Law firms that made deal with Trump, see major clients abandon them for firms that stood up to him
Marc Elias, Voting Rights Attorney and Founder of the Democracy Docket and Michael Schmidt, New York Times Investigative Reporter join Nicolle Wallace on Deadline White House with reaction to new reporting in the Wall Street Journal which details how many of the same major law firms that made deals with the Trump Administration for pro bono work are now seeing major clients abandon them for firms that stood up to Donald Trump.
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CNN
27 minutes ago
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Sean ‘Diddy' Combs' connection to a famous gangster is part of his family lore
As the federal criminal trial of Sean 'Diddy' Combs continues, many parts of his past are being revisited. That includes his father's friendship with the late gangster, Frank Lucas. Melvin Combs was a drug dealer who was fatally shot in 1972, when his son Sean Combs was three years old. 'That's not something I glorify, but he was in Harlem and he was doing his thing, selling narcotics,' Combs told journalist Toure in an interview 13 years ago. 'And we all know what that gets you. That's only going to have you end up in jail or dead. It is the reason why I didn't follow in those footsteps.' In that interview, Combs was clear that his father did not work for either Lucas or another famed Harlem gangster, Nicky Barnes, but rather was 'as big as them' in the hustling game. The younger Combs didn't shy away from his father's history. 'I'm definitely like him,' Combs said. 'But I'm just doing it in a legal way.' Combs has pleaded not guilty to charges that include racketeering conspiracy, sex trafficking and transportation to engage in prostitution in an ongoing federal criminal trial in Manhattan. His mother, Janice Combs, had initially told her son his father had died in a car crash. He told Toure he found out what his father had been involved with on his own. 'This was before the internet and I had looked up my father's name and I saw an article about my mother wearing a full length chinchilla [a fur coat] to a funeral and taking me and I was in a mink,' Combs recalled. 'And that was like the story of just the glamour and like the decadence of our family and just like he was the kingpin, you know, of Harlem and how he had got assassinated.' He said he understood why his mother hadn't initially been honest with him about his dad. Due to where they were living when he was growing up, Combs said he believes he would have become 'one of the biggest drug dealers out there because…the type of person I would have wanted to follow in my father's footsteps.' Melvin Combs had a connection to Frank Lucas, a famous drug lord in Harlem during his heyday in the 1960s and 1970s. Lucas was famously portrayed by Denzel Washington in the 2007 film 'American Gangster.' He was sentenced to 70 years in prison after being convicted of federal drug charges in New York and state charges in New Jersey, but only served seven before turning informant and going into the Witness Protection Program, according to the New York Times. Lucas emerged in later years to share his story and during an interview with Vlad TV said he and Melvin Combs were 'good friends.' 'We did a lot of business together,' Lucas said. 'Of course it was not legal business, but we did a lot of business together.' Lucas expressed sadness regarding the elder Combs' murder and said he met Sean Combs when he was a little boy. 'His daddy used to bring him over my house,' Lucas said. 'He used to come see me on various business and he would bring him over my house.' Lucas added that about a year prior to the Vlad TV interview, he had connected with Combs, who was seeking information about his late father. 'I told him something about his father, but I didn't give him the whole story because he didn't press me,' Lucas said. 'He just asked me casually and I told him casually. But if he had pressed me, I would have told him the whole story.' Combs told Toure that the world didn't know the whole story about him. 'People don't really know me,' the Bad Boy Record founder said at the time. 'And that's by design.' 'Who is this person, the Sean Combs that we don't know,' Toure pressed. 'We have yet to find out,' Combs responded. 'You have to come along for the ride.'


Axios
an hour ago
- Axios
What to know about rare earths in the China-U.S. trade dispute
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Yahoo
3 hours ago
- Yahoo
Together JD Vance and Marco Rubio Toast the New Right
Vice President JD Vance, introduced warmly by Secretary of State Marco Rubio, addressed what previously would have been described as an unusual group of Republicans. The pair attended the black-tie gala of the American Compass institute to celebrate the five-year anniversary of the think tank that best encapsulates, and has most advanced, the New Right, a kind of conservatism defined by skepticism of corporate capital, adoration of union labor, wariness of foreign entanglements, a belief in a more muscular America, and an appetite for bigger government. None of this was Republican orthodoxy a few short years ago, but now the apostates are ascendent. Vance was interviewed Tuesday by Oren Cass, the former Mitt Romney advisor now despised by the business-friendly Wall Street Journal editorial board, a fact the American Compass founder proudly referenced throughout the evening. From the main stage of the National Building Museum, a center devoted to American architecture, Cass surveyed the movement he helped built. And the vice president agreed. "This is a 20-year project to actually get America back to commonsense economic policy," Vance told a crowd decidedly on the younger side. How should this project, the one the Trump administration is pursuing, be judged? The working-class standard he offered: "I just want normal people who work hard and play by the rules to have a good life." What "worries the hell out of" Vance is the fact that life expectancy has dropped in the United States over the last 40 years when at the same time, at least in his estimation, the same sort of people "have been calling the shots." Read that: a cabal of global elites. They are the ones, these new conservatives complain, who pursued market efficiency overall, even if it meant gutting and offshoring domestic industry at the expense of national interest. "We were governed by complete morons," said the VP. Hence the need to move on from some of the old conservative ideas. Abigail Ball summarized the general idea. Said the executive director of the organization, "This country was built with an understanding that markets are for people, not ends in themselves." The populism of the last five years, defined by the first and second Trump seasons, represented "a paradigm shift" and "a rediscovery of that core conservative principle." It is also a kind of revolution. So said Vance. "Ive given up hope that we can persuade most of the think-tank intellectuals in Washington, D.C., to change," he told the crowd. "We can't change them. What we can do is replace them with all of you. And thats exactly what we aim to do." A new kind of elite listened to intellectualized MAGA boilerplate from Vance about the need to achieve fairer trade, reorient higher education to the national interest, and reshore manufacturing. They were the same themes of any Trump rally. But like the president, they are also ascendent in influence across normally crossways interests. The American Iron and Steel Institute sponsored the event featuring a heavy dose of protectionism. So did the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, a somewhat unusual development considering previous Republican suspicion of labor. The corporate money was similarly ironic; BlackRock, Google, and Walmart all underwrote the evening. Fresh from a fight with the Wall Street Journal, Vance was the undeniable draw of the evening. Referencing the memory of Franklin Delano Roosevelt in a recent op-ed, the vice president had defended calling the markets "a tool" for government ends, something that more libertarian conservatives find anathema and was music to American Compass ears. Vance is different than the rest of the political class, Cass previously told RCP. The vice president, he said of his longtime friend, was "a founding member" of the New Right, he said, recalling late-night online debates from before his time in politics. "Vance brings a depth of understanding and eagerness to fight and win on the issues," he said, "that goes far beyond what you get from a typical politician." The same goes for Secretary of State Marco Rubio who pioneered much of the populism that now dominates the GOP. President Trump governs by gut. While in the Senate, Rubio tried to categorize and intellectualize MAGA. He called it "common good conservatism." He was first, not Vance, a genealogy the diplomat referenced playfully onstage. Rubio recalled meeting Vance "back when he was only a best-selling author and not even a political figure." Since joining the administration, his respect for the vice president has only grown, he added, saying that Vance was "doing a phenomenal job" and "my admiration for him has grown tremendously." The vice president later gushed that "Marco is, if anything, more impressive privately than he is publicly." More than just niceties, senior administration officials tell RCP that the friendship is genuine. Unspoken was the fact that there can only be one Republican presidential nominee in 2028. Both men have expressed interest in the job previously. But life after Trump will arrive at some point, and Republicans will have to have answer for what Trumpism means without Trump. Some conservatives, like Ben Shapiro, said that question is akin to saying "Whats compassionate conservatism outside of George W. Bush." The answer, that conservative once told RCP, was "not much." Vance, Rubio, and the ascendent GOP apostates say otherwise. Philip Wegmann is White House correspondent for RealClearPolitics.