Life-threatening violence broke out at a 12-year-old girls' softball game over the weekend, leaving one man unconscious with a fractured skull, a grandfather with a broken hip, and a Texas couple arrested and charged with assault.
Actor-comedian Russell Brand said allegations of sexual misconduct have had a "devastating" impact on his life, as he testified in court Wednesday at his trial on charges of rape and sexual assault.
My home state of Ohio has earned a not-so-nice distinction in the 2026 election: It is the site of "the ugliest" contest in the country. Nasty attack ads have been an ongoing feature of the governor's race between Republican Vivek Ramaswamy and Democrat Amy Acton—piercing many a peaceful Hulu-watching session on my end with allegations that Acton is a pill-popping drunk and Ramaswamy a con man.
But the nastiness reached a whole new level in recent weeks, with the release of a Ramaswamy campaign ad implying that Acton lied about childhood sexual abuse by her stepfather.
Understandably, many Republicans bristled at being viewed as the party that defends accused child rapists. Not Trump. His only regret here is that he didn't get to run an ad like this, he said.
The ad features Acton's mother, Donna Arthur, from whom Acton has been estranged for decades for what seem like very good reasons. When Acton was 12, her mom took her stepfather's side when she accused him of sexually abusing her for years.
In 1978, Acton's stepfather, Cledith Arthur, was arrested and charged with child rape. Records from the case, obtained by Signal Statewide, "also contains a reference to a previous incest charge against Cledith Arthur from 1974…although it's not clear how that case was resolved."
Acton's mom lost custody of both Amy and her brother. But the stepfather was never tried, since he and Acton's mom fled the state. He remained a fugitive—and married to Amy's mother—until he died in 2004.
screenshot of Clip from the Youngstown Vindicator on July 17, 1978
In the new Ramaswamy campaign ad, Acton calls her daughter a liar. "It's not easy for a mother to say this, but Amy has a serious problem. She is a liar," says Arthur in the video. "She lies about her past.…She's lied her entire life. My daughter needs help."
Arthur doesn't outright say "she lied about being molested by her stepfather," but given the historical context here, the implication is pretty clear. In effect, the Ramaswamy campaign has helped Acton's mom accuse her daughter on a national scale of making it all up.
That's despicable, even by political campaigning standards.
And—providing us with some hope for humanity—it also backfired. People roundly condemned the ad and the Ramaswamy campaign for running it. Acton's brother, Philip Stearns, corroborated her story. Even many Republicanshave objectedto the ad.
There are still some lines you don't cross, public figures left and right seemed to agree.
Public figures except President Donald Trump and Vice President J.D. Vance.
Telling Republicans to "stop whining" about the ad, Vance said he was getting "a little bit disgusted when I see Republicans across the country who are whining more about that advertisement than they are about what the congressional Democrats and other Democrats want to do to the United States of America."
"Vivek Ramaswamy had the audacity to run a TV commercial which calls it out like it is and calls Amy Acton a liar," Vance continued.
Trump went further, calling the ad "very powerful" and urging the Ramaswamy campaign to keep it up. Trump also criticized the current Ohio governor, Republican Mike DeWine, for calling the ad "deeply troubling."
DeWine is a moderate Republican who, for the most part, adheres to pre-Trump standards of decency. Their differing reactions here seem a perfect microcosm of pre-MAGA and post-MAGA standards for conduct and bounds of acceptability.
DeWine "probably wants a Dumocrat to win," Trump wrote in a Truth Social post last Thursday. "I suggested, on the other hand, that Vivek should keep it up, and let everyone listen to the mother of a defective, dishonest, and incapable Candidate, explain how the daughter is a DISASTER who, uncontrollably, lies, cheats, and steals!"
Talking to reporters that same day, Trump just kept repeating that if an ad had been made with his mom calling him a liar, the press would love it. He stuck to that talking point again and again, acting clueless about the childhood sexual abuse allegations at the center of this whole controversy.
The idea that the president would passionately post about and answer questions about this without knowing the whole story is almost beyond belief. But even if Trump somehow didn't know the full context when he first started talking about it, he was made aware and then kept right on praising the ad.
Trump on Ramaswamy Ad: The mother is calling the daughter a terrible person and a liar. Why would you shield somebody from that? Why would we do that? So I told him, leave it up and say thank you God. I only wish I could have had an ad like that. pic.twitter.com/M2TYz3jhUy
At a campaign rally in Iowa last Thursday, he said, "I only wish I could have had an ad like that against somebody."
Ramaswamy has also defended the ad, saying, "Unfortunately, the person I'm running against does have serial problems with the truth" and that the ad highlights a "pattern" of the "people who are closest to her" telling Ohioans not to vote for her.
But this is no longer just about one candidate's mistake or one campaign's poor judgment. The response from Trump and Vance has raised Ramaswamy's ad into bigger and uglier territory.
"It's actually kind of hard to find a prominent Republican who is defending the ad other than Vivek Ramaswamy himself, Vice President JD Vance and, quite fervently today, President Trump," noted CNN's Kaitlan Collins last Friday.
But Trump and Vance are the leaders of not just the Republican Party but the nation. And as we've seen again and again, Trump's responses tend to set the tone for what will become acceptable among conservatives by and large.
"Vance's acceptance of this campaign ad only breathes life into the disease that we should be seeking to cure," former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie toldThe Washington Post.
Do voters agree?
Whatever happens with Ramaswamy next Tuesday, it will be impossible to know how much of it is related to this ad campaign and how much of it is related to many other possible factors. But it's hard not to look at the Ohio gubernatorial election results now as something of a referendum on what type of political discourse is OK. Are voters over Trump-style belligerence and nastiness? Or do they accept the premise that politics is a war in which no low is too low if it helps you win?
In the News
Release the FISA Ruling: "Two Democratic senators who have long overseen US intelligence say the Trump administration is illegally withholding a secret court's findings from Congress until lawmakers renew a program that lets federal agents read Americans' communications without a warrant," reportsWired:
Seven months ago, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court objected to search filters that let intelligence analysts pull Americans' messages from intercepted data without the approvals, written justifications, or records the law requires. The court approved another year of surveillance anyway. The ruling has never been made public, and Senators Ron Wyden of Oregon and Adam Schiff of California say the administration's own deadline for releasing it passed in September.
"This opinion details serious abuses of Americans' rights under Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) and, by law, should have been released before September 13," wrote Wyden and Schiff in a letter to the director of national intelligence and the U.S. Attorney General. "Yet this opinion remains hidden over a month later, suggesting that the administration hopes to secure a renewal of Section 702 while keeping Congress and the public in the dark."
Wishful thinking from Flock. Garrett Langley, the CEO of Flock, told a conference of cops to believe him rather than what's right in front of their eyes. The backlash to Flock "is not real," he said at the International Association of Chiefs of Police conference, per leaked audio obtained by 404 Media:
"Somebody was paying for [the social media posts and] stopped paying for it," Langley said about the many viral posts criticizing his company's technology. "Social media chatter on Flock is down about 95 percent from July. It went down 50 percent last week when Ukraine bombed a Russian data center with a drone. Literally 50 percent overnight. And so look, I'm the last person, my wife as well, she's like 'This is crazy, these people are getting paid to say these things,'" he added, repeating a disproven theory that Ukraine's strikes on Russian data centers had a significant impact on internet bot activity.
"It's anonymous bots, and so it is not real," he continued. "Inorganic activity has led to organic activity, but when I look at protests across the country, it is the same people with the same signs and the same message. That's not normal. That's not organic at all." Langley's comments echo another unsubstantiated theory that said opposition to Flock comes from a far-left network spreading propaganda at the behest of China.
The backlash is widespread and multifaceted. Backlash to Flock "has just exploded, like no other issue that I have seen in my time at the ACLU," Becca Eastwood, deputy policy director at the American Civil Liberties Union of Iowa, told Reason recently.
On Substack
Techlash on the campaign trail. Democrats have been panning data centers in campaign ads, but artificial intelligence was the subject of only a small fraction of ads, notes the Blue Horizon Project, an initiative from Chamber of Progress "to restore tech optimism in the Democratic Party and reset the relationship between Democrats and the technology sector." And when Democrats have focused on AI and data centers, it's been more about economics than general anti-AI sentiment, Dave Vorland writes:
Data centers are the important exception to the lack of ads focused on AI and technology. In AdImpact's tables, they appear among the three leading Democratic advertising topics in 5 of the 21 Toss-Up House races. They are not politically irrelevant, and dismissing the local backlash would be a mistake.
But look more closely at what these ads actually argue. Using AdImpact's data on 2026 campaign spending, ads matching either a tax-language screen or energy message, or both, account for $69.76 million, or 76.2% of all data center advertising.
The race with the highest spending on data centers is the Ohio Senate race, where Democratic spending accounts for $32.10 million. AdImpact's data shows Sherrod Brown's campaign spent over $1.5 million to air a data center ad 3,100 times. The message shows that while he is willing to hit his opponent for the data center tax breaks, his solution is ensuring that data centers don't raise energy costs, an idea that could have been drawn directly from our Data Center Development Playbook.
Vorland points out that "AdImpact's data for 2026 Congressional spending shows that less than $2.5 million went to ads supporting a data-center construction pause, moratorium, ban, or stopping new construction, a minuscule portion of the Democratic ad buy."
Interesting that "let data centers build but don't subsidize them" is the implicit message here. It feels like at least somewhat of a good sign that Democratic candidates don't by-and-large think "ban new data centers" is a message that voters want to hear.
More Sex & Tech News
• An interesting essay in Works in Progress looks at "the rise of prudishness" and what demographics might have to do with it.
• "Technology has advanced for centuries, shuffling workers among occupations, industries, and regions without making human labor obsolete," writes Nathan Smith at Human Progress:
As machinery pushed millions of Americans away from farming over the past century, most workers moved to factories, towns, and cities. They ended up with more comfortable lives than their predecessors plowing the fields. The AI economy will likely follow the same path: destroying jobs while creating better ones.
• The New Jersey Assembly recently advanced a bill that would increase prostitution penalties, and several other prostitution-related criminal justice bills are pending in the Assembly and state Senate. Tara Burns has details.
• Florida's attorney general said he plans to introduce even more stringent social media regulation, even as the state's earlier restrictions on minors using social media are still being challenged in federal court.
• British tech regulator Ofcom says its Online Safety Act isn't actually stopping kids from seeing "harmful content" online. So it wants to do more of it. "Instead of suggesting to repeal the Online Safety Act because it does not seem to be working or because it imperils online freedom, Ofcom's report proposes to broaden the law's scope," writesReason's Meagan O'Rourke.
NEW: The Online Safety Act has been a failure, according to a new report from Ofcom.
Ofcom have found "no significant change" in children encountering harmful content since the law came into effect last July. This is despite the signifigant threats to free speech and privacy.
• "Social media decentralized the information environment and weakened the influence of expert opinion. LLMs are likely to have the opposite effects," writes Dan Williams at Persuasion. "Whereas social media has been a democratizing technology, LLMs are a technocratizing force. They shift influence back towards expert opinion."
• Ten states have no birth centers and eight others only have one, according to a new report from The Commonwealth Fund. "Two dozen centers closed between 2023 and 2026, with some publicly blaming onerous regulations and steep increases in malpractice insurance," notesOhio Capitol Journal.
Cornell University faculty will meet Wednesday to conclude debate and begin voting on a proposed no-confidence resolution in the university's administration following widespread frustration over its response to a woman who reported she was gang raped at a campus fraternity house in 2024.
The Cornell University Faculty Senate is set to debate a no confidence vote on Wednesday against President Michael Kotlikoff after allegations of a 2024 gang rape at a campus fraternity that resulted in no criminal charges caused uproar around the country. The more than 75 members of the body will have their second meeting debating the resolution…
The Cornell University Faculty Senate is set to debate a no confidence vote on Wednesday against President Michael Kotlikoff after allegations of a 2024 gang rape at a campus fraternity that resulted in no criminal charges caused uproar around the country. The more than 75 members of the body will have their second meeting debating the resolution…
That ’70s Show actor was sentenced to 30 years in prison for two counts of rape against two women, who were also Scientologists
Danny Masterson has lost the appeal of his rape conviction, meaning his 30-year prison sentence has been upheld.
The actor, best known for his role on That ’70s Show, was convicted in 2023 of two counts of rape against two women in 2003, while a third charge relating to a third plaintiff, who alleged she was raped by Masterson in 2001, was quashed.
Information and support for anyone affected by rape or sexual abuse issues is available from the following organisations. In the US, Rainn offers support on 800-656-4673. In the UK, Rape Crisis offers support on 0808 500 2222. In Australia, support is available at 1800Respect (1800 737 732). Other international helplines can be found at ibiblio.org/rcip/internl.html
Commanders suspected of sexual violence during the largest and fastest slaughter of civilians in more than 30 years have been subjected to travel ban and asset freeze
Senior Sudanese commanders implicated in a “campaign of rape” have been targeted by the UK on the first anniversary of a mass atrocity that saw tens of thousands of civilians killed over several days.
A year after the fall of El Fasher, the British government said it had sanctioned military leaders from both sides in the country’s ongoing conflict whom it suspected of sexual violence during the siege of the city.
Children as young as five are being suspended for sexual misconduct, with schools in England recording 7,278 suspensions last year – nearly 40 every school day and a 12% jump on the previous year.
Grandparents should ask for consent before hugging their grandchildren, a "demeaning" new Government-funded Irish advert from the Dublin Rape Crisis Centre has said.
Questioning the prevailing narrative about the "Cornell seven" case is bound to create controversy. And at Columbia University, two student journalists drew condemnation for their views on the case from the unlikeliest of places: a college free speech group.
On October 13, Barnard junior Christina Ma and Columbia junior Nikos Mohammadi published an article called "The 'Cornell Seven' Is Really About Liberalism" in the Columbia Sundial, an independent student publication. The piece argued that the discourse surrounding the alleged rape at Cornell University infantilizes women by omitting the possibility that in a post–sexual revolution, liberal society, women may make regrettable but consensual choices.
"In the world that, for better or worse, follows from it, we cannot claim to stand for sexual freedom and then recoil in disgust when there's a possibility that a young woman simply chose to exercise it," Mohammadi and Ma wrote.
The piece also argues that the "collective frenzy" over the Cornell case has created a climate on campus that makes it "difficult to disagree with the maximalist position on what happened" the night of the alleged rape.
As Mohammadi wrote in UnHerd, the piece caused immense backlash. He said he received an onslaught of messages urging him to commit suicide and demanding that his "career and life be destroyed." But the criticism went beyond threatening DMs and comments.
The day after the article's publication, the Columbia Open Discourse Alliance (CODA) canceled an event about press freedom because the Sundial's editor in chief, Nick Baum, had been slated to speak at the event. Although Baum did not author the piece, CODA wrote in an Instagram post that the free speech group "refused" to be affiliated with the Sundial's article "in any way."
CODA also claimed that the event, ironically called "Who Gets to Tell the Story? Press Freedom and the Public Square," could not take place at a time when "many survivors in our community feel that their stories are under attack and are not being believed."
The group added that the Sundial's article "promotes rape culture and works to silence survivors of sexual assault."
The group's president, Aum Desai, told Columbia's student newspaper, the Columbia Daily Spectator, that the group canceled the event "not in spite of, but because of [CODA's] commitment to free expression."
Columbia graduate Clayton Smith, who founded CODA in 2025, quickly commented that he was "shocked" by CODA's statements on Instagram. Smith started the organization to create a central hub for groups hosting events promoting free speech and open discourse, including the Sundial and Columbia's Heterodox Academy chapter.
He tells Reason that CODA's rationale for canceling the event was "ironic" and "hypocritical," and he believes the group should have collaborated with the Sundial if there were legitimate safety concerns at the event. He says he was particularly disturbed by the group's condemnation of the article and CODA's claim that it promotes "rape culture."
"They don't argue or explain how it works to silence survivors of sexual assault. It is a baseless slander that they use to condemn the article because it promoted an opinion they do not like," Smith says.
Smith says he spoke to Desai on the phone after CODA posted the statements, and Desai tried to reassure him that CODA would uphold the principle of free speech. But Smith says he did not leave the phone call feeling "very confident at all" in Desai's commitment.
Desai did not respond to Reason's requests for comment.
CODA faculty adviser and Columbia Business School professor emeritus Eli Noam was traveling in China during the fallout from the Sundial article and was not involved in CODA's decision.
After speaking with members of both CODA and the Sundial, Noam tells Reason that he thinks CODA "made some proper decisions, some correct decisions, and some mistakes."
"I think we're dealing here with…a group of college students who kind of were confronted with a crisis at 2 a.m.," Noam says. "And kind of [made] some judgments that they now regret, and they do."
He tells Reason that it was not "unreasonable to assume there would be a disruption" at the event, given the climate at Columbia and "about this rape allegation." He says the group suddenly "had an event where they needed college security" and could not organize in time. CODA, Noam says, is not yet recognized by the university, and he thinks the group was likely fearful of jeopardizing its recognition.
Still, Noam says CODA's statements condemning the article were "unreasonable," and it was "disappointing that they kind of lost their nerve here."
Although he was not involved in planning the panel, Mohammadi says, to his knowledge, there were no credible threats of violence to the panel. He understood there may have been "disgruntled students" and an "environment CODA did not want to deal with." But instead of simply canceling the event or working with the Sundial to find a solution, Mohammadi says CODA overstepped by condemning the Sundial piece.
James Applegate, an astronomy professor who serves on Columbia's Academic Freedom Council (CAFC) alongside Noam, tells Reason that he disagreed with CODA's decision to cancel the event.
Applegate tells Reason he was considering attending the event, and he was "rather surprised and disappointed" when it was canceled.
He recalled that when he was a professor in 2000, he objected to changes to the school's sexual misconduct policy on the University Senate floor. He says his statements were "similar to what was said in the Sundial article" and there was a "level of emotion in this debate."
"Nonetheless, we had the debate. I was in it, and the degree to which it was civil is shocking when you look at where we are now. And it's sad."
Applegate said he does not condemn CODA, however, "for the simple reason that the atmosphere on college campuses and on the left wing of politics in general in the United States is quite vicious."
CODA's honorary faculty fellow John McWhorter tells Reason he interpreted CODA's statement as "saying that an event about who gets to tell the story is untenable when or if a critical mass of people with such stories don't even feel comfortable telling them— i.e.being a participant in the event." He added, "I imagine some might think of that as cutting the salami a little thin, but then I highly suspect that Desai is equally worried about the event becoming a physical melee of some kind. In that, let's face it, he is hardly unreasonable."
Still, McWhorter said that he would have chosen to have the event himself, "especially as in the likely case that some people did talk about their experiences without any particular repercussions, it may have made the more reluctant people less apprehensive about doing so in the future."
According to Mohammadi, as of Tuesday, the Sundial, College Republicans, Platypus Affiliated Society at Columbia (which discusses leftist thought and history), and Columbia's Heterodox Academy chapter have left CODA.
CODA was not the only group to condemn the Sundial's piece. On October 14, the Columbia Political Review's editorial board wrote that Mohammadi and Ma's piece "violates standards of integrity" and "perpetuates a culture of campus violence, rape, and assault." The editorial board of the Columbia Political Review, which purports to publish "multipartisan political discourse," stated that it would refuse to publish "any article that upholds or recreates cultures and systems of rape, sexual assault, or violence" and it urged "all campus publications to do the same."
And on Monday, Columbia's main newspaper, the Spectator, published a staff editorial accusing the Sundial of violating journalistic ethics by "its page to disparage survivors of sexual violence."
Mohammadi tells Reason the piece underwent "far more editorial scrutiny than any other piece" the Sundial had published given the sensitive nature of the topic.
Free speech student organizations are necessary on Columbia's campus, especially as the school's free speech climate continues to crumble; it recently received a failing grade from the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression. And while upholding free speech principles may have become more fashionable among those resisting the Trump administration's pressures on academic freedom or those defending pro-Palestinian speech, it is clear that some topics remain taboo in the public square. College is supposed to be a place where students debate controversial topics, form their own beliefs and opinions, and learn from mistakes. Hopefully, the students who demanded condemnation instead of debate will be forgiven for their perversion of free speech ideals, and they will learn to afford such grace and open-mindedness to classmates with whom they disagree.
It’s been a month since the story of the Cornell Seven case became national news. Ruby Cramer documents what she describes as “an ever-expanding blast radius of online abuse, threats, and vigilantism which has touched virtually every person connected to the case, along with people who have no immediate connection to it at all.” Among those closest to the center is the accuser herself:
Jane Doe explained to the police that her phone number and address had been leaked on the internet, and that she’d been receiving harassing phone calls, including that evening. She had recorded one such call. In the recording, the man says, “I’m probably just gonna, like, pull up to your house and shoot. . . .” The caller speaks in a deep, throaty voice that at times sounds almost garbled. In response, Jane Doe says nothing. The man says, “I can hear you breathing.”
While officers were still at the family’s house, dispatch reported that the initial caller was back on the line, saying that he had an AR-15 assault rifle and was going to kill everyone at the house, then himself. About an hour later, police reported another call, this one saying that the house was on fire. In yet another phone call, a man stated that he had explosives and that the family would die—“either now, midnight, or tomorrow.” Jane Doe was receiving additional threats via text message and D.M. Her phone had hundreds of unread messages on it, but some of them she opened. “Typical white btich whore crying ‘rape,’ ” one of the messages read. “Hopefully someone does the world a favor and 🔫🔫🔫 you, nothing of value would be lost.” Officers advised her to keep her phone turned off. The next day, according to her attorney, she started taping pieces of paper over the windows at the house.
The horrific story of Jane Doe and the Cornell Seven has spurred nationwide outrage and revived contentious debates around prevention and education. But one question is going unasked: Who really pays after a sexual assault? In terms of actual dollars and cents? The answer, Cosmopolitan finds, isn’t good:
Leah received an email from the first hospital. It was a bill for $3,338, including $663 for lab work and a pregnancy test she hadn’t asked for. She hadn’t been charged for the rape kit, but the price of just checking into the ER was $2,241. After her parents’ insurance was applied, she owed $451.06.
“I was so unbelievably angry,” she says. “I lost it. I was like, ‘You mean it cost me $450 to get raped?!’”
Most people don’t realize this care might not be covered, says Vega, who has worked as an emergency room nurse, emergency room director, and a SANE. But that’s actually common: KFF analyzed a sample of insurance claim data from 2016 to 2018 (the most up-to-date data KFF has) and found that 83 percent of women who received a sexual violence diagnosis were billed for treatment. Another analysis of emergency room department data from 2019 found that the average bill for sexual assault survivors was $3,551, according to the New England Journal of Medicine.
A 82-year-old man was reportedly beaten to death by a 76-year-old man during a argument over a sunbed in a popular organized beach in Vouliagmeni in Athens Riviera on Sunday. According to initial information, the 76-year-old who was accompanied with a 21-year-old woman argued with the victim over the sunbed. Quickly the situation went out […]
Three PETA activists were attacked by donkey drivers in the island of Santorini. The attackers insulted the animal activists and one of them hit one of the women in the face. The outrageous incident took place at the Karavolades straits on September 5, 2026, and the shocking images and footage were wide spread on social […]
The San Francisco Police Department cleared 14 percent of rape cases last year—half the national rate. An investigation finds that rape kits get tested fast, only for cases to be quietly shelved. Often, the only thing standing “between a report and the shelf” is what’s known as a “pretext call,” a recorded phone conversation in which a survivor tries to extract an admission of guilt from their attacker (aka relives their trauma to do the police’s work for them):
She sat in a room at the SVU headquarters with [Sergeant Johnathan] Ng and a recorder. She dialed the man she alleged raped her. He didn’t pick up. She tried again. No answer.
“If we don’t get an admission, it’s a he-said, she-said thing,” she remembered Ng telling her.
Then, she said, he offered some unsolicited advice.
“He told me that I probably shouldn’t be hanging out with 55-year-old men,” she said.
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