today as inauguration looms after Supreme Court verdict: Live

President Joe Biden will begin his final week in the White House with a major address aimed at summing up what he considers his administration’s critical work on restoring American alliances and leadership that he will deliver at the State Department on Monday.

A senior administration official described what he viewed as the bleak situation the United States faced on the world stage as Biden grabbed the reins of government from the outgoing Trump administration, during which US alliances “had been badly damaged” by the then former president (now president-elect) Donald Trump’s decision to walk away from “agreements that made America safer.”

Biden aims to “describe how we reclaimed America’s global leadership as a force of stability, put our adversaries in a position of weakness, effectively navigated turbulence around the world and made America stronger,” the official said.

Seth Meyers and The Daily Show’s Desi Lydic have been making fun of the president-elect over his unhelpful contributions to this week’s discourse over the disastrous Los Angeles wildfires.

Jacob Stolworthy has this report on what they had to say.

The Meta boss has decided to ditch fact-checkers and ask users to contest facts – or create alternative ones, write Alan Rusbridger and Khaled Mansour, who sit on the company’s oversight board.

Truth will take second place to rumour and we all risk paying an exorbitantly high price, they argue.

The “rotten to the core” Khamenei regime is a “paper tiger” whose time is up, Donald Trump’s former secretary of state has told Iranians campaigning for democracy at a security conference in Paris.

Pompeo, a stalwart of Trump’s first term in the White House, made the comments while addressing a conference held by the National Council of Resistance of Iran in the French capital.

Here’s more from David Maddox.

Here’s a comprehensive answer to the question on everybody’s lips from Alex Croft, recapping precisely what the president-elect was found guilty of and what punishment Judge Merchan could be about to hand down.

The Independent’s own Alex Woodward is braving sub-zero temperatures to bring us all the latest from inside the courtroom this morning and sends this initial dispatch, typed in between shivers:

Professional line holders and a handful of spectators arrived outside Manhattan Criminal Court before dawn for what is likely the final moment of Donald Trump’s only criminal proceedings, for now.

Hours earlier, the US Supreme Court declined to stop Trump’s sentencing hearing in his hush money case, after he argued that the closure of the trial – and the preservation of a jury’s unanimous guilty verdict – would infringe on his presidency.

The hearing comes nearly eight months after the verdict and has been scrambled several times with Trump’s ongoing claims of “immunity” from prosecution.

New York Justice Juan Merchan ultimately decided the only remaining path forward that keeps the verdict intact before Trump’s inauguration is to issue an “unconditional discharge” – a sentence without jail, probation or fines.

But after weeks of using the courthouse hallways to stump for his campaign and attack prosecutors and the judge, Trump will appear virtually today.

His defense attorneys – now Trump’s nominees to top positions at the Justice Department – are expected to appear.

Instances when all five living Amerian presidents come together are rare.

But for Jimmy Carter’s funeral on Thursday, they were all there.

President-elect Donald Trump was the first to arrive alongside former and future first lady Melania Trump.

Barack Obama, the Clintons, Bushes and Bidens were also in attendance.

Michelle Obama was the only living first lady who was absent, with reports claiming she was in Hawaii.

Outgoing Vice President Kamala Harris and Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff were the last to take their seats among a sea of lawmakers and members of previous administrations. G

iven the funeral’s proximity to the election — and the heated rhetoric over the past few years — some notably awkward moments were spotted by those watching the service.

Here’s more from Gustaf Kilander.

Every living American president filed into pews at the Washington National Cathedral on Thursday to honor one of their own at the funeral for Jimmy Carter, who died late last month at 100 years old.

Ther 39th president was remembered as a compassionate Christian and progressive, despite serving a single term in the White House that was seen as a disappointment at the time.

President Joe Biden, who was the first senator to endorse Carter’s successful bid for the White House in 1976, eulogized Carter for having a “deep Christian faith in God” that informed his extraordinary life, during which he “never let the tides of politics divert him from his mission to serve and shape the world.”

“Throughout his life, he showed us what it means to be a practitioner of good works and a good and faithful servant of God and of the people,” said Biden, who praised Carter as having seen “well into the future” even though he had appeared to many as being a relic of “a bygone era.”

Here’s a full report on an emotional day in DC from Andrew Feinberg.

Thousands of expert American medical professionals have signed a letter imploring the Senate to reject Robert F Kennedy Jr’s confirmation for secretary of health and human services (HHS) this month.

The letter, organized by the advocacy group Committee to Protect Health Care, called the president-elect’s decision to nominate Kennedy, a conspiracy theorist and vaccine-sceptic, “a slap in the face to every healthcare professional who has spent their lives working to protect patients from preventable illness and death”.

“The health and well-being of 336 million Americans depend on leadership at HHS that prioritizes science, evidence-based medicine, and strengthening the integrity of our public health system,” the letter reads.

“RFK Jr is not only unqualified to lead this essential agency – he is actively dangerous.”

The world’s richest man, who is set to co-lead Trump’s new advisory Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), has admitted the agency likely won’t make the $2 trillion in federal budget cuts he originally promised, which feels like a fairly major admission.

Katie Hawkinson has this report.