LOS ANGELES (AP) — Music mogul Sean “Diddy” Combs is asking a judge to free him on a $50 million bond while he awaits sentencing in October after a jury found him not guilty of the most serious federal charges he faced earlier this month.

In a court filing Tuesday, Combs’ lawyer argued that conditions at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn are dangerous, noting that others convicted of similar prostitution-related offenses were typically released before sentencing.

“Sean Combs should not be in jail for this conduct,” Marc Agnifilo said. “In fact, he may be the only person currently in a United States jail for being any sort of john, and certainly the only person in jail for hiring adult male escorts for him and his girlfriend.”

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A spokesperson for the U.S. attorney’s office in Manhattan did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Prosecutors have previously insisted he remains a flight risk.

Combs, 55, faces up to a decade in prison on two counts of transportation to engage in prostitution for flying people around the country, including his girlfriends and male sex workers, for sexual encounters. A conviction on racketeering conspiracy or sex trafficking could have put one of hip-hop’s celebrated figures in prison for life.

Immediately after he was acquitted on July 2, Agnifilo had asked that Combs be released on bond.

But Judge Arun Subramanian denied it, saying Combs at the time had not met the burden of showing by clear and convincing evidence a “lack of danger to any person or the community.”

Combs is the latest celebrity inmate to be locked up at MDC Brooklyn, the only federal jail in New York City, joining a list that includes R. Kelly, Ghislaine Maxwell and cryptocurrency fraudster Sam Bankman-Fried.

The state updated its building code to green-light the “all-electric” law that prohibits the use of gas equipment in new buildings. A court for the Northern District of New York also rejected a legal challenge from fossil fuel industry groups to get rid of it.

New York’s law prohibiting the use of fossil fuel equipment in new buildings is set to go into effect in 2026 for structures of seven stories or less, and in 2029 for larger buildings. (Adi Talwar/City Limits)

New York just took two important steps forward in its quest to enforce the All Electric Buildings Act, a law passed in 2023 that requires most new construction in the state to run on clean electricity instead of climate-change-inducing fossil fuels. 

On Friday, the New York State Fire Prevention and Building Code Council voted unanimously to update the state’s building code, codifying the law and allowing it to go into effect. And a few days earlier, the United States District Court for the Northern District of New York upheld the state’s all-electric law and rejected arguments put forth by fossil fuel industry groups to challenge its legality.

Lawmakers and environmentalists saw these decisions as a resounding victory for on-going efforts to move New York off fossil fuels.

“It’s a really important step and I think it also reflects that down here in New York City and in the environmental advocacy community, we’re not going anywhere but forward,” said New York State Sen. Liz Krueger at a press conference Friday.

The law aims to curb the spread of planet-warming gasses from buildings, which are responsible for approximately 30 percent of the state’s greenhouse gas emissions.

It does this by prohibiting fossil fuel equipment from being installed in most new construction. For smaller buildings up to seven stories tall, the law goes into effect in 2026 and for all other larger buildings, the start date is 2029. Some properties, like food establishments, hospitals, laundromats, water treatment plants and manufacturing facilities are exempt from the gas ban. 

The state law was inspired by New York City’s own prohibition of gas equipment in new construction known as Local Law 154. In the Big Apple, where buildings account for 70 percent of the city’s greenhouse gas emissions, the law went into effect last year for smaller buildings, with larger buildings to follow suit by 2027.

But fossil fuel industry groups launched legal challenges against both the state and local gas bans, as part of a series of concerted efforts to get rid of similar laws across the country.

The National Gas and Propane Association (NGPA), one of 13 plaintiffs in the New York State lawsuit, has spearheaded these efforts. Last year it launched a strategic plan to push back against gas bans by lobbying decisionmakers, financially backing opposition groups and launching lawsuits in places like New York.

In a press release published when the suit was filed, NGPA and the plaintiffs claimed that prohibiting gas equipment in new construction will pose a threat to local businesses that rely on selling the fuel “sparking layoffs and reducing hiring needs.” 

They also argue it will jeopardize “the reliability of an already overburdened electric grid,” as not enough clean energy projects have managed to come online to meet the rising demands for more electricity from new industries and recent electrification efforts. 

Only about 29 percent of the Empire State’s electricity currently comes from renewable sources like wind and solar thanks to inconsistent funding, long timelines for the completion of these projects and recent pushback from the Trump administration. 

Mario Mattera, a Republican New York state senator and president of the Plumbers Local Union No. 200 that joined the lawsuit challenging New York’s gas ban, siting its impact on plumbing jobs. (NYS Senator Mattera’s Office)

“Our clients are strong supporters of the State’s climate goals, but the ban puts our clients and their members at risk,” said Sarah Jorgensen, the lawyer representing the plaintiffs in the New York lawsuit.

Jorgensen is a founding partner at Reichman Jorgensen Lehman & Feldberg, the same firm that successfully managed to topple the California city of Berkeley’s own ban on gas equipment in new construction in the spring of 2023. 

After that victory, the law firm and NGPA set off to do the same in New York. They even used the exact same legal argument: they claimed the all-electric act was “preempted” or blocked by a higher ranking federal law known as the Energy Policy and Conservation Act (EPCA) of 1975.

EPCA was created as a response to an oil crisis that took hold of the United States in the early 1970s. The legislation put in place energy conservation standards for various products to ensure that appliances functioned more efficiently and used up less energy, that way the U.S could curb some of its dependency on foreign oil imports. 

In the Berkley case, three judges decided that banning gas in new buildings impacts the “quantity of energy directly consumed by” household appliances like hot water heaters and furnaces that are covered by EPCA.

But New York environmental lawyers like Dror Ladin, a senior attorney at Earth Justice, called the decision “absurd” explaining that while EPCA creates an efficiency standard for appliances, it doesn’t regulate the actual energy consumption in a home. 

“[Fossil fuel industry groups] really viewed the Berkley decision as an opening for them to try to short circuit the whole process of electrification across the nation,” Ladin said.

But for now, New York’s prohibition of gas equipment in new construction is safe.

In March, the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York dismissed legal challenges to New York City’s gas ban, Local Law 154.

But that decision is being contested at the Second Circuit court, which is the court of appeals that sits over New York. An appeal for the state decision is also on the table, and will likely be headed there too.

And nationally, the battle is far from over. 

Lawsuits to topple gas bans have spread throughout the country, from Colorado to Washington state. If enough split decisions come out of circuit courts across the country, meaning that they either follow in Berkley’s footsteps or disagree with it, the U.S. Supreme Court could choose to take a look at the issue and provide a final decision for the entire judicial system to follow. 

To reach the reporter behind this story, contact Mariana@citylimits.org. To reach the editor, contact Jeanmarie@citylimits.org

Want to republish this story? Find City Limits’ reprint policy here.

The post New York Moves Forward in Banning Gas Equipment in New Construction—For Now appeared first on City Limits.

By MARY CLARE JALONICK and ERIC TUCKER, Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Senate is set to vote as soon as Tuesday evening to confirm former Trump lawyer Emil Bove for a lifetime appointment as a federal appeals court judge despite vocal Democratic opposition and a new whistleblower complaint against him.

The whistleblower provided Congress with an audio recording of Bove that runs contrary to some of his testimony at his confirmation hearing last month, according to two people familiar with the recording. The audio is from a private video conference call at the Department of Justice in February in which Bove, a top official at the department, discussed his handling of the dismissed corruption case against New York City Mayor Eric Adams, according to transcribed quotes from the audio reviewed by The Associated Press.

The people spoke on the condition of anonymity because the whistleblower has not made the recording public. The whistleblower’s claims were first reported by the Washington Post.

Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, departs the chamber as the Senate holds a procedural vote on the nomination of Emil Bove, who served on President Donald Trump’s criminal defense team, to be a U.S. Circuit Court judge for the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, at the Capitol in Washington, Thursday, July 24, 2025. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

Democrats attempt to block Bove

The new evidence comes as Democrats try to delay Bove’s confirmation and convince more Republicans to vote against him. A different whistleblower, a fired department lawyer, said earlier this month that Bove had suggested the Trump administration may need to ignore judicial commands — a claim that Bove denies.

None of that evidence has so far been enough to sway Senate Republicans — all but two of them voted last week to move forward on his nomination as Senate Republicans defer to Trump on virtually all of his picks.

A former federal prosecutor in the Southern District of New York, Bove was on Trump’s legal team during his New York hush money trial and defended Trump in the two federal criminal cases brought by the Justice Department. If confirmed by the Senate, he’ll serve on the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which hears cases from Delaware, New Jersey and Pennsylvania.

Bove was at the forefront of the department’s decision to dismiss the case against Adams and also efforts to investigate department officials who were involved in the prosecutions of hundreds of Trump supporters who were involved in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol. Bove has accused FBI officials of “insubordination” for refusing to hand over the names of agents who investigated the attack and ordered the firing of a group of prosecutors involved in those Jan. 6 criminal cases.

At his confirmation hearing earlier this month, Bove addressed criticism of his tenure head-on, telling lawmakers he understands some of his decisions “have generated controversy.” But Bove said he has been inaccurately portrayed as Trump’s “henchman” and “enforcer” at the department.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., speaks with reporters as the Senate holds its first procedural vote on Emil Bove’s nomination for the 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals, at the Capitol in Washington, Tuesday, July 22, 2025. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

A February call casts a shadow over his confirmation

Senators at the Judiciary Committee hearing asked Bove about the February 14 call with lawyers in the Justice Department’s Public Integrity Section, which had received significant public attention because of his unusual directive that the attorneys had an hour to decide among themselves who would agree to file on the department’s behalf the motion to dismiss the case against Adams.

The call was convened amid significant upheaval in the department as prosecutors in New York who’d handled the matter, as well as some in Washington, resigned rather than agree to dispense with the case.

According to the transcript of the February call, Bove remarked near the outset that interim Manhattan U.S. Attorney Danielle Sassoon “resigned about ten minutes before we were going to put her on leave pending an investigation.” But when asked at the hearing whether he had opened the meeting by emphasizing that Sassoon and another prosecutor had refused to follow orders and that Sassoon was going to be reassigned before she resigned, Bove answered with a simple, “No.”

At another moment, Bove said he did not recall saying words that the transcript of the call reflects him as having said — that whoever signed the motion to dismiss the Adams case would emerge as leaders of the section.

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, right, greets Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., as the panel meets to advance President Donald Trump’s nominees for the federal bench, including Emil Bove, Trump’s former defense lawyer, at the Capitol in Washington, Thursday, July 17, 2025. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

Republicans decry ‘eleventh-hour’ whistleblower claims

A spokeswoman for Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, said that Grassley’s staff has spoken to more than a dozen people who have reached out to the committee, but that the most recent “eleventh-hour” whistleblower allegations “reek of a bad faith attempt to sink a nominee who’s already received committee approval.”

At a separate committee meeting earlier this month, when Democrats walked out in protest, Grassley said that Bove “has a strong legal background and has served his country honorably.”

Since then, Democrats have tried to delay the confirmation, calling for additional votes as Republicans quickly moved his nomination to the floor. But there is little they can do to stop it. If all Democrats vote against Bove, Senate Republicans can lose three GOP votes and still confirm him if Vice President JD Vance breaks a 50-50 tie.

On Tuesday, Democratic Sens. Cory Booker of New Jersey and Adam Schiff of California called on the Justice Department’s inspector general to tell senators whether Bove was under investigation.

“It is imperative that senators exercise their constitutional duty of advice and consent with full knowledge of Mr. Bove’s actions,” Booker and Schiff wrote the inspector general.

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It’s not the first whistleblower claim against Bove

The first whistleblower complaint against Bove came from a former Justice Department lawyer who was fired in April after conceding in court that Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Salvadoran man who had been living in Maryland, was mistakenly deported to an El Salvador prison.

That lawyer, Erez Reuveni, described efforts by top Justice Department officials in the weeks before his firing to stonewall and mislead judges to carry out deportations championed by the White House.

Reuveni described a Justice Department meeting in March concerning Trump’s plans to invoke the Alien Enemies Act over what the president claimed was an invasion by the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua. Reuveni said Bove raised the possibility that a court might block the deportations before they could happen. Reuveni claims Bove used a profanity in saying the department would need to consider telling the courts what to do and “ignore any such order,” Reuveni’s lawyers said in the filing.

Bove said he has “no recollection of saying anything of that kind.”

Illinois Sen. Dick Durbin, the top Democrat on the Judiciary panel, said that Bove has used his position “to weaponize the Department of Justice against the president’s enemies.”

Republican Sens. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Susan Collins of Maine were the only Republicans to oppose moving forward with Bove’s nomination last week.

“We have to have judges who will adhere to the rule of law and the Constitution and do so regardless of what their personal views may be,” Collins said in a statement. “Mr. Bove’s political profile and some of the actions he has taken in his leadership roles at the Department of Justice cause me to conclude he would not serve as an impartial jurist.”