Judge upholds Trump’s felony conviction, but does not plan to order jail time

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Donald Trump was found guilty of falsifying business records to conceal a hush-money payment to Stormy Daniels before the 2016 election. While Trump’s lawyers argued for dismissal due to presidential immunity, the judge upheld the conviction and scheduled sentencing for January 10th, likely making Trump the first felon to serve as U.S. president. The judge rejected Trump’s claims of immunity and emphasized the importance of upholding the rule of law, citing Trump’s stature as a presidential candidate and president as exacerbating the egregiousness of his actions.

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Donald Trump was found guilty in May of falsifying business records to conceal a payment to adult-film star Stormy Daniels ahead of the 2016 election.

Shayna JacobsUpdated 

January 3, 2025 at 4:48 p.m. EST1 minute ago

Donald Trump leaves for a lunch break in May during his trial in Manhattan related to hush money payments. (Victor J. Blue for The Washington Post)

NEW YORK — President-elect Donald Trump will be sentenced on 34 counts of falsifying business records ahead of his swearing-in on Jan. 20, but is not expected to face jail time, a judge ruled Friday.

The decision to uphold Trump’s conviction and schedule the sentencing Jan. 10 almost certainly means Trump will be the first felon to serve as a U.S. president.

New York Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan wrote in his ruling that he does not intend to sentence Trump to jail. He said he plans to order an “unconditional discharge,” a designation in New York criminal courts for a non-jail and non-probation sentence that carries no other obligations.

Trump was convicted in May of falsifying business records to conceal a hush money payment to an adult-film star ahead of the 2016 election. He faced up to four years in prison, but many experts said incarceration was unlikely because of his age and his lack of prior convictions.

Since Trump’s victory at the polls in November, his lawyers have argued that anything short of dismissing the case would violate laws that protect the transition process and grant immunity from prosecution to sitting presidents.

In his decision, Merchan rejected those arguments. He called the Trump team’s claims a “novel theory” of presidential immunity that would amount to an abuse of his legal discretion.

“The Defendant has presented no valid argument to convince this Court otherwise,” he said. “Binding precedent does not provide that an individual, upon becoming President, can retroactively dismiss or vacate prior criminal acts nor does it grant blanket Presidential-elect immunity. This Court is therefore forbidden from recognizing either form of immunity.”

Merchan also dismissed a contention from Trump lawyers that the case was weak from the start, noting that Trump’s stature — as a presidential candidate in 2016 and as president in 2017 — made his behavior all the more egregious.

Finding otherwise would “cause immeasurable damage to the citizenry’s confidence in the Rule of Law,” the judge wrote. “It was the premeditated and continuous deception by the leader of the free world that is the gravamen of this offense.”

The ruling came Friday afternoon, shortly after congressional Republicans narrowly voted to reelect House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-Louisiana). 

Trump congratulated Johnson in a posting on Truth Social. Trump later made another post to announce a personnel appointment for his administration, but he did not immediately offer a public reaction to Merchan’s decision.

Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s office had floated the idea of postponing Trump’s sentencing until after his term ends in 2029. Prosecutors also suggested the judge consider abating the case against Trump while preserving the record of his conviction, a legal mechanism typically used when a defendant dies while proceedings are pending.

The district attorney’s office argued throwing out the case entirely “would go well beyond what is necessary to protect the presidency and would subvert the compelling public interest in preserving the jury’s unanimous verdict and upholding the rule of law.”

The case was the only one of Trump’s four criminal indictments to go to trial before the 2024 presidential election. His victory at the polls made it extremely unlikely he would face additional proceedings in the other cases — at least over the next four years.

Trump’s New York sentencing was originally booked for July but was postponed until September after the Supreme Court issued a sweeping decision on presidential immunity, expanding the scope of what presidential behavior is protected from prosecution. That ruling stemmed from a different Trump indictment, in federal court in D.C., which accused him of unlawfully trying to block Joe Biden’s 2020 election victory.

As this year’s election approached, the sentencing was delayed again, setting the stage for the latest ruling by Merchan, the trial judge.

Separately, Merchan found in a decision Dec. 16 that the high court’s immunity ruling did not nullify Trump’s case in New York because his conduct had no connection to his official duties and the crimes were launched before his first term began in 2017. He also found the defense failed during Trump’s trial to preserve some of his rights to make certain immunity arguments after the fact.

The jury deliberated just over a day before finding Trump guilty on May 30, marking the first time a former president was convicted of a crime. Evidence presented at trial showed he tried to conceal a $130,000 payment to adult-film actress Stormy Daniels in the weeks before the 2016 election as he faced a cascade of sex-related scandals that threatened to derail his campaign.

The money was intended to keep Daniels quiet about an alleged sexual encounter with Trump at a charity golf event at Lake Tahoe in 2006, an episode that Trump denies ever happened. Michael Cohen, Trump’s former lawyer, paid Daniels directly. Trump reimbursed him in installments that were logged as routine legal fees and not reported as campaign expenses, according to trial testimony.

The trial in New York, where Trump was raised and spent most of his life, attracted enormous attention and helped shaped Trump’s unorthodox presidential campaign.

Trump railed daily in front of television cameras against the prosecutors and judge, rallying his base as he said he was the victim of a politically motivated effort to stop him from winning. In the final days of the trial, members of Congress and other Trump allies joined him at the court in a show of solidarity. Several of them have since been invited to join Trump’s administration.

Jurors heard from tabloid publisher David Pecker, a longtime friend of Trump’s, about efforts by the National Enquirer to stifle negative stories about Trump during his 2016 campaign. Daniels, appearing nervous during some of her testimony, conveyed explicit details about the alleged sexual encounter in Trump’s hotel room, which at times sounded nonconsensual. She also discussed negotiations for the six-figure payment a decade later during a close presidential election.

Cohen, who is now a vehement Trump critic, described Trump’s efforts to keep the Daniels account private.

The New York case was the only one of Trump’s four indictments to go to trial before this fall’s election. Two of the others have been dismissed, and a third appears to be on pause at least until he completes his time as president.

Special counsel Jack Smith asked a judge in November to drop the election-interference case in D.C., standing by the facts of the indictment but citing Justice Department policy against the prosecution of a sitting president. A judge dismissed the charges without prejudice, meaning prosecutors could in theory seek a new indictment after Trump’s second term.

Smith separately brought charges against Trump in federal court in Florida, for allegedly hoarding classified records at his Mar-a-Lago residence and private club and obstructing government efforts to recover them. But a Trump-appointed judge dismissed the case in July, saying Smith had been improperly appointed. Smith is appealing that decision but dropped Trump from the case after the election. If his appeal is successful, the Justice Department could still prosecute Trump’s two co-defendants.

Trump’s final indictment is in Georgia, where he and more than a dozen others are accused of a broad conspiracy to block the 2020 election results in that state. The case has been delayed by allegations of prosecutorial misconduct, and many experts believe it cannot move forward while Trump is president. Trump’s lawyers are also trying to get his Georgia case dismissed, citing his election win.

David Nakamura in Washington contributed to this report.

This is a developing story. It will be updated.“

South Korea Fails to Detain Impeached President in Standoff at His Home - The New York Times

South Korea Fails to Detain Impeached President in Standoff at His Home

"Blocked by bodyguards, officials retreated after several hours without serving a court warrant to hold President Yoon Suk Yeol for questioning on insurrection charges.

Jan. 3, 2025Updated 9:52 a.m. ET

Protesters rally against President Yoon Suk Yeol near his residence in Seoul in Friday.Chang W. Lee/The New York Times

When around 100 criminal investigators and police officers entered a hilly compound in central Seoul on Friday morning, they tried to achieve something that has never been done before in South Korea: detain a sitting president.

First, they made it through two blockades formed by parked vehicles and people. Then, when they came within 650 feet of the building where President Yoon Suk Yeol was believed to be holed up, they came face to face with an even more formidable barrier: 10 buses and cars along with 200 elite soldiers and bodyguards belonging to Mr. Yoon’s Presidential Security Service. Small scuffles erupted as the investigators tried in vain to break through and serve a court-issued warrant to take Mr. Yoon away.

Three prosecutors were allowed to approach the building. But there, Mr. Yoon’s lawyers told them that they could not serve the warrant because it was “illegally” issued, according to officials who briefed news media about what happened inside the compound.

Outnumbered, the 100 officials retreated after a five-and-a-half-hour standoff.

“It’s deeply regrettable,” the Corruption Investigation Office for High-Ranking Officials, the independent government agency that led the raid into the presidential compound on Friday, said in a statement. It accused Mr. Yoon — who has already been suspended from office after being impeached by Parliament last month — of refusing to honor a court-issued warrant. “We will discuss what our next step should be.”

President

Yoon Suk Yeol’s

official residence

Road leading

to Yoon’s

residence

A bus blocked the road.

An armored vehicle

blocked the road.

Barricades and buses blocked

the gate to Yoon’s residence.

Thousands of Yoon’s supporters

gathered here Friday morning.

Anti-Yoon protesters

have camped out here.

Anti-Yoon protesters

gathered around here.

The failure to bring in the deeply unpopular president deepened a growing sense of helplessness among South Koreans, exacerbated by the country’s sharply polarized politics. The nation appears rudderless and distracted by infighting at a time when it faces major challenges at home and on the international scene.

There is already uncertainty around its alliance with the United States as the unpredictable Donald J. Trump prepares to return to the White House. Seoul’s decades-old foe North Korea has sought to score propaganda points from the South’s political quagmire, with its state media reporting that its neighbor was in “paralysis of its state administration and spiraling sociopolitical confusion.”

And, at home, the crash of a Jeju Air passenger jet that killed 179 of the 181 people on board on Sunday has added to as list of challenges that range from widespread labor strikes to rising household debts. On Thursday, the finance ministry sharply downgraded its growth forecast for 2025.

A Constitutional Court is deliberating whether to remove Mr. Yoon, who was impeached on Dec. 14 by the National Assembly. That came after he abruptly declared martial law 11 days earlier, prompting national outrage and calls for his ouster.

On Friday, the besieged Mr. Yoon vowed to fight to return to office through the Constitutional Court trial and showed he had no intention of voluntarily subjecting himself to criminal investigations. Mr. Yoon faces accusations that he committed insurrection by sending armed troops into the National Assembly during his short-lived military rule.

Investigation officials nearing the building where Mr. Yoon was believed to be in Seoul, where they encountered walls of vehicles, and 200 soldiers and bodyguards protecting the president. Chang W. Lee/The New York Times

By refusing to honor the warrant, Mr. Yoon “kept adding more reasons he should be removed from office through impeachment,” said Lim Ji-bong, a professor of law at Sogang University in Seoul.

“He may think he survived today, but what he did today would not go down very well with the justices at the Constitutional Court and judges who would eventually try his insurrection case.”

Mr. Yoon is not the first South Korean politician who has defied court warrants to detain them. In 1995, prosecutors wanted to question the former military dictator Chun Doo-hwan on insurrection and mutiny charges stemming from his role in a 1979 coup and a massacre of demonstrators the following year. He defied the summons and headed to his southern hometown, trailed by a crowd of supporters.

The prosecutors chased him there. After an overnight standoff, Mr. Chun surrendered himself.

But unlike Mr. Yoon, Mr. Chun was out of office when he faced the insurrection charge. Mr. Yoon, though suspended, is still guarded with the full support of his Presidential Security Service, a government agency that hires teams of elite bodyguards and anti-terrorist experts selected from the police, military and other government services.

“People who have seen him rely on his bodyguards as a shield against his legal trouble will see him as a coward,” Mr. Lim said.

The investigators warned that they would charge the presidential bodyguards with obstruction of justice.

“We will do everything we can to provide security for the object of our service according to laws and principles,” the Presidential Security Service said in a statement.

Public surveys showed that a majority of South Koreans wanted Mr. Yoon ousted and punished for insurrection. But his governing party, which opposed his impeachment, denounced attempts to hold him.

Mr. Yoon’s supporters protesting in Seoul as the officials began withdrawing from presidential residence.Chang W. Lee/The New York Times

Mr. Yoon also has die-hard supporters — mostly among mostly older South Koreans. Thousands of his supporters have been camped out for days on the pavement, chanting, “Let’s protect Yoon Suk Yeol!”

In a message delivered on New Year’s Day, Mr. Yoon called them “citizens who love freedom and democracy” and thanked them for braving the cold weather to show their support out on the street near his home.

“I will fight with you to the end to save this country,” Mr. Yoon said.

When the officials withdrew from Mr. Yoon’s compound, they shouted: “We have won!”

Protesters who have been clamoring for Mr. Yoon’s arrest began gathering again on Friday, marching near Mr. Yoon’s residence and shouting “Arrest Yoon Suk Yeol!” They, as well as the country’s opposition parties, expressed fury over the failure to detain Mr. Yoon, calling his presidential security service “accomplices” in an insurrection.

“I’m so angry,” said Lee Ye-seul, 19, a university student in Seoul. “I will speak out until he is removed and the people involved in the insurrection are punished.”

A leader of the protest calling for Mr. Yoon’s detention, urging thousands of demonstrators to sit down as they begin to camp out on a road outside the president’s residence.Chang W. Lee/The New York Times

To Mr. Yoon’s supporters outside his residence, the security service was the last line of defense to save Mr. Yoon.

“The presidential guard should throw grenades if necessary to stop them from coming near the president,” said Lee Young-jin, 65.

But Mr. Yoon’s tactic of stoking political divides to avoid his legal trouble reflected poorly on South Korea, said Ahn Byong-jin, a professor of political science at Kyung Hee University in Seoul.

It “exposed weaknesses in South Korea as a democracy,” he said.

Protesters on Friday evening near Mr. Yoon’s residence.Chang W. Lee/The New York Times

John Yoon is a Times reporter based in Seoul who covers breaking and trending news. More about John Yoon

Jin Yu Young reports on South Korea, the Asia Pacific region and global breaking news from Seoul. More about Jin Yu Young"

South Korea Fails to Detain Impeached President in Standoff at His Home - The New York Times

Rudy Giuliani, Slow to Transfer Assets to Election Workers, Could Be Held in Contempt - The New York Times

Giuliani, Slow to Give Up His Belongings, Tests Patience of Court

"The former mayor of New York City could be held in contempt of court after failing to fully comply with orders to surrender millions of dollars in assets to election workers he defamed.

Jan. 3, 2025, 3:02 a.m. ET

Rudolph W. Giuliani, the former mayor of New York, has missed several deadlines to hand over assets to two Georgia poll workers he claimed had helped steal the 2020 election from Donald J. Trump.Jefferson Siegel for The New York Times

After several missed deadlines and extensions, Rudolph W. Giuliani, the former mayor of New York, could be found in contempt of court on Friday for failing to deliver assets worth $11 million to two poll workers he defamed after the 2020 presidential election.

If he is held in contempt, he could face steep penalties, including jail time.

Mr. Giuliani, 80, was set to appear in federal court in Lower Manhattan to justify the stalled handover of some of his most prized possessions, including a penthouse apartment in Manhattan, a collection of Yankees memorabilia, luxury watches and a vintage Mercedes-Benz convertible. (It is unclear whether Mr. Giuliani will appear in person; his lawyers have indicated that he might attend the hearing remotely, citing health problems.)

The transfer was originally scheduled to take place in October, as a down payment on a $148 million judgment that he was ordered to pay to two Georgia election workers, Ruby Freeman and her daughter, Shaye Moss. Mr. Giuliani had claimed, without evidence, that the women had helped steal the presidential election from Donald J. Trump more than four years ago.

But one deadline after another has passed, and lawyers for the women said they have received only a fraction of the property.

Mr. Giuliani has argued that he has largely complied with the handover request and said that some of the items sought by the plaintiffs are not in his possession.

“The Court should see that I gave everything that I could give,” Mr. Giuliani wrote in a personal plea to the judge, Lewis J. Liman, on Christmas Eve.

But lawyers for the women said Mr. Giuliani continues to defy orders, despite repeated warnings from the court.

The plaintiffs have yet to receive legal possession of his 10-room apartment on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, once listed for over $6 million, in part because paperwork has not been updated since his divorce from his ex-wife, Judith Giuliani, according to court filings. The title to Mr. Giuliani’s 1980 Mercedes convertible, which he said was once owned by Lauren Bacall, has yet to be transferred.

And the whereabouts of a signed and framed Joe DiMaggio Yankees jersey, which once hung over Mr. Giuliani’s fireplace, are unknown, Mr. Giuliani has said. Lawyers for the plaintiffs said the item was removed from his apartment sometime before they gained access.

“It is hard to square Mr. Giuliani’s position with reality,” Aaron E. Nathan, one of the plaintiffs’ lawyers, wrote in a letter to the court on Dec. 30. “Enough is enough.”

The hearing marks a low point in Mr. Giuliani’s many legal battles stemming from his stint as Mr. Trump’s personal lawyer. In November, Mr. Giuliani’s lawyers withdrew from the handover case, citing an undisclosed professional ethics reason.

In a recently unsealed letter explaining their departure, one of the lawyers, Kenneth Caruso, said Mr. Giuliani was not cooperating in the discovery process related to a condominium he owns in Palm Beach, Fla., and was withholding access to his electronic devices.

On Wednesday, a lawyer for Mr. Giuliani requested that he be allowed to participate in Friday’s hearing remotely, because he was “having medical issues” related to his left knee, as well as breathing problems that he attributed to his time spent at the World Trade Center after the Sept. 11 attacks.

Judge Liman, who had a testy exchange with Mr. Giuliani about the handover delays in November, said he would not force Mr. Giuliani to appear in person, but that he would not consider his testimony otherwise.

Later this month, Mr. Giuliani also faces the possibility of contempt charges in a Washington, D.C., court, where he has been accused of continuing to publicly make false claims about the two Georgia poll workers.

Stefanos Chen is a Times reporter covering New York City’s economy. He previously covered real estate in the city for over a decade. More about Stefanos Chen"

Rudy Giuliani, Slow to Transfer Assets to Election Workers, Could Be Held in Contempt - The New York Times

Opinion | Vivek Ramaswamy Leaves Something Out of His Story of South Asian Success - The New York Times

What Vivek Ramaswamy Leaves Out of His Story of South Asian Success

Jan. 3, 2025

Illustration by The New York Times

By Zaid Jilani

"Mr. Jilani, a journalist based in Georgia, writes the newsletter The American Saga.

Vivek Ramaswamy, who has been tapped by President-elect Donald Trump to help lead a government-efficiency initiative, recently argued on X that Americans can learn from high-skill immigrants, especially those working in the science and tech industries, because “American culture has venerated mediocrity over excellence for way too long.” He suggested that certain immigrant communities have promoted a superior culture that values excellence and produces “wildly successful STEM graduates.”

I have heard some version of Mr. Ramaswamy’s sentiments countless times over the years. I grew up north of Atlanta in the 1990s as the son of two Pakistani parents and came to know hundreds of Indians and Pakistanis who hail from the culture Mr. Ramaswamy is lionizing. (He noted that he personally knew “multiple sets of immigrant parents in the ’90s” who took meticulous steps to inculcate values of excellence.) Few of those immigrants would disagree with him.

It would be easy to shrug this off as South Asian chauvinism. The idea of a “model minority,” which puts Asian Americans on a pedestal, has been criticized with considerable justification. For one thing, the immigrants who come to the United States from those societies are typically among their most ambitious members. In the case of South Asia, they don’t represent a cross section of India or Pakistan, where millions of people still lack literacy and are not coming to our shores to run tech companies.

But that doesn’t mean Americans have nothing to learn from South Asian immigrant culture. Indian Americans are among the richest ethnic groups in America. One reason is that they have high levels of educational achievement. They also have high rates of marriage and very low rates of divorce. There is no doubt that an emphasis on academics and stable families has helped South Asians find a foothold in this country.

What Mr. Ramaswamy leaves out of his story, however, are the trade-offs of success. Over the years, I’ve spoken to many South Asians who have related to me the stresses that this culture places on them. One therapist told me that the Indian American children she sees often struggle with low self-esteem, low confidence and perfectionism. Because parents don’t understand what this form of parenting is doing to their children’s mental health, she often must convince them to allow her to treat their kids by telling them — you guessed it — that doing so will help the kids in their studies.

The pragmatism that Mr. Ramaswamy values also means that Asian Americans are overrepresented in STEM-related fields but underrepresented in industries like Hollywood. Our community tends to discourage us from pursuing the arts and humanities. As a kid, I often resented it for that reason.

It took me years to understand that this is a culture not of success but of survival. My parents grew up surrounded by immense poverty. In my own trips to Karachi, Pakistan, their hometown, what stood out most to me was seeing children begging on the street everywhere I looked.

An environment like that changes you. When our parents encourage us to study hard or marry early or go to medical school or be frugal, they’re trying to protect us from the terror of precarity they faced on the subcontinent. Even a “third culture” kid like me — someone who was raised in the crosscurrents of two cultures — can’t deny inheriting some of this instinct. I spend many hours every month looking for deals and coupons; at restaurants, I always finish my food or request a doggie bag and feel some disgust when I see waiters take half-eaten plates away from other diners.

But as South Asians continue to establish ourselves here in America, I hope the community learns that we can afford to let our children relax more. We don’t have to make our kids participate in half a dozen sports to get into college. (One sport and one extracurricular is fine.) They don’t always have to study STEM subjects. And it’s OK to splurge a little bit with the spending money we have from time to time.

Mr. Ramaswamy is right that Americans have something to learn from South Asian communities. But we also have something to learn from the rest of America: Fear of precarity doesn’t have to rule our lives. The Indian American dream doesn’t just have to be about hard work; it can also be about enjoying the life that hard work has produced."

Opinion | Vivek Ramaswamy Leaves Something Out of His Story of South Asian Success - The New York Times

Surgeon General Calls for Cancer Warnings on Alcohol - The New York Times

Surgeon General Calls for Cancer Warnings on Alcohol

"Dr. Vivek Murthy’s report cites studies linking alcoholic beverages to at least seven malignancies, including breast cancer. But to add warning labels, Congress would have to act.

Jan. 3, 2025Updated 7:23 a.m. ET

The advisory called for updating labels on all alcoholic beverages with a warning that drinking heightens the risk for at least seven cancers, including common ones like breast and colon cancers.Ruth Fremson/The New York Times

Alcohol is a leading preventable cause of cancer, and alcoholic beverages should carry a warning label as packs of cigarettes do, the U.S. surgeon general said on Friday.

It is the latest salvo in a fierce debate about the risks and benefits of moderate drinking as the influential U.S. Dietary Guidelines for Americans are about to be updated. For decades, moderate drinking was said to help prevent heart attacks and strokes. 

That perception has been embedded in the dietary advice given to Americans. But growing research has linked drinking, sometimes even within the recommended limits, to various types of cancer. 

Labels currently affixed to bottles and cans of alcoholic beverages warn about drinking while pregnant or before driving and operating other machinery, and about general “health risks.”

But alcohol directly contributes to 100,000 cancer cases and 20,000 related deaths each year, the surgeon general, Dr. Vivek Murthy, said.

He called for updating the labels to include a heightened risk of breast cancer, colon cancer and at least five other malignancies now linked by scientific studies to alcohol consumption.

“Many people out there assume that as long as they’re drinking at the limits or below the limits of current guidelines of one a day for women and two for men, that there is no risk to their health or well-being,” Dr. Murthy said in an interview.

“The data does not bear that out for cancer risk.”

Only Congress can mandate new warning labels of the sort Dr. Murthy recommended, and it’s not clear that the incoming administration would support the change.

Still, President-elect Donald J. Trump does not drink, and his choice to head the Health and Human Services Department, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., swore off alcohol and drugs decades ago, and says he regularly attends AA meetings.

There is no question that heavy consumption is harmful. But supporters of moderate drinking — including makers of wine, beer and spirits, and some physicians and scientists — argue that a little alcohol each day may reduce cardiovascular disease, the No. 1 killer in the United States.

Newer scientific studies have criticized the methodology of earlier studies, however, and have challenged that view, which was once a consensus.

While most cancer deaths occur at drinking levels that exceed the current recommended dietary guidelines, the risk for cancers of the breast, the mouth and the throat may rise with consumption of as little as one drink a day, or even less, Dr. Murthy said on Friday.

Overall, one of every six breast cancer cases is attributable to alcohol consumption, Dr. Murthy said. More recent studies have also linked moderate alcohol consumption to certain forms of heart disease, including atrial fibrillation, a heart arrhythmia.

Two scientific reviews will be used to inform the updated recommendations about alcohol consumption in the federal dietary guidelines.

Five years ago, the scientific report that informed the writing of the 2020-2025 dietary guidelines acknowledged that alcohol is a carcinogen and generally unhealthy and suggested “tightening guidelines” by capping the recommendation for men at one standard drink, or 14 grams of alcohol a day.

When the final guidelines were drafted, however, there was no change in the advice that moderate drinking of up to two drinks a day for men was acceptable.

But the government acknowledged emerging evidence indicating that “even drinking within the recommended limits may increase the overall risk of death from various causes, such as from several types of cancer and some forms of cardiovascular disease.”

Since then, even more studies have linked alcoholic beverages to cancer. Yet any attempt to change the warning labels on alcoholic beverages is likely to face an uphill battle.

The current warning label has not been changed since it was adopted in 1988, even though the link between alcohol and breast cancer has been known for decades.

It was first mentioned in the 2000 U.S. Dietary Guidelines. In 2016, the surgeon general’s report on alcohol, drugs and health linked alcohol misuse to seven different types of cancer.

More recently, a scientific review of the research on moderate drinking, carried out under the auspices of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine, was commissioned by Congress.

That analysis found a link between alcohol consumption and a slight increase in breast cancer, but no clear link to any other cancers. The report also revived the theory that moderate drinking is linked to fewer heart attack and stroke deaths, and fewer deaths overall, compared with never drinking.

The World Health Organization says there is no safe limit for alcohol consumption, however, and 47 nations require warnings on alcoholic beverages. But cancer is rarely mentioned.

To date, only South Korea has a label warning about liver cancer, though manufacturers can choose alternative labels that don’t mention cancer. Ireland is currently slated to introduce labels that say there is a “direct link between alcohol and fatal cancers” in 2026.

The industry has a strong history of fighting warning labels that mention cancer, and alcohol-producing nations have also challenged warning labels under international trade law.

Industry opposition led to the premature termination of a federally funded Canadian study of the impact of warning labels that mentioned cancer.

The surgeon general’s advisory provided a brief overview of research studies and reviews published in the past two decades, including a global study of 195 countries and territories involving 28 million people.

They all found that higher levels of alcohol consumption were associated with a greater risk of cancer.

Other studies looked at specific cancers, like breast cancer and mouth cancer, finding the risks increased by 10 percent and 40 percent, respectively, for those who had just one drink a day, when compared with those who did not drink.

The report described the biological mechanisms by which alcohol is known to induce cancerous changes at the cellular level.

The most widely accepted theory is that inside the body, alcohol breaks down into acetaldehyde, a metabolite that binds to DNA and damages it, allowing a cell to start growing uncontrollably and creating a malignant tumor.

Animal experiments have shown that rodents whose drinking water was spiked with either ethanol, the alcohol used in alcoholic beverages, or with acetaldehyde developed large numbers of tumors all over their bodies.

Research has shown that alcohol generates oxidative stress, which increases inflammation and can damage DNA.

It also alters levels of hormones like estrogen, which can play a role in breast cancer development, and makes it easier for carcinogens like tobacco smoke particles to be absorbed into the body, increasing susceptibility to cancers of the mouth and the throat.

The surgeon general’s report also goes into detail about the increase in risk associated with drinking, differentiating between the increases in absolute risk and in relative risk.

For example, the absolute risk of breast cancer over a woman’s life span is about 11.3 percent (11 out of 100) for those who have less than a drink a week.

The risk increases to 13.1 percent (13 of 100 individuals) at one drink a day, and up to 15.3 percent (15 of 100) at two drinks per day.

For men, the absolute risk of developing an alcohol-related cancer increases from about 10 percent (10 of every 100 individuals) for those who consume less than one drink a week to 11.4 percent (11 per 100) for those who have a drink every day on average. It rises to 13 percent (13 of 100 individuals) for those who have two drinks a day on average.

Many Americans don’t know there is a link between alcohol and cancer.

Fewer than half of Americans identified alcohol use as a risk factor for cancer, compared with 89 percent who recognized tobacco as a carcinogen, according to a 2019 survey of U.S. adults aged 18 and older carried out by the American Institute for Cancer Research.

Yet alcohol consumption is the third leading preventable causes of cancer, after tobacco and obesity, according to the surgeon general’s report.

Dr. Murthy said it was important to know that the risk rises as alcohol consumption increases. But each individual’s risk of cancer is different, depending on family history, genetic makeup and environmental exposures.

“I wish we had a magic cutoff we could tell people is safe,” he said. “What we do know is that less is better when it comes to reducing your cancer risk.”

“If an individual drinks occasionally for special events, or if you’re drinking a drink or two a week, your risk is likely to be significantly less than if you’re drinking every day,” he added.

Roni Caryn Rabin is a Times health reporter focused on maternal and child health, racial and economic disparities in health care, and the influence of money on medicine. More about Roni Caryn Rabin"

Surgeon General Calls for Cancer Warnings on Alcohol - The New York Times

Veteran Israeli Negotiator Gershon Baskin: Netanyahu Remains Obstacle to Ceasefire Deal | Democracy Now!

Veteran Israeli Negotiator Gershon Baskin: Netanyahu Remains Obstacle to Ceasefire Deal | Democracy Now!

Trump aims to crush legal curbs on his climate rollback – but it may not be easy | Donald Trump | The Guardian

Trump aims to crush legal curbs on his climate rollback – but it may not be easy

"The president-elect said he will ‘stop the wave of frivolous litigation from environmental extremists’ but the ability to block suits will be limited, experts say

Dharna Noor

Donald Trump at a Turning Point USA event in Phoenix, Arizona, on 22 December. Photograph: Cheney Orr/Reuters

Donald Trump has promised to deregulate the energy sector, boost fossil fuels, dismantle environmental rules and otherwise attack climate progress. However, experts and advocates say that lawsuits that aim to hold the fossil fuel sector responsible for deceiving the public about the climate crisis still “have a clear path forward”.

“The overwhelming evidence of the industry’s lies and ongoing deception does not change with administrations,” said Richard Wiles, president of the non-profit Center for Climate Integrity, which tracks and supports the litigation. There are more than 30 accountability lawsuits active around the US brought by states and municipalities accusing fossil fuel interests of covering up the climate risks of their products or seeking damages for impacts. “Climate deception lawsuits against big oil have a clear path forward no matter who is in the White House.”

On the campaign trail, Trump pledged to “stop the wave of frivolous litigation from environmental extremists”.

But the administration’s ability to block the suits will be limited, Wiles said.

Since the federal government is neither plaintiff nor defendant in any of the suits, Trump’s election will not directly affect their outcome. And since each case was filed in state court, the president cannot appoint judges who will oversee them.

However, if any of the cases are sent to the federal courts – something oil companies have long pushed for but have not achieved – Trump’s rightwing appointees could rule in favor of fossil fuel companies.

“The most important impact that Trump will have on the climate accountability litigation is the justices he has appointed to the supreme court,” said Michael Gerrard, the faculty director of the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law at Columbia University.

In his first term, Trump appointed three justices to the high court, including two with ties to the fossil fuel industry.

In early December, Joe Biden’s solicitor general urged the supreme court to reject requests from fossil fuel interests to quash two climate accountability lawsuits, after a July call from the court for the administration to weigh in. Experts say Trump’s White House could attempt to politically tip the scales in favor of the oil companies.

“The views of the federal government tend to carry weight with the supreme court, so if Trump did that it would give a bit of a boost to the oil companies,” said Daniel Farber, who directs the University of California, Berkeley’s Center for Law, Energy & the Environment.

But that doesn’t guarantee that the court would agree with the administration, he said. “The court doesn’t always listen to the government’s view, and it would really depend on how persuasively they were able to argue the point,” Farber said.

Trump’s justice department could also file influential “friend of the court” briefs in the cases, said Gerrard.. The Biden administration filed such a brief in support of the plaintiff last year, whereas Trump’s previous administration reliably supported the defendants and is expected to do so again.

These can have a significant impact on the outcome of a case, but similarly do not guarantee an outcome.

Another possibility advocates are preparing for: Trump could work with Republican majorities in both houses of Congress to attempt to offer legal immunity to the fossil fuel industry from the lawsuits.

But such a measure is unlikely to succeed, even with a Republican trifecta, said Farber.

“You’d need 60 votes to break the filibuster in the Senate, and that means they would need to pick up seven Democrats,” he said. “I just don’t see that happening.”

The firearms industry successfully won a liability waiver in 2005 which has successfully blocked most attempts to hold them accountable for violence. Fossil fuel companies have pushed to be granted the same treatment, but have failed so far.

The Trump administration’s pledges to roll back environmental regulation and boost fossil fuels could inspire additional climate accountability litigation.

“If they feel like other channels for change have gotten cut off, maybe that would make the legal channel more appealing,” said Farber.

Climate accountability suits filed by cities and states have gained steam in recent months. In December, a North Carolina town launched the nation’s first-ever climate accountability lawsuit against an electric utility. In November, Maine also filed a suit against big oil, while a Kansas county sued major fossil fuel producers, alleging they had waged “a decades-long campaign of fraud and deception about the recyclability of plastics”.

Even amid Trump’s expected environmental rollbacks, the suits are a way to “secure some measure of justice and accountability for big oil’s climate lies and the damages that they’ve caused”, said Wiles."

Trump aims to crush legal curbs on his climate rollback – but it may not be easy | Donald Trump | The Guardian