Sean Combs Found Not Guilty of Sex-Trafficking in Shocking Verdict

Hip-hop mogul Sean “Diddy” Combs was found not guilty on major charges of sex trafficking and racketeering. He was found guilty on two lesser charges of transportation for prostitution.

Prosecutors had alleged that Combs, 55, had been engaging in sex trafficking and racketeering in regards to his so-called “freak offs,” in which they alleged he coerced former girlfriend and key witness Cassie Ventura and sex workers into long, drug-fueled, sexual encounters. Combs still faces up to 20 years in prison, or 10 years on each charge, but is acquitted from the most serious of his charges.

Combs’s defense framed Ventura as some messy, unstable lover rather than the abused woman we all watched him brutally beat on camera.

This acquittal is a shocking end to a case that was closely watched by millions of people for months. The result raises questions about the strength of the federal government’s RICO and sex-trafficking charges and the impact this ruling will have on survivors of domestic abuse and sexual violence across the country, especially those who are the victims of rich and powerful men.

“Although the jury did not find Combs guilty of sex trafficking Cassie beyond a reasonable doubt, she paved the way for a jury to find him guilty of transportation to engage in prostitution,” Ventura’s lawyers wrote in a statement after the verdict. “By coming forward with her experience, Cassie has left an indelible mark on both the entertainment industry and the fight for justice. We must repeat – with no reservation – that we believe and support our client who showed exemplary courage throughout this trial. She displayed unquestionable strength and brought attention to the realities of powerful men in our orbit and the misconduct that has persisted for decades without repercussion. This case proved that change is long overdue, and we will continue to fight on behalf of survivors.”

This story has been updated.

Even Donald Trump’s most unwavering allies are irate over the contents of the president’s spending package.

Trump’s “big, beautiful bill” narrowly passed through the Senate Tuesday when Vice President JD Vance cast the tie-breaking vote on the highly controversial legislation that both strips Medicaid from millions of Americans and is projected to add trillions to the national deficit.

In the wake of the vote, Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene joined Steve Bannon’s War Room podcast, flaming the effort as a “shit show.”

The MAGA acolyte said the battle over the bill was “far from over,” adding that she believes “there’s no way” it will pass through the House.

“It is really a dire situation. We’re on a time clock that’s been really set on us, so we have a lot of pressure,” Greene said, referring to the July 4 deadline that the president imposed on Congress to pass his key agenda item.

“And then also given the fact that there’s 435 members of Congress and it’s hard for us to get to an agreement on anything,” she continued. “So this whole thing is—I don’t know what to call it—it’s a shit show. And I’m sorry for saying that. I know we’re not supposed to say that on the air, but that’s truly what it is.”

Trump’s “big, beautiful bill” would extend his 2017 tax cuts for millionaires and corporations in exchange for $880 billion in cuts to social programs such as Medicaid, practically gutting the critical low-income health care option. But none of the cuts to other areas of government actually pencil out the massive tax rewrite. Instead, on Saturday, the Congressional Budget Office estimated that the Senate legislation would increase the deficit by more than $3.9 trillion over the next 10 years—an incredible moralistic flip-flop for a party that has claimed for decades to be focused on curtailing government spending.

Even senators who voted for the bill have already changed their tune about it. Alaska Senator Lisa Murkowski, whose switched “no” vote Tuesday was critical to advancing the bill, said after the vote—and massive national backlash—that she expects the House to send the bill back to the Senate.

“My hope is that the House is gonna look at this and recognize that we’re not there yet,” Murkowski told Punchbowl News.

When asked why she voted for the legislation if she didn’t align with it, Murkowski said that a vote against the bill would have been its death knell.

“Kill it and it’s gone,” she said.

The Wisconsin state Supreme Court relegated a 176-year-old abortion ban to the ash heap of history on Wednesday, as the court’s liberal majority ruled that the ban was superseded by state laws that have been passed since.

The ban went into effect after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022, halting abortion providers’ operations in the state. Then in 2023, a Dane County judge invalidated the ban, allowing clinics to resume operations. Also that year, Wisconsin voters resoundingly elected pro-choice Judge Janet Protasiewicz to the state Supreme Court, tipping its majority from conservative to liberal. Liberals on the court hung onto their majority after Judge Susan Crawford defeated an Elon Musk–backed candidate in April this year.

The state Supreme Court’s Wednesday ruling, issued 4–3 along ideological lines, affirms the lower court’s ruling. In doing away with the ban, the decision leaves in place a law allowing abortions until about the twentieth week of pregnancy.

In the majority opinion, Justice Rebecca Dallet noted that the state Supreme Court had applied the ancient ban in a 1968 ruling. “But that was over 50 years ago,” the opinion states. “In the decades since, the legislature has enacted a myriad of statutes governing abortion.”

Namely, laws adopted in 1985, 1997, and 2015 narrowed the ban, as did “many additional statutes” enacted since then. These laws “specify, often in extraordinary detail, the answer to nearly every conceivable question about abortion.” Yet with the near-total ban in effect, they “would serve no purpose.”

Further, if the ban were in effect, that would nonsensically mean that existing state statues that allow the state, counties, and municipalities to fund abortion in cases of sexual assault, incest, and medical necessity would necessarily “authorize the state, counties, or municipalities to subsidize a crime.”

That said, the court concluded that state abortion legislation had “impliedly repealed” the ban.

“This case is about giving effect to 50 years’ worth of laws passed by the legislature about virtually every aspect of abortion including where, when, and how health-care providers may lawfully perform abortions,” the majority opinion states. “The legislature, as the peoples’ representatives, remains free to change the laws with respect to abortion in the future. But the only way to give effect to what the legislature has actually done over the last 50 years is to conclude that it impliedly repealed the 19th century near-total ban on abortion, and that [the ban] therefore does not prohibit abortion in the State of Wisconsin.”

This story has been updated.

Truckling to President Donald Trump, Paramount has agreed to settle the president’s frivolous lawsuit over the editing of CBS News’s 60 Minutes interview with Kamala Harris.

Some executives at the media conglomerate reportedly desired this outcome, for it would clear the way for a megamerger requiring the Trump administration’s approval, despite surely emboldening his war against the press.

As part of the settlement, Paramount will reportedly not apologize or admit wrongdoing—cold comfort, considering it will, per The New York Times, fork up $16 million, including to Trump’s legal fees and planned presidential library, and release written transcripts of future 60 Minutes interviews with presidential candidates.

Trump alleged that the show deceptively edited an answer from Kamala Harris on Israel during an October 2024 interview. Of course, 60 Minutes and other news programs customarily edit politicians’ remarks for concision, including those of the notorious prolix president.

The settlement paves the way for a multibillion-dollar merger with Skydance, which requires the approval of Trump’s Federal Communications Commission. In May, Senators Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, and Ron Wyden wrote to Paramount that “Paramount may be engaging in potentially illegal conduct involving the Trump Administration in exchange for approval of its megamerger with Skydance.”

Paramount’s supine settlement starkly contrasts a court filing from just last Monday, in which the company called the “meritless lawsuit” an attempt “to evade bedrock First Amendment principles establishing that public officials like themselves cannot hold news organizations like CBS liable for the exercise of editorial judgment.”

Previously, the company had called the lawsuit “an affront to the First Amendment … without basis in law or fact.”

Former FBI agent and January 6 rioter Jared L. Wise—who shouted “Kill ’em! Kill ’em! Kill ’em!” while the mob attacked law enforcement at the Capitol—is now part of Trump’s Department of Justice. 

Wise will act as counselor to Ed Martin while the latter heads the Weaponization Working Group, a committee tasked with enacting revenge on the president’s political enemies, particularly those involved in investigating January 6. This means that a man who broke into the Capitol in a face mask and called for the deaths of police officers is now playing a key role in an agency that is attacking those who criticize and question the events of that infamous day.   

Wise worked for the FBI from 2004 to 2017 before joining the far-right propaganda think tank Project Veritas, where he infiltrated teachers’ unions across the Midwest. Wise was officially charged with two felonies and four misdemeanor counts in 2023, including trespassing and disrupting the orderly conduct of government. All of his charges were dropped by Trump, along with those of the hundreds of other insurrectionists he pardoned. 

This should all but confirm that there is not an ounce of MAGA remorse or discomfort about the January 6 insurrection. They have time to play Nixon and attack protesters across the country for acting against ICE raids and speaking out on Palestine, while venerating people who are proud and obvious threats to the U.S. government.   

It looks like Alaska Senator Lisa Murkowski is getting exactly what she voted for, even though it’s not what she wanted.

Murkowski was the crucial vote Tuesday in passing Donald Trump’s “big, beautiful bill” through the Senate. But right after the vote, she said she’d backed the measure in the hopes that the legislation could be amended after it was returned to the House. But Republican leadership in the other chamber seems content passing the bill as is.

“My hope is that the House is gonna look at this and recognize that we’re not there yet,” Murkowski told reporters after the vote. But more haggling over changes doesn’t seem to be on the agenda for House Speaker Mike Johnson.

The Louisiana Republican admitted that the Senate had strayed a “little further than many of us would have preferred” from the original bill that had passed in the House but that he would continue to work to pass the bill as it had returned, according to Punchbowl News.

“My objective and my responsibility is to get that bill over the line. So we will do everything possible to do that,” Johnson said.

The behemoth budget bill passed through the Senate only after Murkowski had acquired a stack of carve-outs for her state. “Do I like this bill? No. But I tried to take care of Alaska’s interests,” Murkowski defiantly told NBC News.

In settling for a bill she doesn’t like at all, Murkowski has just signed onto adding trillions to the national deficit and gutting social programs such as SNAP and Medicaid while extending tax breaks for the rich.

Trump officials got a lesson in the Streisand effect—whereby attempts to suppress information only circulate it further—as their outrage over ICEBlock, a free iPhone app that monitors the activity of Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, propelled the app to the top of Apple’s App Store on Tuesday.

On Monday, CNN published an article about ICEBlock, which anonymously crowdsources information about ICE agent sightings in order to create an “early warning system,” according to the app’s developer, Joshua Aaron. Users have turned to ICEBlock as fear grips communities where federal immigration enforcement has ramped up operations in recent months, often led by agents conducting arrests and raids in masks and plain clothes.

In a Monday night Fox News appearance, Attorney General Pam Bondi chastised CNN for its reporting and lashed out against Aaron, saying, “He’s giving a message to criminals where our federal officers are, and he cannot do that, and we are looking at it, we are looking at him, and he better watch out, because that is not protected speech, that is threatening the lives of our law enforcement officers throughout this country.”

The app also drew condemnations from Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, ICE acting Director Todd Lyons, and Trump border czar Tom Homan.

By Tuesday morning, ICEBlock had rocketed to the top of the App Store charts, becoming the #1 free app in the marketplace’s social networking category. It remains in that top social networking slot as of this writing on Tuesday afternoon, and it also appears to have more than tripled its user base: While the CNN story published Monday stated that the app had more than 20,000 users, Aaron on Tuesday afternoon posted that it now boasts over 70,000.

Thanking the app’s users, Aaron wrote, “I am so incredibly grateful that this little idea has become so popular. All I wanted to do was help protect people and #resist this downward spiral to authoritarianism.”

In a week dominated by Trump’s budget bill, Democrats can take some solace in a legal victory over Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and DOGE.

On Tuesday, U.S. District Judge Melissa DuBose of Rhode Island issued an injunction that blocks RFK Jr. from moving on with his plan to eliminate crucial agencies and fire 10,000 employees at the Department of Health and Human Services. The injunction was on behalf of 19 Democratic states that challenged the HHS secretary’s initial layoffs and his planned restructuring of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Food and Drug Administration, the Center for Tobacco Products, the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation, and the Office of Head Start. The injunction also blocks the Trump administration from issuing further layoffs at the department.

“The Executive Branch does not have the authority to order, organize, or implement wholesale changes to the structure and function of the agencies created by Congress,” DuBose wrote. Her injunction comes just one day before those 10,000 employees were set to be fired. Some have already been rehired.

Republican Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska on Tuesday supplied the deciding vote for Senate Republicans to pass Trump’s signature budget bill. After doing so, she registered concerns about the disastrous piece of legislation, even while defending her vote.

The bill, if also passed in the House, would increase the deficit while delivering tax cuts to the rich and historic cuts to social programs such as Medicaid and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. Murkowski, a last-minute holdout, caved after being presented with handouts to make the bill slightly less ruinous for Alaskans—such as one temporarily waiving provisions requiring Alaska to pay for a portion of SNAP benefits.

The decision process, Murkowski told reporters after the vote, had been “agonizing,” and she “struggled mightily with the impact on the most vulnerable in this country, when you look to Medicaid and SNAP.”

She also expressed hope that the House would alter the bill she voted for, saying she wants the House to “look at this and recognize that we’re not there yet.”

Why did she vote for it, then? “Kill it, and the provisions that are going to be very helpful for economic development in my state would no longer be available,” Murkowski replied, pointing directly to the handouts.

In an interview with NBC’s Ryan Nobles, Murkowski addressed suggestions that she’d accepted a “bailout,” saying, “When people suggest that federal dollars go to one of our fifty states in a quote, ‘bailout,’ I find that offensive. I advocated for my state’s interests.”

“Do I like this bill? No,” Murkowski said, lamenting that, “in many parts of the country, there are Americans that are not going to be advantaged by this bill.”

But, she continued, “When I saw the direction that this is going, you can either say, ‘I don’t like it,’ and not try to help my state, or you can roll up your sleeves, and do so.”

The senator now faces intense criticism, including from Democratic Representative Jim McGovern who, during a House Rules Committee meeting, asked if Murkowski really hopes it’s improved in the house, “Why the hell did you vote for this bill? It doesn’t make any sense.”

McGovern called Murkowski’s vote “a dereliction of [her] duty as a United States senator,” as the bill is “a middle finger to millions of Americans.”

“If this is Republicans’ top legislative priority in this Congress, it tells us everything about where your values lie,” McGovern added. “And it’s not with working families, not with struggling communities, but with megacorporations, billionaires, and Donald Trump.”

Murkowski today is perhaps best rebutted by the words of Murkowski eight years ago, when she held fast as Senate Republicans dangled deals before her in hopes of getting her to help repeal Obamacare: “Let’s just say that they do something that’s so Alaska-specific just to quote, ‘get me,’” she told reporters at the time. “Then you have a nationwide system that doesn’t work. That then comes crashing down and Alaska’s not able to kind of keep it together on its own.”

Step right up: For a limited time, you, too, could smell like Donald Trump.

The president’s latest business venture is a pair of colognes that retail for $249 per 3.3-ounce bottle. The scent is called “Victory 47-45” for men and women, a nod to his dual election wins. The fragrance comes in a small container inscribed with Trump’s thick signature, and is topped by a gold statuette of a man in a business suit that doesn’t resemble the president but is, presumably, supposed to.

“Trump Fragrances are here. They’re called ‘Victory 45-47’ because they’re all about Winning, Strength, and Success—For men and women,” Trump posted on Truth Social Monday evening, announcing their arrival. “Get yourself a bottle, and don’t forget to get one for your loved ones too.”

“Enjoy, have fun, and keep winning!” the president wrote.

Neither of the listings for the cologne paint a picture of what it actually smells like, though both allege that they capture “strength” and “confidence.”

But Victory 47-45 is not the only scent advertised on the website. The president has also featured two other bottles that have supposedly sold out: one that is, curiously, also called “Victory,” though it appears to come in different packaging and one titled “COLOGNE: TRUMP FOR MEN” that arrives in a box emblazoned “Fight, fight, fight”—a reference to the assassination attempt on him in Butler, Pennsylvania, last year.

Early reviews of the scents don’t bode well. Descriptions of the scent on perfume rating site Fragrantica say the men’s version of Victory 47-45 has outdoorsy top notes mixed with cardamom, middle notes of geranium, and woody base notes of amberwood. Overall, it received a rating of 1.66 out of five with 436 votes. One reviewer said it made them feel “nauseous,” while another said it was “way, way, way” overpriced with “very poor longevity and projection.”

It “legit smells like something you could get at Ross for $26,” the second reviewer wrote, noting that the cologne resembles a mixture of more popular perfumes, but worse. “There just really isn’t any reason to own this unless Trump is your God.”

The women’s version didn’t get better ratings, receiving a score of 1.45 out of five with 250 votes. The scent is supposed to smell citrusy, built on a base of vanilla with strawberry middle notes, though one reviewer said it smelled more like “Don’s Diaper.”

Others were aghast at the “cheap” design of the bottle itself, with one user writing that it was “utterly appalling” that Trump remained atop the women’s scent, apparently lacking the “decency to put his third trophy wife on top.”

The company behind the operation, 45Footwear LLC, has a likeness partnership with CIC Ventures LLC, the same organization through which Trump has made millions off of his other tacky grifts, including his remarkably ugly $499 gold sneakers, an assortment of Trump-branded watches (that start at $499 and top out around $899), and a collection of $60-a-pop God Bless the USA Bibles. CIC Ventures LLC and CIC Digital LLC, which managed Trump’s Marvel-inspired NFT trading card project, were both fully owned by the Donald J. Trump Revocable Trust as of late last year.

Despite promises on the products’ respective websites that they are the only “official” locations to buy products “offered” by Trump, the Trump perfume website FAQ insists that the LLC is “not owned, managed or controlled” by Trump, the Trump Organization, or CIC. The no-refund website also stresses that Trump has no influence on the fragrances, and that the initiative “is not political and has nothing to do with any political campaign.”