Noir Nation, it looks like one of the most talked-about retail collaborations is officially on its way out!

Ulta Beauty and Target have announced that their partnership will be coming to an end in 2026, closing the chapter on what many shoppers considered a game-changing move in the beauty and retail industry.

A GAME-CHANGING COLLABORATION 💄

Launched in 2021, the Ulta x Target partnership was designed to bridge the gap between convenience and luxury. The deal brought Ulta’s signature brands directly into select Target stores across the country, allowing customers to snag high-end beauty products while shopping for their everyday essentials.

From skincare staples to the hottest makeup must-haves, the partnership gave shoppers the best of both worlds—and boosted Target’s foot traffic in the process.

WHY THE SPLIT? 🤔

While the collaboration has been recognized as one of the strongest retail crossovers in recent years , both Ulta and Target have decided it’s time to move in different directions. Industry experts believe Ulta is preparing to double down on its standalone store experience and e-commerce growth, while Target continues expanding its own beauty section and strengthening partnerships with other popular brands.

THE COUNTDOWN BEGINS ⏳

Although the breakup doesn’t officially take effect until 2026, shoppers still have plenty of time to take advantage of the convenience that Ulta at Target has to offer. Still, many loyal customers have already taken to social media to voice their disappointment, calling the split a major loss for accessibility and affordability in beauty shopping.

As the countdown begins, one question remains: will another major retail collaboration step up to fill the void, or will this be the end of an era? Noir Nation, let us know—are you sad to see Ulta and Target go their separate ways, or are you ready to see what’s next? 👇🏽

U.S. Rep. Jasmine Crockett has much to think about as Texas Republicans prepare to approve a new congressional map that would significantly impact her district.

During a recent interview with CBS News, Crockett shared she is considering running in a different district next year after Texas Republicans redrew a map that puts her residence outside her 30th Congressional District. Crockett will have to decide whether to run for office in the neighboring 33rd Congressional District or potentially find a new home.

However, the latter option is not an ideal one for Crockett.

“As a single woman who has one income, who’s not allowed to make outside income, there’s a lot to be had there,” Crockett said about her decision-making process.

“The idea of actually buying a new home…We don’t get enough money. I mean, I’m being honest, and I know that some people may take issue with that, because they talk about how much money we make, and I get it. It’s not that we’re obviously getting minimum wage,” the Texas congresswoman explained. “It’s a matter of do you sell your home, then go somewhere else and get a higher interest rate.”

Crockett shared that the current mortgage interest rate is 3%. According to Freddie Mac, the average national interest rate is more than 6%.

A major part of Crockett’s decision will depend on how her constituents feel about her potentially living outside of her district. She explained that, unlike state legislators, members of Congress are not required to live within district lines. However, Congresswoman Crockett said her campaign will conduct polling to learn more about the new 200,000 voters in her redrawn 30th Congressional District, and whether they prefer a representative who lives there.

Crockett said her decision is not being taken lightly, reiterating, “They don’t pay me enough to go and buy another home.” The annual salary for members of the United States Congress is $174,000.

Despite the reality of having her district and others represented by Democrats, Crockett said the redistricting plan is clear racial discrimination, as the districts targeted have majority Black and Latino populations.

“These have to be some of the most obviously racially gerrymandered and terrible lines that I’ve ever seen in the state of Texas,” she told CBS. “Why is it that you continue to try to dilute their voices and don’t want them to be heard?

She added, “It is about making sure in the state that has more African-Americans than any other state, that they are not left with their voices only amounting to one-fifth the strength of their Caucasian counterparts.”

President Donald Trump on Monday declared Washington, D.C., safe again, a week after he announced a federal crackdown amid claims about crime in the nation’s capital.

“It’s safe,” Trump said inside the Oval Office during a White House meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. As evidence of his claims, the president told reporters he received several calls from others, including Democrats, who shared that they were dining out in D.C. after previously avoiding doing so due to crime in the city.

Now, they feel safer, the president claimed, as a result of Trump declaring a public national emergency and deploying 800 D.C. National Guard troops onto the streets.

“We went from the most unsafe place anywhere to a place that now people, friends are calling me up, Democrats are calling me up, and they’re saying, ‘Sir, I want to thank you. My wife and I went out to dinner last night for the first time in four years, and Washington, D.C., is safe, and you did that in four days,” said Trump.

The president claimed that another person told him, “What you’ve done is incredible, and I think the people realize it, but the press says ‘he’s a dictator. He’s trying to take over.’”

Trump continued, “No, all I want is security for our people. But people that haven’t gone out to dinner in Washington, D.C., in two years are going out to dinner, and the restaurants the last two days were busier than they’ve been in a long time.”

Despite Trump’s claim that D.C. restaurants have been “busier” since his administration announced its federal crackdown on law enforcement, recent data shows the opposite.

According to data from OpenTable, restaurants in D.C. have seen a 25% drop in diners since Trump’s Aug. 11 announcements, including invoking the D.C. Home Rule Act to federalize the city’s local police department. WUSA9 reports that restaurant reservations were 27% below their 2024 levels the day after the president’s announcement. On Wednesday, Aug. 13, reservations dipped by 31%.

On Monday, D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser again dismissed Trump’s claims about crime in the nation’s capital, and the recent deployments of additional national guard troops by the Republican governors of West Virginia, South Carolina and Ohio.

“The facts on the ground don’t support this,” she told reporters during a news conference. “This is not about something that fits into logic…the question is really not for us. It’s for why the military would be deployed in an American city to police Americans? That’s the question, and it’s not for me.”

Democratic strategist Joel Payne told theGrio that President Trump’s “militarization” of D.C. law enforcement is a “series of stunt tactics in search of a crisis.” According to data from D.C.’s Metropolitan Police Department, the city’s violent crime declined to a 30-year low.

“The political theater was bad faith and transparently serves as a predicate to try and put military on the streets in other places to pursue other authoritarian overreach,” said Payne.

He added, “If Trump and Republicans wanted to help D.C. in a sustainable way that actually netted results, they could reverse the cuts that he bullied Republicans into making into the city’s budget, or, better yet–he could just help spearhead an effort to make D.C. a state.”

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Hulu’s latest limited series, The Twisted Tale of Amanda Knox, is already sparking conversation, not just for its gripping retelling of one of the most infamous cases of the 21st century, but for the powerhouses behind it. Creator KJ Steinberg (This Is Us) and Emmy-winning producer Warren Littlefield sat down with Where Is The Buzz’s Nakia Richardson to unpack the creative vision, cultural weight, and raw humanity driving the project.

Rewriting a Story the World Thinks It Knows

When asked why Amanda Knox’s story needed to be told in a scripted series rather than through yet another documentary or book, Steinberg was blunt: it was about perspective.

“There are many things that separate us from the herd and make this original,” she explained. “We live in a time where misinformation is rampant, polarizing, and damaging. When I first engaged with Amanda, I knew people had deeply entrenched, violent beliefs about her—but I didn’t. I wanted to know why people held these false beliefs and clung to them.”

Steinberg was particularly moved by Knox’s personal outreach to her former prosecutor, Giuliano Mignini. “Here is this woman, nearly 20 years later, still clawing back her freedom, reclaiming her narrative, and bridging divides with the very people who pursued her. That intimacy and humanity gave me a way into the story.”

Producers Who Know What It Means to Be Misunderstood

Richardson pivoted to Warren Littlefield, pointing out the rare dynamic of Amanda Knox and Monica Lewinsky both serving as producers on the series. Two women who have been vilified by media for decades, finally stepping into the role of storytellers instead of subjects.

“They have lived with media bias in the worst possible way,” Littlefield said. “This all began when Monica forged a relationship with Amanda. Amanda trusted her, and then KJ came in with the vision. My job was to protect that vision and help bring it to life. It was exciting, it was challenging, and it was one of the most rewarding experiences I’ve had.”

Littlefield’s comments underscored the meta-layer of the project: a story about misinformation told by those who have survived it.

What the Audience Should Take Away

For Steinberg, the goal of The Twisted Tale of Amanda Knox extends beyond retelling the trial or the headlines. She hopes viewers will stop scrutinizing Knox’s behavior and start interrogating the larger systems that enabled her wrongful conviction.

“I hope people put down the microscope on Amanda and widen their lens to examine the ecosystems and institutions that allow grand injustices to happen,” she said. “I hope they question their beliefs, understand coerced confessions, and see the nobility in Amanda’s outreach to Mignini, and in Mignini’s willingness to meet her outside an adversarial frame. To see each other as human beings that’s the heart of it.”

Why This Series Will Hit Hard

With an all-star cast featuring Grace Van Patten, Sharon Horgan, John Hoogenakker, Francesco Acquaroli, Giuseppe De Domenico, and Roberta Mattei, paired with executive producers including Monica Lewinsky, Amanda Knox herself, and director Michael Uppendahl, the series is poised to be one of Hulu’s defining dramas of the year.

Richardson closed the interview praising the show’s emotional depth. “It’s really good,” she told Steinberg and Littlefield. And in the end, that’s the point the series isn’t just about sensational headlines. It’s about people, truth, and the long, messy journey of reclaiming a narrative once stolen.

The Twisted Tale of Amanda Knox premieres August 20th on Hulu.

Watch KJ Steinberg & Warren Littlefield Interview Below:

Related

PHOTO : Getty Images

Iconic filmmaker Spike Lee has once again proven why his work remains a cornerstone of Black storytelling. His latest film, Highest 2 Lowest, hits theaters November 15, 2025, marking a gripping return to the big screen with an unforgettable lineup — Denzel Washington, A$AP Rocky, and a storyline that blends suspense with a deeply urgent social cause.

🔥 Plot With Purpose

The film follows music mogul David King, played by Washington, whose life spirals after his son is kidnapped. Facing a heart-wrenching decision between paying a multi-million-dollar ransom or risking everything he’s built, King’s journey pulls audiences into a tense, emotional whirlwind. Beyond the nail-biting drama, the narrative mirrors real-life issues faced by countless Black families — particularly when a loved one goes missing.

Spotlight on the Ebony Alert System

At its heart, Highest 2 Lowest champions awareness of the Ebony Alert System, a California-based initiative signed into law in 2024. Designed to locate missing Black youth and young women ages 12 to 25, the system uses tools like social media blasts, highway alerts, and news bulletins to mobilize communities.

Modeled after the Amber Alert, the Ebony Alert tackles a long-standing disparity: missing Black individuals have historically received less media coverage and slower law enforcement responses. By weaving this into the plot, Spike Lee transforms entertainment into education — pushing audiences to not just watch, but act.

A multi-part documentary about the journey of Colin Kaepernick directed by legendary filmmaker Spike Lee for ESPN is being shelved by the network, according to a statement from ESPN, shared with Reuters. 

“ESPN, Colin Kaepernick and Spike Lee have collectively decided to no longer proceed with this project as a result of certain creative differences,” said the statement. 

Spike Lee was asked about the documentary’s fate on the red carpet for the Harold and Carole Pump Foundation dinner, in Beverly Hills, last week and said, very forthrightly, “It’s not coming out. That’s all I can say.” When pressed further, he dropped a bit of legalese into the mix. 

“I can’t. I signed a nondisclosure. I can’t talk about it.”

Well, I guess that’s ‘that’ on that, as they say. Kaepernick’s representatives said the athlete had no comment on the matter.

The documentary, commissioned in 2020 and which began production in 2022, was intended to be a “first person account,” interview-style film that documented Kaepernick’s journey. Colin Kaepernick became a lightning rod for controversy after he started kneeling for the national anthem in 2016 as a silent, peaceful protest of police brutality in America. His weekly protest drew both praise and condemnation from nearly every part of the country and became fodder for sports media, cultural media, and news media on nearly a weekly basis. By 2017, President Trump (who’d been elected in November 2016, succeeding President Barack Obama) had very choice negative words for NFL players who continued Kaepernick’s protest, going so far as to suggest that fans leave stadiums if they saw players kneeling.

In 2016, Kaepernick was the starting quarterback for the San Francisco 49ers but by 2017, he was out of the league and unable to find a new home after opting out of his contract with the 49ers. The prevailing thought around the league was that his political activism would be too much of a distraction to the fan base of the most popular league in America. In 2019, he settled a lawsuit with the NFL, claiming that owners colluded to keep him out of the game.

In September 2024, Puck News ran a story titled, “Da Saga of Spike Lee, Colin Kaepernick & ESPN”—the documentary was reportedly titled “Da Saga of Colin Kaepernick”—noting several issues with the project, claiming that Lee’s scheduling issues and differences over the creative direction of the project stifled its progress. At the time, Puck even claimed that ESPN was allegedly open to shopping the 7-episode series elsewhere.