by Jill Filipovic | Oct 2, 2026 | Criminal Justice, culture, Opinion
A message shared in a groupchat in 2024 profoundly changed many lives: A student at Cornell University sent out a call to his fellow friends and fraternity brothers on a chat called “Chi Phi Actives” that there was “free p—-” available for the taking, according to a recently filed lawsuit.
Documentation of this message exchange is central to the case, which is being brought against seven men in the chat, their fraternity, Cornell University, the local district attorney’s office and the bar accused of serving the subject while underage at the time.
Because that so-called “free p—-” was attached to a human woman, referred to as Jane Doe in the lawsuit. Jane Doe alleged she was rendered passive by alcohol and drugs; effectively a receptacle for the impulses and a misplaced desire for male bonding amongst more than a half-dozen men who she alleged proceeded to have nonconsensual sex with her while she remained in a compromised state.
Social media did not, in fact, make us more social; instead, it put a screen between us and other human beings.
Later, the woman reported it to campus police; after viewing her signed statement, prosecutors at the Tompkins County District Attorney’s Office didn’t find grounds to bring criminal charges. The recent lawsuit alleged her initial report was not properly handled by campus police or the DA’s office (two men were expelled and the fraternity was suspended). Attorneys of some of the seven men named in the lawsuit have publicly denied allegations. Cornell on Thursday agreed to an independent investigation into the allegations. The Tompkins County DA said his office was unaware of some of the details
by Dr. Owais Durrani | Oct 2, 2026 | Health, Opinion, Politics, White House
A patient recently showed up to my emergency department after he’d been doing home repairs for several days, including lifting heavy equipment and moving boxes. When he started feeling a recurring tightness in his chest, he entered his symptoms into a large language model, which told him he likely strained a muscle. He rested and waited for the pain to go away, but it never did.
When he finally came to my emergency room a few days later, his EKG and lab tests showed that he had suffered a serious heart attack. Because of the long delay, part of his heart muscle was permanently damaged, and he now has chronic heart failure.
Because of the long delay, part of his heart muscle was permanently damaged, and he now has chronic heart failure.
At a Make America Healthy Again summit Tuesday that was co-sponsored by OpenAI and Anthropic, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. boasted that artificial intelligence would soon give Americans a second opinion “much better informed than any doctor in the country.”
He’s wrong to say that, and my position doesn’t arise from any philosophical opposition to AI technology. To the contrary, not only am I an emergency room physician, but I am also U.S. chief medical officer at Keikku, a clinical AI company. I use AI in some capacity every shift. However, the patient who consulted a chatbot and suffered irreversible heart muscle damage that a cardiologist could have prevented is an example of why human expertise matters now — and will continue to matter for the foreseeable future.
The AI chatbot a person uses at home cannot conduct
by Dan Froomkin | Oct 2, 2026 | Opinion, White House
If you’re a journalist about to interview President Donald Trump and ask the kind of questions you’d ask a normal president, you ought to know what you’re going to get. You’re going to get lies, nonsense, fantasies and insults. And probably very little news, because he just repeats himself endlessly.
Time political correspondent Eric Cortellessa and editor-in-chief Sam Jacobs had a whopping 75 minutes with Trump on Tuesday to get something worthy of the magazine’s record 56th cover story about him. But because they chose deference over true inquiry, they ended up with 11,000 words of incoherence, zombie talking points and free association that ought to embarrass everyone involved.
The only thing Trump was effusive and actually knowledgeable about was his portfolio of construction projects, so that’s what Time went with for the cover title: “What Trump Has Built.”
But what he has destroyed and what he has lost is the real story. And you can’t tell that story without confronting him with reality in the moment — without correcting him when he’s wrong, calling him out when he’s making no sense, cutting him off when he rambles and testing him to see if he actually knows anything about what he’s talking about.
Trump exists in a bubble of adoration. Journalists are the only relatively normal people allowed anywhere near him. But Time didn’t disturb the bubble.
Trump’s Time interlocutors should have aggressively interrogated him about the depths of his ignorance before going to war with Iran and his utter lack of an exit strategy — to say nothing of his grotesque (and thank goodness, empty) threats to wipe out Iran’s civilization. They should
by John Pfaff | Oct 2, 2026 | Civil Rights, Opinion
On Wednesday evening, the state of Tennessee attempted to execute Christa Pike for a brutal murder she committed, with two accomplices, in 1995. In what Robin Maher, the executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center, called “unlike any other botched execution in the modern era,” officials failed to execute Pike despite administering the execution drug, pentobarbital, twice. Exactly what happened is unclear, since officials repeatedly curtained off the witnesses, but her lawyers say she is now hospitalized, her condition unknown.
The next day, Gov. Bill Lee suspended all Tennessee executions for the rest of 2026, his second statewide moratorium over how executions are administered. That makes him the second Republican governor to do so, after Ohio’s Mike DeWine, who has suspended executions since 2019 over a different drug, midazolam (which also prompted Lee’s first moratorium, in 2022).
The suspension, however, does not mean Pike will not be executed. It just delays her killing by the state.
In short, anyone bothered by Tennessee repeatedly trying to execute Pike will find no help from the Supreme Court.
That might shock those who think repeatedly trying to execute someone should violate the Eighth Amendment’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment. But in 1947, in Louisiana ex rel. Francis v. Resweber, the Supreme Court held that repeated attempts do not necessarily violate the Eighth Amendment, at least as long as the errors are in “good faith” or reflect sincere mistakes; intentionally dragging out the process to torture or prolong pain could still be impermissible.
That last part could open another argument against trying to execute Pike again.
Pentobarbital is quite controversial: the Biden administration banned it in federal executions
by Lt. Col. Rachel E. VanLandingham (ret.) | Oct 1, 2026 | Opinion, Politics, White House
Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth’s typical culture war-laden, right-wing manosphere-infused sophomoric rhetoric was on full display Wednesday during his disturbing State of the Force address to midlevel enlisted service members and military officers assembled at Quantico.
Exactly a year ago Hegseth had used Quantico as a bully pulpit to ridicule and deride almost the entire cadre of then-serving generals and admirals — calling them fat; extolling a hypermasculine “warrior culture” seemingly ripped from the historic Christian Crusades that included a “war on woke”; excoriating past efforts at promoting diversity, equity and inclusion within the ranks; and goading senior officers who didn’t agree with his attacks on meritocracy or his campaign to erode the military’s apolitical nature to resign.
Play
Iraq War Vet Rieckhoff calls Hegseth’s speech a ‘SNL cold open’
October 1, 2026 / 08:03
Such rhetoric should be taken seriously. Hegseth has been busy turning such rhetoric into reality, reversing decades’ worth of professionalism and efficacy gains in the armed forces, degrading national security in the process. Further, Hegseth exercises huge influence within the Trump administration — he reportedly counseled President Donald Trump to attack Iran — and has been floated as Trump’s heir apparent to the White House. His words cannot be ignored.
Now, a year after his initial Quantico address and numerous Hegseth-led assaults on the U.S. military — including a purge of 10% of senior officers (he’s now promised 20%); the subversion of merit-based senior leader promotion processes along gender, racial and ideological lines; the expulsion of thousands of experienced transgender members with critical skill sets; a suppression campaign against non-MAGA-aligned service member speech; and far more — it wasn’t much of
by Ja'han Jones | Oct 1, 2026 | Opinion, White House, World
Donald Trump’s imperialistic administration and its allies are locked in on Brazil’s election — and Democrats and Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva are sounding the alarm.
Lula is facing Flávio Bolsonaro in Sunday’s presidential election. Bolsonaro’s father — former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, a Trump ally — was convicted last year of launching a Jan. 6-style coup attempt. And ever since, Trump’s regime has targeted Lula and Brazil’s government over the prosecution, including threats of potential military action.
Trump, for instance, baselessly claimed the elder Bolsonaro was the victim of a “witch hunt” while justifying a 50% tariff on Brazilian goods. My colleague Steve Benen summed up a bunch of the Trump administration’s related attacks on Brazilian officials in this post for MS NOW.
The authoritarian-loving MAGA movement’s efforts to influence politics in Brazil — the second-largest democracy in the Western Hemisphere after the increasingly illiberal U.S. — have been laid bare over the past year. That’s why dozens of Democrats sent a letter to Secretary of State Marco Rubio last week demanding answers and a commitment that the administration will respect the upcoming election results. The signees included Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., and a single senator, Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt.
“Over the course of President Trump’s second term, we have seen U.S. officials engage in a sustained, multifaceted campaign of interference and destabilization in Brazil,” they wrote, citing actions they said amount to an “extraordinary infringement on Brazil’s national sovereignty.”
The letter also cites the Trump administration’s appointment of Darren Beattie — who has openly stated that “[c]ompetent white men must be in charge if you want things to work” — as
