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On Monday, a Santa Monica jury found Bill Cosby liable for drugging and sexually assaulting a woman in 1972 and ordered Cosby to pay the victim nearly $60 million in damages. According to AP, the victim, Donna Motsinger, filed her suit against Cosby in 2023. In her lawsuit, Motsinger said she was working as a server in a restaurant near San Francisco when Cosby approached her. Cosby invited her to a nearby comedy show, where she said Cosby gave her a glass of wine and two pills she believed to be aspirin. Motsinger said she was going in and out of consciousness when two men put her in a limousine. “She woke up in her house with all her clothes off, except her underwear on – no top, no bra, and no pants,” the lawsuit said. “She knew she had been drugged and raped by Bill Cosby.” They both were in their 30s at the time of the assault. After a nearly two-week civil trial and two days of deliberation, the jury awarded Motsinger $17.5 million in past damages and $1.75 million for future damages, which include “mental suffering, loss of enjoyment of life, inconvenience, grief, anxiety, humiliation, and emotional distress.” During the second phase of the trial on Monday afternoon, the judge also awarded Motsinger an additional $40 million in punitive damages. The New York Times reports that Cosby has said he’s run into financial difficulties in recent years. “Due to allegations, whether they be newspaper, radio, television, magazines or just plain internet, I have not worked in about 10 years, or more,” Cosby said in a deposition for the case. “That means I have not earned a cent through my being an entertainer, a writer, a television performer, except in reruns, and my net worth has gone down like a submarine with no motor.” An expert witness brought in by Motsinger’s lawyers disputed the idea that Cosby was destitute and estimated that his worth was approximately $128 million. “This verdict is not just about me – it’s about finally being heard and holding Mr. Cosby accountable,” Motsinger said in a statement. “I have carried the weight of what happened to me for more than 50 years. It never goes away. Today, a jury saw the truth and held him accountable. That means everything. I hope this gives strength to other survivors who are still waiting for their moment to be heard.” Motsinger added that while it was not a criminal trial with a guilty verdict, she expressed gratitude “that I’m believed and he, in some way, has to be accountable for what he did to me.” Cosby’s lawyer, Jennifer Bonjean, argued against the punitive damages and said that they fully intend to appeal. “This is not about providing deterrence,” Bonjean told the jury. “A blind 88-year-old man can’t leave his house.” I don’t think anyone assumed this was about deterrence. It’s about getting justice for a woman who’s had to live with a trauma no one should have to endure. The ruling comes five years after Cosby was released from prison after serving three years of a three-to-10-year sentence for sexually assaulting Andrea Constand. Cosby was released from prison after the Pennsylvania Supreme Court tossed his conviction after finding that a deal Cosby had made with a previous prosecutor should have prevented him from being criminally charged in the case. Constand testified during Motsinger’s trial along with two other women who have accused Cosby of sexual assault. While it’s not the justice the victims deserve, at the very least, the court acknowledged the pain that Cosby caused Motsinger. SEE ALSO: Bill Cosby Forced To Sell His $7 Million NYC Mansion Women Sue Cosby For Sex Assault In New Lawsuit  

Yung Miami isn’t backing down from her decision to defend Sean “Diddy” Combs during his sex trafficking and prostitution trial. The City Girls alum addressed her relationship with Diddy during a new sit-down interview with Charlamagne Tha God for The Breakfast Club. While discussing her three-year relationship with the disgraced music mogul, she also revealed why she didn’t turn her back on him following his numerous allegations of sexual abuse and conviction on prostitution charges. Once the topic of Sean “Diddy” Combs came up in the conversation, which premiered on Mar 24, Yung Miami—born Caresha Romeka Brownlee—was asked how she differentiates between the person she had a relationship with versus the allegations against him. “I think in life you always get put in a situation where you gotta, you know, make a life decision,” she began. “And you gotta look back and say like, ‘What makes sense for me right now?’ I can love this person, but I can love this person from a distance, or no, I can have a relationship with this person, but maybe I gotta come back to it. Like, maybe I gotta come back around, and I think that this was one of those situations.” During Diddy’s highly-publicized trial, Caresha was one of the celebrities who wrote a character letter in support of the rapper and producer. In the letter, she described him as a “loving” and “supportive” person, even declaring at the end that he’s a “good man.” Once the letter was released to the public, there was a negative reaction from fans, which Miami was asked about during the interview. “I think I wrote a letter for a changed man,” she explained. “I think that the man that I met and that I experienced was changed. I’m not gonna justify some bulls**t or like, support some bulls**t. I felt like the person that I met was changed. It was a different experience, so that’s why I wrote the letter.” As for whether she thinks she owes her fans an explanation or if her personal relationships aren’t their business, she said she feels she has to do “both.” “I feel like, as people that’s supporting you, that’s buying into you and that love you…They gotta be able to connect with you,” she said. “I can’t just be like, ‘F**k y’all, this is my personal life. I don’t owe y’all.’” Ultimately, Combs was found guilty on two counts of transportation to engage in prostitution and sentenced to four years and two months in prison. He was found not guilty on racketeering and sex trafficking charges. Yung Miami spoke more on her decision to support Diddy by insisting that she’s unable to comment on things she didn’t personally experience. “I can’t speak to nothing that I don’t know of. I can only speak to the person that I met. And if I met this person that changed my life, that helped me grow, that treated me like a queen, that made me believe [in] myself…That’s what I know,” Caresha explained. “I feel like people can have opinions, but I can only judge a person off of what I know and what I experience. Like, I can’t speak on nothing that I never was a part of, that I never knew. I can only judge who I met. I can only judge who I was in a relationship with.” Charlamagne also asked the rapper if she was afraid of being called to testify during the trial, to which she replied, “I never hid nothing, I don’t have nothing to hide.” Miami went on to add that many people turned their back on her following her support for Diddy, saying the whole situation “really” impacted her brand. “I lost deals. I lost money. I lost relationships. I lost a lot,” she concluded. “The only person I try to trust is God and my kids.” Check out the whole interview up above. The post Doubling Down On Diddy: Yung Miami Defends Her Decision To Write A Letter To The Judge Gushing Over ‘Good Man,’ Sean Combs appeared first on Bossip.

The Rev. Jesse Jackson, a towering titan who expanded the reach of the Civil Rights Movement, founded the Rainbow PUSH Coalition and broke barriers with two presidential bids, died Tuesday, leaving an indelible imprint on American activism. In a statement shared with NBC News, the Jackson family described him as “a servant leader — not only to our family, but to the oppressed, the voiceless, and the overlooked around the world.” “We shared him with the world, and in return, the world became part of our extended family,” the statement read. “His unwavering belief in justice, equality, and love uplifted millions, and we ask you to honor his memory by continuing the fight for the values he lived by.” He was 84. His family said he died peacefully, surrounded by loved ones, and the cause of death has not been released. Jackson’s death comes after he was hospitalized in November to receive treatment for a rare neurological condition. NBC 5 Chicago reported at the time that he was rushed to the hospital and placed under observation for Progressive Supranuclear Palsy, as confirmed by the Rainbow PUSH Coalition. The health scare followed Jackson’s 2017 reveal that he had been diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease. Public observances will be held in Chicago, with additional celebration-of-life events to be announced by the Rainbow PUSH Coalition and the Jackson family. Job well done. Rest in power, Rev. Jesse Jackson. The post Rest In Power: Rev. Jesse Jackson, Towering Titan Of The Civil Rights Movement & Rainbow PUSH Founder, Dies At 84 appeared first on Bossip.

Drake thinks the lower court has created an “unprecedented” rule that rap diss tracks can never be actionable with their dismissal of his lawsuit. The Canadian rapper has officially moved to appeal the dismissal of his lawsuit against Universal Music Group (UMG) tied to Kendrick Lamar’s diss track “Not Like Us.” He originally sued UMG last year, alleging the company defamed him by distributing Lamar’s viral diss track, which branded him a “certified pedophile.” However, a federal judge ruled in October that listeners wouldn’t interpret jabs exchanged in a rap feud as literal, factual claims. Rolling Stone reports that in his long-anticipated appeal filed Wednesday, Drake’s legal team argues the opposite is true: That audiences absolutely took the lyrics at face value. “Millions of people understood [Not Like Us] to convey factual information, causing countless individuals around the globe to believe that Drake was a pedophile.” According to the rapper’s attorneys, dismissing the case in spite of that public reaction amounted to the court establishing an “unprecedented” and “dangerous” legal doctrine, one that suggests statements in rap songs can never be defamatory. “It is hard to imagine a statement more damaging to one’s reputation and safety than being labeled a ‘certified pedophile,’ which elicits intense vitriol, and can spur violent retaliation,” Drake’s attorney Michael J. Gottlieb writes in the appeal, obtained by Billboard. “The court’s rule brushes aside the risk of concrete reputational harms that can and here, did spill over into violence.” This appeal serves as the latest turn in a legal saga that caught much of the music world off guard. Very few anticipated that a rap beef would escalate into a lawsuit, leading to some corners of hip-hop culture taunting Drake for taking it there. Lamar dropped “Not Like Us” in May 2024 as the final blow in a fierce back-and-forth between the two artists. Beyond being viewed as Lamar’s lyrical knockout, the song also dominated the charts. It went on to win five Grammy Awards, including record and song of the year, and became a centerpiece of Lamar’s Super Bowl halftime performance. By January, Drake answered not with another track, but with legal action, claiming UMG had defamed him by aggressively amplifying the song’s reach, allegedly through bots and other questionable promotional tactics. While Lamar himself was not named in the suit, Drake accused UMG of having “waged a campaign” against its own star to spread a “malicious narrative.” The post Lawbrey Lawyers Up…Again: Drake Appeals Dismissal Of Lawsuit Over Kendrick Lamar’s ‘Not Like Us’ appeared first on Bossip.

In this dystopian hellscape created by the MAGA-movement and nutless Republicans, armed gang members ride through neighborhoods looking for people to kidnap. In Minneapolis on Wednesday, they killed a woman, Renee Nicole Good, 37, a mother of three. A gentle soul, which I can say without pause, because she was a poet. All poets have gentle souls. She was trying to get away from the armed gang harassing her when they opened fire on her. The gang’s OGs have already started spinning a tale about cars being used as weapons and factions of people learning to drive recklessly to take them out. It’s a story as old as time, this war between gangs and the communities that they terrorize, but this is different. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is a federally funded gang that slides into communities and tears families apart, and they do so with impunity. It is worse than the Crips or Gangster Disciples because ICE is backed by America’s lifeblood, racism, and a racist White House that implored them to make their bones. Racism drives this administration. It’s the spine of Project 2025, the playbook of Trump’s White House. It’s the foundational tenet for ICE’s harassment, kidnapping, and capture of working immigrants who are simply trying to make a way for themselves and their families while navigating an increasingly hostile U.S. immigration system. The U.S. Supreme Court is in on it, too. They allow ICE to racially profile those whom they decide to stop and question. Racism is the sole reason that the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) went from a terror-fighting faction of the Department of Homeland Security to those that create said terror. ICE was created in the post-9/11 haze and sold to the public as a necessary evil to protect us from shadowy threats. Two decades later, its actual résumé reads like a rap sheet: family separations, warrantless arrests, deaths in custody, medical neglect, sexual abuse allegations, and now—yet again—gun violence. Remember, most gangs start with good intentions. The Crips were formed to protect neighborhood youth against other, more violent gangs. See what the Crips are on now. Details of the tragedy are still being sorted, but the pattern is familiar: a heavily armed law-enforcement presence, escalating force, and yet another civilian harmed in the name of “public safety.” The script never changes—only the zip code does. “Federal agents have shot people 14 times since last January, killing at least four; on multiple occasions, officers shot at people observing ICE raids and people attempting to drive away,” the Trace notes. At what point do we admit that the people claiming to stop crime are, in fact, committing it? Because let’s be clear: snatching people off the street in unmarked vehicles is not “enforcement.” That’s kidnapping with a PR team. Detaining people indefinitely without charges isn’t “border security.” That’s incarceration without due process. Shooting civilians during routine operations isn’t “keeping the peace.” That’s state violence, full stop. Because ICE isn’t preventing harm; they’re creating it. They are rolling up on unsuspecting people masked up, carrying large weapons, and shouting demands. That’s gang behavior. And to be frank, all of this is a show of force that isn’t even warranted, as crossing a border without papers is a civil violation, not a violent crime. If ICE were a person, they would be locked up, considering they would’ve been charged with unlawful detention, excessive force, obstruction of legal counsel, and gross negligence that has resulted in death. If anyone did even a portion of that, we wouldn’t be debating semantics—we’d be calling a lawyer. ICE doesn’t get to be both the perpetrator and the victim. They don’t get to hop out of tinted-windowed vehicles, guns at the ready, and then claim that the person fleeing this lawless gang endangered their lives by trying to get to safety. But that’s America at work, where the brown face can be charged for hurting the white fist. These agents are not de-escalators. They are not community protectors. They are trained to treat human beings as threats first and ask questions later. When that mindset collides with real neighborhoods and real people, they get hurt. And this is the quiet part that never gets said out loud: all gang structure is to feed an ecosystem of terrorism that thrives off fear and, more importantly, money. Everyone has to kick up to the big homies when they hit a lick, and so does ICE. This anarchic band of hoods kidnapping people is to feed a private prison system that profits off those in custody. There are bed mandates. Quotas. Contracts. When your budget depends on keeping cages full, you stop caring whether the people inside them pose any danger. You just need them compliant—or gone. Which brings us back to the central scam: ICE does not make communities safer. Immigrants—documented or undocumented—are statistically less likely to commit violent crimes than native-born citizens. ICE knows this. Politicians know this. But fear is more useful than facts, especially when elections need winning, and dog whistles need blowing. So the world’s most dangerous crew is ICE. They are neighborhood police with crack strength. And they don’t care. They will show up at courthouses, hospitals, graduations, and birthday parties just to rip families apart because they pledged allegiance to their gang and got jumped in. And they’re the criminals they claim to be looking for. And that’s the uncomfortable truth America keeps dodging: the most dangerous criminals in this country don’t always come from the hood. Sometimes they come with badges, guns, and a talking point about “law and order,” leaving blood, trauma, and broken families in their wake—and daring us to pretend that’s justice. SEE ALSO: Woman Shot And Killed By ICE During Crackdown In Minneapolis ICE Agents Invade Minneapolis Hospital With No Warrant  

At a Turning Point USA event in Phoenix, Vice President JD Vance, the self-appointed “hillbilly” who made it out the mud, told white Americans they no longer have to “apologize for being white.” After Vance’s remarks, much of the media coverage fixated on crowd reaction, viral outrage, and whether the comment was provocative or racist, with outlets describing applause and backlash. The coverage treats the remark like a culture-war skirmish or a spicy soundbite meant to rile liberals and thrill conservatives. Was it divisive? Was it provocative? Was it just red-meat rhetoric for the base? But we need to be interrogating the deeper political calculus behind the message. The one real question we should be asking has been politely avoided: why was this man chosen to say it, on that stage, at this moment? Because the power of the line, which is not new, doesn’t come from its originality, but from its messenger. Those words could never have carried the same weight coming from Donald Trump. He is too rich, too cartoonishly gilded, and too insulated from the daily humiliations of working-class life. He smells like inheritance, bankruptcy lawyers, and gold-plated toilets. White Americans already know Trump doesn’t apologize to anyone for anything because that’s his brand. Coming from him, the remark would have sounded like exactly what it was: a billionaire dismissing accountability from the safety of unearned power. But coming from JD Vance, those words hit different. Vance is the perfect vessel because he is not supposed to be the villain in this story about American decline. He’s supposed to be the proof that the American story still works. He’s the poor white kid who survived Appalachia and clawed his way out of generational precarity. He escaped addiction and instability and sits among elite power without fully shedding the aesthetic of struggle or indicting the system that chewed up everyone he left behind. Appalachia was gutted by corporations, poisoned by industry, abandoned by policy, and exploited by capital. If anyone has standing to name the real villains, it is him. But instead, he stood on that stage and offered absolution to angry white folks. He doesn’t look like a robber baron. He doesn’t sound like a hedge fund vampire. He doesn’t wear his privilege in gold leaf. He arrives coded as earned, not inherited. And that’s precisely why he can say things Donald Trump can’t say without exposing the scam. Vance is the walking proof-of-concept for the lie at the heart of white grievance politics. His biography does the dirty work for him. His mere presence tells struggling white Americans: See? The system isn’t broken. I made it. And if you didn’t, that failure isn’t about class warfare, corporate theft, union busting, or billionaires hollowing out your town. Nope, it’s about culture. It’s about values. It’s about them. ‘Them’ being all those immigrants who “cut the line.” The Black folks who “won’t stop complaining” and “hate white people.” The DEI programs that supposedly stole your job. The leftists and “Democrats” who “hate America.” The queer folks who make you uncomfortable by existing out loud. The problem is anybody but the corporations that poisoned your water. That shipped your labor overseas and cashed the checks while your community collapsed. It’s not the hedge funds that strip-mined your hospitals and nursing homes. Nor the pharmaceutical giants that flooded your towns with opioids and called it pain management. It ain’t the private-equity vultures that bought your trailer parks and jacked up the rent. Not the agribusiness monopolies that crushed family farms, the telecoms that took public money and still left you without broadband. Not the coal and chemical companies that took the land and left the cancer clusters, or the banks that redlined you on the way in and foreclosed on you on the way out. And it’s certainly not the lawmakers who gutted unions, and the billionaires who wrote the tax code so your paycheck shrank while their fortunes ballooned. According to our “hillbilly” Vice President, it’s anybody but the people who actually pulled the levers. That’s the magic trick. Vance stands there as living proof that the ladder still works as long as you redirect your anger at structural violence in the right direction. And once that story takes hold, class solidarity becomes impossible. Because why punch up at the capital when you’ve been trained to punch sideways and down at the people who were never holding the knife in the first damn place? That sleight of hand is exactly why a Turning Point USA stage was the perfect place for Vance to perform this routine. Turning Point USA isn’t some scrappy youth movement. It is a grievance factory bankrolled by wealthy donors who benefit directly from keeping white Americans angry, confused, and misdirected. The same corporate interests that busted unions, suppressed wages, deregulated industries, and strip-mined rural communities now underwrite conferences where white resentment is packaged as “freedom.” Vance’s job is to make sure no one in the audience ever connects those dots. So instead of asking why private equity gutted their hospitals, why pharmaceutical companies flooded their towns with opioids, or why billionaires keep getting tax cuts while their schools crumble, the crowd is trained to seethe at safer targets. Everyone except the corporations in the room and the donors signing the checks. That’s the scammy business model. Vance doesn’t challenge that model; he completes it. He reassures white Americans that their suffering has nothing to do with capitalism run amok and everything to do with moral decline and cultural invasion. He turns class betrayal into racial discipline. He sells the lie that dignity comes not from solidarity or justice, but from refusing to interrogate who’s actually profiting off your pain. And because he comes wrapped in a hillbilly origin story, the absolution feels authentic and trustworthy. When he tells white Americans they don’t have to apologize, it doesn’t sound like a billionaire sneering at accountability. It sounds like a neighbor who understands, a man who’s been

Mercedes Wells, a Black woman in Indiana, went viral earlier this month after releasing a video showing herself being sent home from a hospital despite being in active labor. Rep. Robin Kelly (D-Ill.) introduced a bill in Congress that aims to prevent hospitals from turning away women while they’re in labor. According to NBC News, the Women Expansion for Learning and Labor Safety Act, or WELLS Act, would require hospitals to implement a “Safe Discharge Labor Plan before discharging a patient who presents with signs or symptoms of labor.” The Safe Discharge Labor Plan would see hospitals providing clinical justification for the discharge, assessing travel distance and time before approving the discharge, and receiving a written understanding from the patient. The WELLS Act would also require health care professionals to undergo racial bias training. “My bill aims to address systematic issues around maternal care, racial disparities, and hospital accountability,” Kelly said. “It’s clear that what happened to Mercedes isn’t an isolated incident, nor is it the first time a Black woman’s pain has been ignored.” “Until all women are heard and listened to in our hospitals and health centers, I’ll be their voice in Congress fighting for change,” Kelly added. On Nov. 16, Mercedes Wells’ husband rushed her to Franciscan Health Crown Point hospital when her contractions were 10 minutes apart. After six hours, Wells only received a checkup from a nurse before being discharged from the hospital. She never saw a doctor and wound up giving birth to her fourth child in the backseat of her car, only 8 minutes after leaving the hospital. “It was really a horrific situation to be treated like a dog, or not even like a dog, like less than,” Wells told NBC News. “It says that they don’t care at all for Black women in health, and it’s hurtful. We thought that, you know, things have changed at this point in our country, and I don’t see a change.” Franciscan Health President and CEO Raymond Grady told NBC News that the nurse and doctor who declined to provide Mercedes Wells proper care no longer work for the hospital. Grady also issued a formal apology to the Wells family. “We failed to listen to Mrs. Wells’ concerns,” CEO Raymond Grady said in the statement. “We must fix what failed in our hospital so that no one experiences what happened to Mercedes Wells.” Sadly, Mercedes Wells’ experience isn’t abnormal for Black women. Black women disproportionately represent maternal mortality rates and are three times more likely to die from pregnancy-related complications. These rates have only skyrocketed in states like Texas and Georgia, where stringent abortion bans have led to unnecessary deaths of Black women, like in the case of Amber Thurman. Black people already have a heightened distrust of medical professionals due to historical mistreatment and racial bias in health care. The experiences of Mercedes Wells do little to dispel the notion that the American health care system is designed to work against Black people. Hopefully, this bill passes, so no more women will have to endure what Mercedes Wells went through. SEE ALSO: White Women In Medicine Have Always Neglected Pregnant Black Women 7 Ways Racism Harms Pregnant Black Women