Alaska Airlines planes are shown parked at gates with Mount Rainier in the background on March 1, 2021, at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport in Seattle. (AP Photo/Ted S. Warren, File)
AP- Air travelers in the U.S. without a REAL ID will be charged a $45 fee beginning in February, the Transportation Security Administration announced Monday.
The updated ID has been required since May, but passengers without it have so far been allowed to clear security with additional screening and a warning. The Department of Homeland Security says 94% of passengers are already compliant and that the new fee is intended to encourage travelers to obtain the ID.
REAL ID is a federally compliant state-issued license or identification card that meets enhanced requirements mandated in the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
Obtaining the ID — indicated by a white star in a yellow circle in most states — means taking more documents to the motor vehicle agency than most states require for regular IDs. It was supposed to be rolled out in 2008 but the implementation had been repeatedly delayed.
Beginning Feb. 1, travelers 18 and older flying domestically without a REAL ID and who don’t have another accepted form of ID on them, such as a passport, will pay the non-refundable fee to verify their identity through TSA’s alternative “Confirm.ID” system.
TSA officials said that paying the fee does not guarantee verification, and travelers whose identities cannot be verified may be turned away. If approved, however, the verification covers a 10-day travel period.
The fee can be paid online before arriving at the airport. Travelers can also pay online at the airport before entering the security line, but officials said the process may take up to 30 minutes.
The TSA initially proposed an $18 charge for passengers without a REAL ID, but officials said Monday they raised it after realizing the alternative identification program would cost more than anticipated.
Other acceptable forms of ID include military IDs, permanent resident cards and photo IDs from federally recognized tribal nations. TSA also accepts digital IDs through platforms such as Apple Wallet, Google Wallet and Samsung Wallet at more than 250 airports in the U.S.
Photo of the Candy Cane Hunt video promotion, provided by Juneau Parks and Recreation
NOTN- As December arrives, Juneau’s Parks and Recreation Department has a busy schedule.
Newly appointed Parks and Recreation Director Marc Wheeler said he is excited to lead the department.
“I’ve always had a passion for Parks and Recreation. I think it’s a really wonderful thing for Juneau. It makes Juneau a great place to live and work and raise a family.” Said Wheeler, “I’m a power user of parks and recreation. I swim, I run on the trails. I love all our facilities and our programs, and it’s just great to be part of the team.”
The department oversees a vast array of operations, from local pools and indoor recreation to youth housing services and after-school programs.
Youth Services Manager Jordan Nigro said the city’s offerings for young people continue to grow, ranging from the nearly 80 year old Zach Gordon Youth Center to a youth shelter, transitional housing, rapid rehousing assistance, and after-school programs.
“The thing folks are most familiar with is Zach Gordon Youth Center, it’s been around for a long time, and it’s a pretty special place.” Said Nigro, “It’s got free drop in activities for youth of all ages. It’s a good reminder that the Holiday break is coming up, so come by over the break, we always have tons of things going on.”
Nigro said the department is recruiting young people with lived experience in housing instability to join its Youth Action Board.
“It’s young people working on issues around housing and homelessness, and right now we are doing a push for more youth to be involved with that. So this is specifically young people who have lived experience with challenges with housing, and housing insecurity.” Said Nigro, “We want to have your voice involved in making changes at the local and state level. The Alaska Coalition on Housing and Homelessness really helps with this so young people can get paid to be involved. It’s pretty great.”
Parks and Recreation is also offering “in-service day” camps when schools are closed, and registrations are open for youth basketball through Dec. 20.
Wheeler said community engagement is crucial as the department prepares for funding challenges.
“Our biggest constraints are funding with our budget. And the city is going to be looking at their budget really soon with the assembly, and it’s a great chance for people to get involved in that process. If you care about Parks and Rec, we would love to have your voice be heard.” Wheeler said.
The department’s annual Candy Cane Hunt is also starting today, and will run through Dec. 17. Participants can download a “Candy Cane Tracker” from the city website, then visit participating businesses to find candy canes displayed in their windows.
Completed trackers can be submitted online or dropped off at the Parks and Recreation office for entry into a prize drawing scheduled for Dec. 18.
“We started this during the pandemic, and a lot of downtown and businesses around town are participating. And you can see a candy cane in the window, you can go and get your candy cane, it’s super fun.” Wheeler said, “It’s super fun, there’ll be a lot of prizes with the drawing, and the prizes are good.”
Five giant candy canes placed around downtown CBJ facilities will offer entries for participants who snap selfies with each one.
Parks and Rec also has a deal on a Winter Pass.
“It’s a great bargain. For $200 you get unlimited access to the pools, to the Treadwell arena, to the Field house and the Mount Jumbo gym, and that’s free entry through March 31.” Wheeler said.
More information about programs and events is available on the department’s website and its social media pages.
Members of the Alaska Air and Army National Guard, Alaska Naval Militia, and Alaska State Defense Force work together to load plywood onto a CH-47 Chinook helicopter, in Bethel, Alaska, Nov. 2, 2025, bound for the villages of Napaskiak, Tuntutuliak, and Napakiak. The materials will help residents rebuild homes and restore community spaces damaged by past storms. (U.S. Army National Guard photo by Spc. Ericka Gillespie)
Gov. Mike Dunleavy has approved a U.S. Defense Department request for Alaska National Guard service members to assist the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement office in Anchorage with “administrative support,” the guard office announced Tuesday.
The Alaska National Guard said five service members will assist with “administrative and logistical” duties at the Anchorage ICE office for up to a year.
“The Alaska National Guard members are administratively supporting the Enforcement & Removal Operations section and Homeland Security Investigations section, ensuring seamless operations at the Anchorage ICE office. Their mission includes a wide range of duties, from vehicle fleet management and safety compliance to office support and processing purchase orders,” the Guard statement said.
The announcement included a list of clerical duties, including data entry and creating reports, answering phones, managing fleet vehicles and checking fire extinguishers. Officials said the partnership is authorized by Title 32 Section 502(f) of the U.S. Code, which enables National Guard members to perform additional duties under the direction of the President or Secretary of Defense.
Grant Robinson, Dunleavy’s deputy press secretary, confirmed the governor approved the request.
“The Alaska National Guard members joined the guard to serve our nation. This support they are providing the Anchorage ICE office is in service of the nation,” he said by email Tuesday.
Grant did not say whether the National Guard would provide further assistance with immigration enforcement actions.
“Any future requests for administrative and logistical support will be considered on a case by case basis,” he said.
The Trump administration has continued to accelerate immigration enforcement operations, and officials have promised to “limit legal and illegal immigration,” after the shooting of two National Guard service members in Washington, D.C. last week. The Trump administration has also continued to roll back humanitarian programs for immigrants, including ending the temporary protected status of 330,000 nationals from Haiti last week.
While ICE has been conducting mass raids, court house arrests and large-scale detentions and deportation operations across the United States, in Alaska ICE has focused enforcement efforts on specific individuals identified through the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services or having interactions with law enforcement, according to the ACLU of Alaska.
Rep. Andrew Gray, D-Anchorage is the co-chair of the Alaska Joint Armed Services Committee and has been outspoken about his concerns about the Alaska National Guard being deployed domestically for “civil disturbance operations.”
“I see it’s a long list of boring, banal administrative tasks that are in no way controversial or concerning in and of themselves,” he said of the National Guard announcement. “What’s concerning is that Alaska ICE is requesting additional support, and the assumption that I make is that it’s because Alaska ICE intends to be doing more detainments, and intends to be doing more field operations in which they’re going to need this administrative support behind them. So that’s my concern.”
Gray was reached by phone Tuesday leaving a meeting with U.S. Sen. Dan Sullivan in Washington, D.C. Gray said he expressed his concerns at the meeting about the leadership of U.S. Department of Defense, which the Trump administration has renamed the “Department of War,” and Secretary Pete Hegseth.
Gray said he’s also concerned about a wider chilling effect of ICE activity and increased immigration enforcement in Alaska.
“It’s going to increase fear, not only in the undocumented folks that might be in Anchorage and the rest of Alaska, but also fear in people who are here legally, and even U.S. citizens who might be mistaken for someone who might be undocumented,” he said.
An October investigation by ProPublica found that more than 170 U.S. citizens were detained by ICE in raids and at protests, and the government does not track how many citizens are held by immigration agents.
Dunleavy’s office did not respond to requests for comment on the concern around ICE overreaching its authority, and arresting and detaining U.S. citizens.
“It seems that Alaska’s notorious SNAP backlog caused by a lack of workforce doing many of the tasks in this memo would be much better use of our Guard,” Gray added. “Why not deploy Guard members to feed Alaskans instead of deploying them to earn brownie points with the Trump administration?”
Cindy Woods, senior staff attorney on immigration rights with the ACLU of Alaska, said they have tracked at least 70 ICE arrests this year, as reported in the custody of the Alaska Department of Corrections. That’s an almost 500% increase from last year.
“We have been seeing a growing ICE presence in the state and a growing trend of ICE enforcement,” she said. The ICE activity has been largely in Anchorage, she said.
“We are very concerned about what this signals in relation to our state government’s willingness to cooperate with federal law enforcement, specifically in relation to ICE enforcement operations,” she said of the National Guard announcement. “I think it can’t be overstated the negative impact that increased enforcement has had across the country and Alaska, unfortunately, is not immune to that.”
An estimated 7.7% of the population, or more than 57,000 people, in Alaska are foreign-born, Woods pointed out, and the Trump administration’s continued restrictions on paths to legal immigration and citizenship, as well as humanitarian and refugee resettlement programs are impacting Alaskans.
“It’s kind of an assault from both sides, and so we’re really concerned about that as well,” she said.
Woods said the ACLU is not aware of any U.S. citizens being detained by ICE in Alaska, but there is heightened scrutiny.
“One case that we have heard of recently is of a longtime Anchorage resident who has been happily married and was going to their interview for their green card based on that marriage, and being arrested with basically accusations of marriage fraud,” she said. “And so we’re seeing folks who are in affirmative applications, who are not in any sort of civil enforcement proceedings, who are also being subject to heightened scrutiny and enforcement actions.”
More than one-third of homicides of women are perpetrated by intimate partners, and there has been a steady increase in domestic violence-related deaths of children.Alvaro Medina Jurado/Getty Images
Of the eight children who died, five were involved in active custody disputes. These deaths took place when families faced high stress but also when legal systems should have been well placed to intervene. Multiple children were killed alongside a sibling or a parent.
It’s clear that something is different about domestic violence that resists our attempts to reduce overall violent crime. But researchers have struggled to identify exactly what those differences are in ways that can inform effective policy.
To start addressing these deaths, we first need to effectively measure them, a task that is more challenging than one might expect.
Measuring domestic violence
Studying domestic violence is, at best, difficult — not least because data is highly limited.
Law enforcement may not recognize and interpret a fatality as resulting from domestic violence if abuse was not previously reported. It is particularly challenging to identify whether a death involved dating or sexual partners unless witnesses who knew the victim closely cooperate with the investigation.
Additionally, the vast majority of victims of domestic abuse do not contact law enforcement or seek medical care. Often, this is due to fears that police will not believe them or that their abuser will find out. Parents may worry their abuser could take custody of their children, or that calling 911 will instigate child welfare system involvement.
The result is that half of the perpetrators of domestic violence fatalities in Colorado in 2024 did not have a prior domestic violence-related arrest. Only one-fifth had been previously convicted of domestic violence.
Domestic violence affects more than intimate partners
Domestic violence affects more than intimate partners or spouses. It can also affect siblings, roommates and even neighbors, co-workers or bystanders. These are collateral victims – people harmed by domestic violence without directly being part of the abusive relationship.
9News reports on the increase in domestic violence-related deaths in 2024.
Colorado and Wisconsin have expanded their definition of domestic violence fatalities to account for some of these collateral deaths. For years, Colorado has included abusers who died by suicide, or whom law enforcement killed in the line of duty, in statewide counts. But states disagree on how wide to cast the net, making comparisons between states difficult.
These fatality reviews are further hamstrung by the boundary between domestic violence and child abuse.
These data gaps present challenges to understanding, predicting and preventing domestic violence. Policymakers struggle to gather up-to-date information to make effective public safety policy, including over how and when to detain alleged abusers before their day in court.
In Colorado, pretrial detention recommendations are made using a rigid scoring rubric. This rubric includes the accused’s prior criminal sentences or time served in jail or prison. However, it does not include information about domestic violence protection orders or prior charges that did not result in conviction.
In general, this is a well-intended policy that upholds the principle of “innocent until proven guilty.” But in domestic violence cases, it creates a catch-22. The vast majority of abusers have never been found guilty in court. This can be due to dropped charges, lack of victim cooperation or unclear evidence. These abusers can have long histories of abusive behavior that aren’t visible to a judge when making pretrial detention decisions.
Designing effective prevention and response
Despite these challenges, policymakers have made substantial steps forward.
In 2022, the national Bipartisan Safer Communities Act closed the so-called “boyfriend loophole” whereby married individuals convicted of domestic violence offenses were prohibited from gun ownership but dating partners were exempt. This is particularly important given that the majority of firearm mass shootings in the U.S. are domestic violence-related.
Because laws and law enforcement cannot do everything or support every survivor, solutions must come from outside of the criminal-legal system. Community-based services and programs such as emergency housing, counseling and cash assistance help survivors to overcome barriers to safety.
Adams County, Colorado, unveils new Family Justice Center to help domestic violence survivors.
However, access to these programs and services varies. Not all counties – in Colorado or most other states – have emergency domestic violence shelters. Recent federal funding cuts threaten many programs’ continued operations. Even when programs exist, local availability of housing and services can limit service providers’ effectiveness for their adult clients and their children.
Failing to effectively measure, prevent and respond to domestic violence can be a matter of life and death. Given how survivors’ needs vary, policymakers need to recognize that policy solutions and programs are not one-size-fits-all. And tailored, local policy solutions require improved data and better resources.
Kaitlyn M. Sims receives funding from the Wisconsin Department of Children and Families, the Arnold Ventures Foundation, and the Institute for Humane Studies.
Ranked choice voting makes use of more information from the voters than plurality voting.stefanamer/Getty Images
American democracy is straining under countless pressures, many of them rooted in structural problems that go back to the nation’s founding. Chief among them is the “pick one” plurality voting system – also called winner-take-all – used to elect nearly all of the 520,000 government officials in the United States.
In this system, voters select one candidate, and the candidate who receives the highest number of votes wins.
Plurality voting is notorious for producing winners without majority support in races that have more than two candidates. It can also create spoilers, or losing candidates whose presence in a race alters the outcome, as Ralph Nader’s did in the 2000 presidential election. And it can result in vote-splitting, where similar candidates divide support, paving the way for a less popular winner. This happened in the 2016 Republican primaries when Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz and John Kasich split the anti-Donald Trump vote.
Plurality can also encourage dishonest voting. That happens when voters are pressured to abandon their favorite candidate for one they like less but think can win. In the 2024 elections, for example, voters whose preference for president was Jill Stein, the Green Party nominee, might have instead cast their vote for Democrat Kamala Harris.
An increasingly well-known alternative to plurality voting is ranked choice voting. It’s used statewide in Maine and Alaska and in dozens of municipalities, including New York City.
Better performance
Whereas plurality voting allows voters to select only one candidate, ranked choice lets them rank candidates. If a candidate secures a majority of first-place rankings, they are the winner just like they would be under plurality.
But the two systems diverge when there is no majority winner. Plurality simply chooses the candidates with the most first-place votes, while ranked choice voting eliminates the person with the fewest first-place votes and transfers their votes to the next candidate on each ballot. The process is repeated until there is a majority winner.
Ranked choice voting makes use of more information from the voters than plurality, but does it avoid some of the problems plurality suffers from?
We are a team of mathematicians who recently concluded a study aimed at answering this and related questions. We analyzed some 2,000 ranked choice elections from the U.S., Australia and Scotland. We supplemented those real-world results with 60 million simulated elections.
The results were clear: Ranked choice voting performed much better across all the measures we tested, including spoiler, vote-splitting, strength of candidates and strategic voting.
Eugene Peltola Jr. holds the Bible during a ceremonial swearing-in for his wife, U.S. Rep. Mary Peltola, D-Alaska, on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., on Sept. 13, 2022. AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana, File
Empowering voters
Plurality voting produced a spoiler up to 15 times more often than ranked choice voting. And it was 50% more likely to elect an extreme candidate. Plurality, furthermore, was highly susceptible to vote-splitting, while ranked choice voting was nearly impervious to it.
Ranked choice voting picked strong candidates up to 18 times more frequently than plurality voting, where by “strong” we mean candidates who received many first-place votes and also had broad support, even among their noncore supporters. This method also rarely elects a weak or fringe candidate and typically elects a candidate near the electorate’s ideological center.
Ranked choice voting is also more resistant to various forms of strategic behavior such as bullet voting, where voters choose only one candidate despite the ability to rank more, and burying, where voters disingenuously rank an alternative candidate lower in the hopes of defeating them.
Our research also studied the ways in which election systems can influence behavior. In a plurality election, voters are afraid that their ballot could be “wasted” on a candidate who doesn’t have a shot at winning, or that they might contribute to a spoiler. Our study shows that ranked choice voting largely avoids these pitfalls, empowering voters to express their true preferences rather than being strategic.
We found that candidates in ranked choice voting elections do best when they adopt the policies the greatest number of people support, meeting the voters where they are.
In Alaska’s 2022 special U.S. House election, for example, Democrat Mary Peltola positioned herself firmly within Alaska’s center-left base – while still embracing some positions considered conservative outside of Alaska. She won by garnering enough second-place votes from supporters of Republican Nick Begich.
And in the New York mayoral primary in June 2025, Zohran Mamdani won by creating a coalition with another progressive candidate, Brad Lander, and occupying a progressive space representing a range of voters.
The Alaska and New York examples highlight some differences with plurality voting, which often favors appealing to a narrow base without the necessity of reaching out beyond it.
Ballots are prepared to be tabulated for Maine’s 2nd Congressional District House election on Nov. 12, 2018, in Augusta, Maine. The election was the first congressional race in U.S. history to be decided by the ranked-choice voting method. AP Photo/Robert F. Bukaty
Mending a broken system
A mathematically interesting feature of Alaska’s 2022 special U.S. House election is that Begich beat both Peltola and Republican Sarah Palin in head-to-head contests – meaning that more people ranked Begich above Peltola than the other way around – but lost the ranked choice voting election to Peltola.
Critics seize on such cases as reasons to avoid ranked choice voting. But our work shows that these are statistical outliers, occurring fewer than 1% of the time.
Overall, our research shows that ranked choice voting elects candidates with broader support and greater democratic legitimacy than plurality. It therefore seems sensible that voting reform advocates continue to pursue this method as an alternative to plurality voting.
At a time when Americans are losing faith in democracy, voters cannot afford systems that hand victory to unrepresentative candidates and force them to play tactical games. The math is in, and the evidence is overwhelming: Plurality voting is broken. Ranked choice voting will not solve every democratic ailment, but it is a good step toward mending them.
Ismar Volić receives funding from Schwab Charitable.
Andy Schultz receives funding from Schwab Charitable. He is a registered Democrat.
David McCune receives funding from Schwab Charitable.
Kim Kardashian wants to teach you her “Ten Kimmandments” for success.
Yes, really.
No matter how many times Kim fails the bar exam, she’ll always be a success in other areas.
Can students mimic that success by listening to her Kimmands?
A tearful Kim Kardashian falters as her voice breaks with sadness. (Image Credit: Hulu)
Kim Kardashian wants to teach you the ‘Ten Kimmandments’ of business
MasterClass is an online education subscription platform.
Experts in various fields pre-record their lectures and tutorials. Students then access this material, ideally to their benefit.
In this case, the “expert” is Kardashian. The field is business.
Kimberly is branding her rules for business as “The Ten Kimmandments.”
It’s looking like the class is about building your own brand.
Kim Kardashian films a confessional segment for ‘The Kardashians.’ (Image Credit: Hulu)
Her content goes live on MasterClass on Thursday, December 4.
However, TMZ is offering a sneak peek at the … let’s call it “wisdom” … that The Ten Kimmandments will impart.
Kim’s first rule is “You are the product.”
It starts there, and ends with Kimmandment 10: “Because I said so.”
In between are other silly quips, like number four: “Don’t follow the feed. Be the feed.” (Someone put that sign up at a cattle ranch, please and thank you)
She took a sex tape, her good looks, her late father’s relative fame, a friendship with Paris Hilton, and being born into colossal wealth and turned it into worldwide mega-fame and even more wealth.
We’re sure that even Kim would say that following her Kimmandments is not a guaranteed recipe for success.
But after thousands of people have attempted to use her meteoric climb like a blueprint, interest in her branding advice is sure to be high.
On The Kardashians, Kim Kardashian addresses the confessional camera. (Image Credit: Hulu)
That said, very few could even begin to emulate the perfect storm that led to Kim’s success. Among other things, they would need an internet-breaking buttload of luck.
If you ask a lottery winner how they succeeded, they might tell you that they made their wealth by playing the lottery. It’s true, but that doesn’t mean that it will work for you.
The same applies to Kim — or to Taylor Swift, or any other big name under the sun.
While all decked out ahead of her Milan show, Kim Kardashian appeared to be all geared up to fight Thanos and win. (Image Credit: Hulu)
How many people still see Kim as someone from whom to take advice?
Kim Kardashian being out of touch is normal. One expects it, given literally everything about her and her entire life.
However, lately, Kim has seemed … almost dangerously misinformed, even gullible. That took many by surprise.
She also drives her cringe Cybertruck. And she uses ChatGPT for legal advice, only to wonder why she fails tests. (Don’t use AI chatbots for anything, please)
Do we think that Kim is dumb? Well, no. But she’s clearly lacking in basic reasoning skills as they apply to some really basic, important topics.
Tammy Slaton and Amy Slaton are about to return to the small screen.
In a way we haven’t really seen them before.
On December 2, TLC released the officia trailer for 1000-Lb. Sisters Season 8.
And the stunning sneak peek features the show’s two leads appearing to have some animosity toward one another as they document their topsy turvy lives for the cameras.
(TLC)
“It feels like we’re drifting apart,” Tammy says in a confessional interview about her sister Amy. “She used to be my best friend.”
What might be the basis for this rift?
Tammy allegedly calling her sibling a deadbeat mom. Ouch, huh?
“I can’t handle her toxic ass no more,” Amy says while trying to hold back tears in the preview. “I’m done.”
Amy and Tammy Slaton pose here for a 1000-lb Sisters promo. (TLC)
Later on in this footage, Amy and Tammy’s brother, Chris Combs, attempts to play the role of mediator and bring the sisters together.
But it doesn’t go very smoothly.
“Every other word is an F-bomb,” he says about the family group chat. “Beep, beep, beep, you beep, beep, beep ass.’”
We don’t know exactly when these episodes were filmed, but we hadn’t heard much in recent weeks or even months of issues between the Slatons.
They seem to be doing pretty darn well, but maybe not as a tandem.
Tammy Slaton says on Season 7 that she’s now dating a woman. (TLC)
In a separate scene from Season 8, Tammy tells her brother, “If Amy keeps her mouth shut, so would I.”
Away from each other, though, we see Tammy embrace her MEGA weight loss and skin removal surgery, while she continues to explore a new relationship with Andrea Dalton.
Slaton also goes on a job interview in hopes of finding a new passion.
“Kinda wonder if she’s gonna ask me to marry her,” Tammy says in the sneak peek clip after hanging out with Andrea.
Tammy Slaton appears here on the season finale of 1000-Lb Sisters. (TLC)
Elsewhere, Amy is planning her dream wedding to boyfriend Brian Lovvorn — with a surprise twist.
“The wedding is like, in six months. It’s really important for the venue to be haunted because that’s a symbol of our love,” she says. “My family, they don’t want nothing to do with it and neither does Queen Tammy.”
We do know what Amy ended up exchanging vows with Brian in October.
But will she and Tammy ever reconcile?
“I’m not going to have you feed me this bologna when I don’t like bologna,” Tammy tells her brother after he tries to bring the sisters together.
1000-Lb. Sisters returns to TLC on Tuesday, January 6, at 9/8c.
The series — co-produced by longtime Diddy rival 50 Cent — contains never-before-seen footage and some shocking new allegations against Combs.
Aubrey O’Day arrives at the launch of the DermKing Humanity Foundation on November 05, 2023 in Los Angeles, California. (Photo by Kevin Winter/Getty Images)
In one scene from Sean Combs: The Reckoning, former Danity Kane singer Aubrey O’Day reads from an affidavit in which a woman who filed a civil suit claims that she saw Combs and another man raping O’Day at a party.
According to the shocking account, O’Day was “sprawled out on a leather couch looking very inebriated.”
“She was naked from the bottom half, and she had something over her top. Puff Daddy was penetrating in her vagina, and there was another stalky light-skinned man with his penis in her mouth,” the affidavit continued.
O’Day has criticized Diddy before, claiming that he was verbally abusive to her when they worked together, and stating that she believes he was guilty of all the crimes he was charged with.
(Combs was acquitted of the most serious sex trafficking charges and is now serving 50 months in prison, rather than the life sentence he had been facing.)
Singer Aubrey O’Day of the duo Dumblonde attends the 2015 MTV Video Music Awards at Microsoft Theater on August 30, 2015 in Los Angeles, California. (Photo by Jason Merritt/Getty Images)
But when it comes to the claim that Diddy raped her while she was intoxicated — O’Day says she has no idea if the allegation is accurate … and she prefers to keep it that way.
In the documentary, Aubrey revealed that she “didn’t drink like that at all” during that time.
“I don’t drink at all. It’s never been an issue with me,” she explained.
So O’Day doesn’t see how she would have wound up heavily inebriated at one of Diddy’s infamous parties — but that doesn’t mean the alleged assault never happened.
“Even after I told her I didn’t have a recollection of this, I said, ‘Could she be making a mistake?’ I asked in every way I possibly could think of, [and] she was certain,” the singer explained, adding:
Sean “Diddy” Combs attends the 2022 Billboard Music Awards at MGM Grand Garden Arena on May 15, 2022 in Las Vegas, Nevada. (Photo by Frazer Harrison/Getty Images)
“Does this mean I was raped? Is that what this means? I don’t even know if I was raped, and I don’t want to know. I don’t want to find out any more what that woman has to say.”
O’Day says she was hesitant to push back against the claims, as she feared that doing so might discredit other Combs’ accusers.
“If she made it up, I would be compelled to take her the f–k down,” she explained.
“And you realize the burden that that puts on my soul for the past year, which is if I expose one victim who’s got a civil lawsuit, that gives Diddy and his legal team credit to take down everybody else as potential liars,” O’Day added.
“It goes right back on my shoulders, just like that. The weight of that man and his bulls–t … I will never get up from under it.”
Yes, like many women who crossed paths with Combs, O’Day believes she’ll be haunted by their interactions for the rest of their days.
And while he might have avoided a life sentence, hopefully Diddy’s victims can take some solace in the fact that he’ll be locked up until at least 2028.
Very, very sad news this week out of the world of reality television:
Donyelle Denise Wilson, who went by the name Donyelle Jones when she advanced to the finals of So You Think You Can Dance in 2006, has passed away.
She was 46 years old.
(FOX)
Her passing comes nearly ten years after Donyelle was diagnosed with stage 3C breast cancer in 2016, which later progressed to Stage 4 metastatic breast cancer.
Donyelle was remembered as “A wife. A daughter. A sister. A friend. And a warrior who kicked cancer’s ass every single day she was here,” in the social media announced that confirmed her death.
“Her spirit never dimmed. Her heart never hardened. And even in the storm, she never lost her smile.”
After appearing in various music videos and other dance projects, Jones broke out as a contestant on Season 2 of So You Think You Can Dance, which aired on Fox in the summer of 2006.
The contestant specialized in the hip-hop and jazz styles and ultimately finished in third place, behind winner Benji Schwimmer and runner-up Travis Wall.
Pretty darn impressive.
(Instagram)
Since being diagnosed with breast cancer, Donyelle actively chronicled her journey on Instagram and other platforms, highlighting July 6, 2025, as the date she taught her first dance class in four years … something she called a “bday gift to myself.”
The “theme for this evening was Love, Peace, Reassurance,” she added.
“Cancer has robbed me of so much and I Iet the grief of losing what I had in dance or how it connected to my life take over the possibility of how it can show up in my life right now.
“I’m learning at every twist and turn of this journey called life how to navigate each season as they come.”
(FOX)
Just this past June, Jones shared an Instagram video in which she said the following:
“Right now, I have to choose absolute radical faith, because I am in the fire, y’all.
” just got some horrible news from my doctor. … But I don’t even have a tear for it right now. I am strapping in and I am choosing radical faith. I have to choose radical faith because it’s the only thing that actually will make sense. Otherwise, I’ll lose it. But today, I feel good.”
Donyelle was remembered by many in Hollywood, including actress Yvette Nicole Brown, who wrote a tribute on Instagram, describing the dancer as a “dear friend” and also stating:
@donyelledenise8 was… no IS the best of us. One of one. We love you, Donnie! Thank you for showing us how to live and fight and love and DANCE! We will see you on the other side. I will be the one dancing towards you. Me and my two left feet.
Republicans won Tuesday’s special election in Tennessee. But instead of celebrating, many are dreading what it means about the midterms.
Republican Rep.-elect Matt Van Epps’ roughly nine point win marks a massive shift toward Democrats from 2024, when President Donald Trump carried the district by 22 points. That double digit swing — on the heels of crushing losses in off-year elections in November — could be a harbinger of what House Republicans will face in the midterms next year, members and strategists warned, as they seek to hold on to their narrow control of the chamber.
“Tonight is a sign that 2026 is going to be a bitch of an election cycle,” said one House Republican, granted anonymity to speak candidly. “Republicans can survive if we play team and the Trump administration officials play smart. Neither is certain.”
Democrat Aftyn Behn’s overperformance in the Tennessee special election — which attracted millions of dollars in spending and national attention in its final days — continues a trend of concerning electoral results for the GOP. Earlier this year, Democrats saw big overperformances in losses in other special elections in deep-red seats, and last month they swept a slate of critical off-year elections, including gubernatorial races in Virginia and New Jersey.
In the wake of those victories, some Republicans urged the White House to retool its political message to better engage moderate voters and independents who broke for Trump in the presidential election.
“I’m glad we won. But the GOP should not ignore the Virginia, New Jersey and Tennessee elections,” Rep. Don Bacon (R-Neb.), who is retiring from his swingy Omaha-based district, said. “We must reach swing voters. America wants some normalcy.”
House Republican leadership had been preparing for Tuesday night’s results. And while Speaker Mike Johnson leadership’s team was bracing for a tighter-than-comfortable race, the single-digit margin was still a hard pill to swallow after national Republicans pulled out all the stops — including a Trump tele-rally and Johnson visit to the district — to rescue Van Epps in the final days.
“It was too close,” said one House GOP leadership aide, who was also granted anonymity to candidly discuss the race.
Trump himself projected confidence after the win, celebrating Van Epps’ victory. “The Radical Left Democrats threw everything at him, including Millions of Dollars. Another great night for the Republican Party!!!,” he wrote on Truth Social.
But Matthew Bartlett, a GOP strategist and appointee in the first Trump administration, said the single-digit margin for Van Epps continues the momentum Democrats already feel after the New Jersey and Virginia races.
“None of it bodes well for the GOP in the midterms,” Bartlett said. “Being an ostrich with your head in the sand on the key issues that matter most to Americans is not a strategy, or certainty not a winning one.”
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) directly tied Van Epps’ underperformance to Democratic voters motivated by their disapproval of Trump, and he pleaded with Republicans to “set out the alarm” with Republican voters about the consequences of losing control of the House and the Senate.
“It was dangerous. We could have lost this district because the people who showed up, many of them are the ones that are motivated by how much they dislike President Trump,” Cruz said in a Fox News interview Tuesday evening.
“In a year, it’s going to be a turnout election, and the left will show up,” he added. “Hate is a powerful motivator.”
Turnout was extraordinarily high for a special election, pacing the 2022 midterms. Van Epps got roughly 90 percent of the number of raw votes Republican Mark Green — whose retirement triggered the special election — got that year, while Behn got over 115 percent of the 2022 Democrat nominee’s total.
One GOP consultant, granted anonymity to speak candidly, worried the result in Tennessee signals that Republican voters won’t turn out in significant numbers for candidates other than Trump — a problem that has plagued Republicans in the past.
“The Trump coalition is captivated by the force of his personality and willingness to disrupt the established order. There’s not much interest in supporting other ‘politicians’ when Trump isn’t on the ballot,” the consultant said. “The winds are likely to blow against Republicans in federal races in 2026. People are rarely satisfied anymore and they’re looking for someone to punish.”
In a statement celebrating his victory on Tuesday, Van Epps acknowledged Trump’s importance in the race.
“Running from Trump is how you lose. Running with Trump is how you win,” he said.
Ahead of Tuesday’s election, National Republican Congressional Committee chair Rep. Richard Hudson sought to downplay the results of an election that was projected to be uncharacteristically competitive, telling House Republicans in a closed-door meeting that special elections are unique. And after Tuesday’s win, he celebrated Van Epps, saying in a statement “no one is better positioned to take up the mantle and deliver results” for Tennessee.
But coming out of that meeting, one House Republican said that a narrow result could send shockwaves among the House GOP conference.
“If our victory margin is single digits, the conference may come unhinged,” the House Republican said prior to polls closing on Tuesday.
Elena Schneider and Lisa Kashinsky contributed to this report.
