ORANGE ALERT: For the fourth time this week, Donald Trump was denied an attempt to delay Monday’s opening of his Stormy Daniels payoff trial. This time the former president who can’t stop talking about his legal problems was trying to get the trial delayed because there’s been too much pre-trial publicity.

  Judge Juan Merchan wrote in his ruling, “The situation Defendant finds himself in now is not new to him and at least in part, of his own doing.”

  Trump is charged with 34 counts of falsifying business records to cover payments he made to silence porn star Stormy Daniels about their affair to protect his reputation before the 2016 election. Jury selection starts Monday.

  Trump spoke angrily about his legal situation in a joint press conference yesterday at Mar-a-Lago with House Speaker Mike Johnson. He ranted about Joe Biden being out to get him.

  Trump and Johnson said they had conferred about election integrity and came out calling for a federal law for voters to be required to prove their citizenship before registering. It’s already illegal for non-citizens to vote.

  Trump, of course, continues spouting the lie that the 2020 election was rigged against him and Johnson has echoed that. Trump also claims that migrants are registering to vote although there is no proof of that.

  In a statement released by the Biden campaign, Mississippi Democratic Rep. Bennie Thompson, said, “Donald Trump and Mike Johnson don’t care about election integrity, They care only about helping Trump’s campaign of revenge and retribution to regain power at all costs.”

BY THE NUMBERS: The latest NY Times/Marist poll has President Biden chipping away at Donald Trump’s lead. The two are now nearly tied … well within the margin of error … at 46 percent Trump, 45 percent Biden.

  The NY Times says, “President Biden has nearly erased Donald J. Trump’s early polling advantage, amid signs that the Democratic base has begun to coalesce behind the president despite lingering doubts about the direction of the country, the economy and his age.” 

  Eight percent of those polled were listed as “Don’t know what to say.”

MASSACRE DOWN UNDER: Six people were killed and others wounded when a man went on a stabbing spree in a busy mall in Sydney, Australia. The attacker was shot dead by police.

  Two brothers described seeing a mother and her infant attacked at the Westfield Bondi Junction mall. “The baby got stabbed and the mum got stabbed,” one of the brothers said. “We were holding the baby and trying to compress the baby. Same with the mother, trying to compress the blood from stopping.”

  There’s no word on the condition of the mother and child.

  Investigators say they don’t know the motive for the attack. Mass casualty events are rare in Australia, although 35 people died in the Port Arthur massacre in 1996.

RED SPOTS: A spike in cases of measles largely caused by people not getting vaccinated, poses a “renewed threat” to the to the eradication of the highly contagious airborne disease in the US, according to the Centers for Disease Control.

  “The U.S. measles elimination status will continue to be threatened by global increases in measles incidence and decreases in global, national, and local measles vaccination coverage,” the CDC said in a report released this week. There have been 120 cases in the country so far this year, double all of last year.

  The CDC says that measles, which is sometimes fatal, is so contagious that if an infected person coughed in a room, 90 percent of unvaccinated people in that room could get sick.

THE OBIT PAGE: Taro Akebono, Japan’s first foreign-born sumo wrestling champion, died of heart failure in Tokyo earlier this month at age 54. 

  Born in Hawaii, Akebono in 1993 became Japan’s 64th Yokozuna grand champion sumo wrestler in the sport’s 300-year recorded history.  In his career he went on to win 11 grand championships and opened the door for foreign-born wrestlers to dominate Japan’s unique national sport. 

  Sumo is a simple yet brutal and ritual sport. The wrestlers smash into each other like football lineman and the first to be knocked out of the ring or touch any part of his body to the ground is the loser. Matches can take only seconds. 

  Named Chad George Ha’aheo Rowan at birth, Akebono changed his name and became a Japanese citizen. He had played basketball in high school and a bit of college ball before moving to Japan in 1988 to learn sumo and became a dominant figure in the ring. Akebono was a massive 6-foot-8 and 466 pounds when he was first named Yokozuna at 23. 

THE SPIN RACK: President Biden yesterday cancelled another $7.4 billion in student loans … he’s looking to secure younger voters. — The House over the objections of Donald Trump passed a two-year extension of the warrantless foreign surveillance law known as FISA. Intelligence agencies depend on FISA to learn what foreign evil-doers are up to. Speaker Mike Johnson had to overcome the hard right members of his party. 

BELOW THE FOLD: In the “No Surprise” department, the first couple to marry after meeting on the ABC show “The Golden Bachelor,”  a so-called “reality” show for participants over 60, announced that they are splitting just three months after giving their vows.

  And after making a momentous decision as the result of being on a television show, Gerry Turner and Theresa Nist announced they are divorcing on ABC’s “Good Morning America.” It would appear that their personal lives are under contract to ABC.

  The couple had helped sell the “Bachelor’s” line that it’s still possible to find love in advancing age. But they told interviewer JuJu Chang that they both have children and grandchildren and couldn’t decide where to live together.

  You’d think that at ages of 72 and 70 they might have discussed that before the wedding.

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