Roofies and a “King in Albany”
  October 6, 2026 Greetings, Meteor readers, I recently learned that Netflix produced and is going to air a new version of the Stanford Prison Experiment, this time putting participants in an actual prison. We have quite literally gone too far as a TV-watching society. In today’s newsletter, we answer some lingering questions about the legal loophole that protected the Cornell 7 from criminal rape charges. Plus, a quick romp through the news. With love, Shannon Melero  WHAT'S GOING ONThe inner workings of injustice: Last week we reported on New York State’s voluntary intoxication exclusion loophole—a gap in the state’s penal code that leaves sexual violence victims who willingly got drunk unprotected by the law. The exclusion has been at the center of trying to understand why the Cornell case didn’t go anywhere when the incident was first reported in 2024. Many readers and commenters had one question: How, in the year 2026, can the law still contain such an egregious flaw? I myself will admit that as I’ve been conducting interviews, the most frequently said phrase in every conversation (by both me and my sources) is, “It doesn’t make any sense.” We realized it was time for an FAQ. So here you go—a product of our own research and many hours on the phone with Elizabeth da Trinidade-Asher, a lawyer and co-chair of Justice Without Exclusion Coalition, who has been working to close New York’s loophole for the last eight years. Please note that what you’re about to read includes descriptions of sexual assault. What do you mean loophole?“There is a vast difference between what is morally reprehensible and what is criminally liable as rape,” Asher says, “and that is defined by the criminal code no matter how deficient it is.” This applies to all crimes—there must be a definition of the crime in the penal code for it to be prosecutable. New York State’s penal code establishes legal differences between various sex crimes and also defines how “lack of consent” or an inability to give consent can be established. Intoxication loopholes in sexual assault laws are widespread across the country, although their details vary from state to state. Some states, like Minnesota and Texas, have closed the loopholes completely. You can review your home state’s approach to consent and incapacitation here. So then how did we end up with this in New York? Speak plainly!When it comes to bringing a charge of rape, there are very specific parameters. New York’s penal code establishes that lack of consent does exist when “the victim clearly expressed that he or she did not consent to engage in such acts” in a way that a reasonable person would have understood.  PROTESTORS ON THE CAMPUS OF CORNELL YESTERDAY. (VIA GETTY IMAGES) But what about situations in which a victim is incapable of giving or refusing consent—for instance, while intoxicated? Asher explains that for an adult with their mental faculties intact to be considered incapable of consent, one of three conditions must be met: “You must be physically helpless, meaning comatose for the entire time—no physical or verbal response at any point; mentally incapacitated; or roofied.” That last condition, being roofied, is the key to understanding how this infuriating loophole came to exist in New York. Asher explains that in the ‘90s there was a surge in “roofying”: slipping Rohypnol, also known as the “date rape drug,” into someone’s drink. In trying to write legislation to address these new crimes, New York lawmakers “committed a rookie mistake.” What they wanted to do was write into law that a person was incapacitated and incapable of consent if they had been unknowingly given Rohypnol. But to single out Rohypnol would have left out any other drugs used to facilitate rape, like GHB, ketamine, or tranquilizers. So legislators wrote the code broadly to include any drug or intoxicant consumed without knowledge. And that was the error. “Because they only specified involuntary intoxication as a way to define your mental incapacitation,” explains Asher, “they left all these other kinds of cases out of the code.” Is Cornell the first known time this loophole has hindered a rape case?Unfortunately, no. In a 2023 case, two NYPD officers sexually abused a woman whom they had met at a bar in the Bronx. She became intoxicated of her own free will; the officers are seen on camera holding her up by the arms exiting the bar, and a second video shows them entering one of the officers’ apartment buildings, where they remained until 7:30 in the morning. This year, after reaching a plea deal, the officers were convicted of criminal sexual abuse—which is defined as misdemeanor “unwanted sexual touching.” Not rape. They both got probation, with only one of them having to go on the sex offender registry. Because that Jane Doe had been drinking voluntarily and was not completely knocked out, she was legally not considered incapacitated or incapable of consent. In the case of the Jane Doe who attended Cornell, the loophole applies because Doe was intoxicated before entering the frat house and allegedly consented to sex, though heavily under the influence of alcohol and ketamine—something at least one of her assailants was aware of. If the loophole had been closed, Doe would have been considered incapable of consenting. Full stop. “The problem with New York law,” Asher says, “is that it differentiates how it is that you came to be completely inebriated. Most states that have ended the loophole basically say…if you couldn’t pass a DUI test, then for sure you can’t consent. So anything that happened to you is rape. It’s such an easy fix.” Um, this is disgusting! Why hasn’t anyone done anything about this?Advocates and legislators have been trying to close this loophole for nearly a decade, via a bill that has garnered near-unanimous support in the state senate. But the bill has never been brought to the floor of the legislature for a vote, although throughout that time one man has had the power to do so: Speaker Carl Heastie, the Democrat from the Bronx who sets the legislative calendar. “The speaker controls all the levers by which a bill becomes a law, which is a huge democratic problem,” Asher explains. “In New York we think everything is great because the Democrats control the Senate, Assembly, and governor’s office. But you know what? There’s a king in Albany, and nobody’s calling him out.”  HOCHUL AND HEASTIE AT AN EVENT IN 2024. (VIA GETTY IMAGES) So now what?On the heels of the Cornell lawsuit, Heastie has agreed to convene a working group to discuss solutions for closing the loophole now that there is an active case—something he’s said he needed in the past in order to get this bill moving, according to Asher. However, Heastie has been in power for at least two other such cases (the 2023 case involving the NYPD officers, and another 2017 case), although Cornell is the most high-profile one so far; Governor Kathy Hochul has appointed New York Attorney General Letitia James as a special prosecutor to investigate Jane Doe’s claims. Still, if the law remains unchanged, James would have limited options for prosecution. Hochul could also, at any point while the investigation is underway, call for a special session of the New York State Assembly to address this issue before the normally scheduled session begins in 2027. But Heastie still needs to schedule a vote. A lot of people want to know: Why hasn’t he brought the bill looking to close the loophole to a vote? In the meantime, another question only Heastie can answer: How many women need to be revictimized by the system before Albany decides to do something about it? Call his office and ask. AND:
 ONE MORE THING: OUR CLIMATE HEROES DR. AYANA ELIZABETH JOHNSON TOES THE LINE BETWEEN "OPTIMIST" AND "WORRIED SCIENTIST" AT A CLIMATE WEEK DINNER HOSTED BY THE METEOR AND LA MER. (PHOTO BY KRISTEN BLUSH) Last month, dozens of women climate activists, scientists, journalists, and environmental entrepreneurs convened in New York City for a Climate Week dinner at abcV, co-hosted by The Meteor and La Mer. “Sustainability is a mediocre goal,” Ashlan Cousteau, a conservationist and one of La Mer’s Blue Heart ambassadors, told the crowd. “We want a better world.” Marine biologist Dr. Ayana Elizabeth Johnson, another ambassador and a member of The Meteor collective, urged the guests to keep thinking about climate issues as the midterm elections approach. “A number that I want you to remember is 11.2 million,” she said. “That is the number of people who have [the] environment as their number one voting issue, who are already registered to vote, and did not vote in America’s 2024 election.” She encouraged all of us to channel the “tenacity and creativity” of the climate activists she’d seen that week, including the people at dinner. When “you get 40 women in a room,” she said, “so much is possible.”  FOLLOW THE METEOR     Thank you for reading The Meteor! Got this from a friend? |
A Legal Loophole That Saved the Cornell 7...the First Time
  September 24, 2026 Greetings, Meteor readers, It’s only Tuesday, and this has already been a heavy week, especially as we learn more about the lawsuit being brought against Cornell University and the seven fraternity members accused of disgusting crimes. In today’s newsletter, we're uncovering the little-known legal apparatus that allows cases like these to escape investigation for so long. Plus, the Trump administration adds insult to injury, and a young icon is born. We recognize that this may be a difficult read for some, so if today’s newsletter is not for you, please know that we are with you in spirit, in grief, and in rage. Help is available if you need it. With extra love, Shannon Melero  WHAT'S GOING ONVoluntary intoxication exclusion: By now, the whole world has learned that earlier this month, a former Cornell University student, known only as Jane Doe, filed a civil lawsuit against the university and seven fraternity members, alleging that the men gang-raped her in 2024 and that the school failed to hold them accountable. (Their fraternity, Chi Phi, was banned from campus, but no criminal charges were brought against the accused.) On Sunday night, Tompkins County District Attorney Matthew Van Houten said his office would revisit the case to see whether criminal charges were appropriate, adding that local police initially hadn't conducted a thorough investigation and instead relied on information gathered by campus police—who never fully engaged local law enforcement. When the news broke that Van Houten’s office was re-opening an investigation, my phone buzzed off the table. For the last few months I have been investigating New York State’s voluntary intoxication exclusion loophole, a failure of the current penal code that excludes someone who was willingly intoxicated from being able to pursue rape charges against their assailant. Jane Doe was allegedly drunk of her own volition the night of her attack so, to put it bluntly: The New York State Penal Code says—for now—a crime did not take place at Cornell University that night. In other words, how someone became intoxicated is the legal difference between a morally reprehensible act and a crime. If someone voluntarily downs enough cocktails, advocate Will Rivera explained to The Meteor last year, their assault “does not technically constitute a crime.” (This changes if a victim presents with bruises or other physical evidence of battery.)  THE CORNELL CAMPUS IN ITHACA, NEW YORK (VIA GETTY IMAGES) In fact, Van Houten raised this exact distinction when he addressed why criminal charges were never brought in the Cornell case: “[Jane Doe] never says [in her original interview] that she was drugged without her knowledge,” he said. “She admits to taking drugs and alcohol voluntarily and with knowledge.” Doe’s lawyer says that campus police never followed up after the initial statement and did not thoroughly investigate the complaint despite evidence provided, and now we know one likely reason why. “There’s an environment where the police are like, Oh, this is just a waste of our time,” explains Elizabeth da Trinidade-Asher, a lawyer and co-chair of Justice Without Exclusion Coalition. “Because these cases are messy, prosecutors don’t take them. It's technically not a crime in the books.” Think all this sounds unjust? It is, and for the last eight years, advocates in New York State have been working on a bill that would close this loophole. “The legislature has to…say this is a crime, period, end of sentence,” says Trinidade-Asher, who has been lobbying for this bill for the last five years. “We recognize in a court of law that if you walk into a car dealership, visibly intoxicated, and you sign for a car, that signature is not valid,” adds Minister Peace, co-chair of Community for a Cause. Yet “we stop short in our law in New York when it comes to sexual assault if you got yourself intoxicated voluntarily.” The bill has passed the state senate five times and, this spring, obtained a record number of bipartisan co-sponsors, but Speaker of the New York State Assembly Carl Heastie, a Democrat, has not brought it to a vote. And the dismissive environment Trinidade-Asher describes is not limited to the police departments, nor to Cornell—it reaches all the way to the corridors of Albany, where this bill has been referred to as the “ruining-drunk-sex bill” by assembly members, Trinidade-Asher and Peace say.  SUMMER WILLIS, WHO HELPED CLOSE THE INTOXICATION LOOPHOLE IN HER HOME STATE OF TEXAS, JOINED ADVOCATES IN NEW YORK LAST YEAR TO BRING ATTENTION TO THE BILL. SHE HAS CONTINUED HER EFFORTS THIS YEAR. (VIA GETTY IMAGES) In May of this year, she and Peace were in Albany to lobby for the bill when Peace heard Assemblymember Patrick Burke of Buffalo describe the bill with that language. “He said it in a very jovial manner,” says Peace. “He was just like, ‘Oh, as me and my colleagues call this, the ‘ruining-drunk-sex bill.’ That took me aback.” Reached for comment, Burke tells The Meteor that he is a supporter of the bill, and plans to vote “yes” if it’s brought to the floor. He denies referring to it in a disrespectful manner, and a representative from his office clarified in a statement that Burke was using a colloquial term for the bill. “‘Drunk sex bill’ is something that was sort of a general reference to it,” Burke said on a call. “This is not something people in Albany are being callous about.” Callous? Maybe not. Infuriatingly slow? Let’s review: This bill has been in the works for nearly a decade. It has the support of survivors, legislators, and advocacy groups. Last year, 92 assembly members signed on as co-sponsors to bring the bill to a floor vote. Yet it has never been brought to a vote and it is still reportedly being called a “drunk sex bill.” And meanwhile, Jane Doe is left with limited legal recourse. New York state senator Nathalia Fernandez, one of the co-sponsors of the bill, released a statement yesterday saying that voluntary intoxication exclusion must be a priority for the next legislative session. She also announced a rally for Thursday at the Bronx County Courthouse to shed light on this loophole. So if you’re angry, hold your anger; tend to it like a houseplant. Bring it with you on Thursday if you’re local, and carry it into 2027 when this bill will have another opportunity to be brought to the floor. It could, after all, have given Jane Doe a chance to pursue justice. And it would have acknowledged: Rape is not “drunk sex.” It’s rape. The Meteor will continue to monitor the progress of this bill and offer further reporting on what's been holding it up all of these years. Stay with us. AND:
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“This is what I have to say”
  September 24, 2026 Greetings, Meteor readers, The Fat Bear Week bracket is out, and my money is riding on Bear 910, the daughter of former champion Beadnose. 910 is in a round-two head-to-head against her sister, 909, which probably makes things really awkward in the den.  I LOVE HER. (PHOTO COURTESY OF C. LOBURG) In today’s newsletter, Nona Willis Aronowitz has three questions for Jamia Wilson, the editor of Gloria Steinem’s posthumous memoir. Plus, a sneak peek at tomorrow’s season finale of UNDISTRACTED. But first, a little bit of news. 🐻, Shannon Melero  WHAT'S GOING ON
 Three Questions About….Editing Gloria SteinemEditor Jamia Wilson explains what it was like to shepherd the feminist icon’s final book. BY NONA WILLIS ARONOWITZ  IMAGES COURTESY OF JAMIA WILSON AND RANDOM HOUSE When Gloria Steinem’s longtime editor, Kate Medina, retired last year, she passed on her memoir project to Jamia Wilson, a VP and executive editor at Random House. Wilson was a close friend and collaborator of Steinem’s who was nearly 50 years her junior. The resulting memoir, An Unexpected Life, turned out to be the final piece of writing Steinem shared with the world, and it hits bookshelves this week. The Meteor talked to Wilson—one of our founding members—about what it was like to edit her mentor (though “Gloria always hated it when I called her that”) and her favorite passages of the book. When was the last time you met with Gloria, and do you think that she had a sense that this book was her last word? It was at a talking circle in July at her home. I’d been to many of her talking circles, and this one was with librarians and people who were invested in conversations about books and freedom of expression. And with Gloria being such a passionate writer and reader, it really was a profound experience for me to witness her in conversation with people who are the connectors of books and their readers. I left that talking circle with a deep awe of how she still had that ability to make every single person feel seen and loved and supported. She was still embodying the French idea of “refaire le monde,” like: “Let’s remake the world with a dinner party.” [But I didn’t get a sense that we were in her final days.] I got there a little early like I always tried to do, and we talked about how I was going to the beach later that summer. She said, "Oh, tell me about it when you get back, but you should also put Positano on your list—it's the most beautiful." So I felt the conversation had ellipses on it at the end.  STEINEM AND WILSON AT A 2015 DISCUSSION FOR STEINEM'S FIRST MEMOIR, "MY LIFE ON THE ROAD" (VIA GETTY IMAGES) You’d known Gloria for more than 20 years, starting when you were a youth organizer for the March for Women's Lives in 2004—but this was your first time having an editor-writer relationship with her. What was that like, and what was her process like as a writer? Working on the project became an intergenerational conversation with us and her whole team; in true Gloria fashion, the process was a circle. She also told me, "Jamia, everyone needs to be edited, so I need you to really make sure you tell me every critique that comes to mind." She was so exacting and diligent in that way. Gloria identified as a writer, and the only thing that she said she regretted in this life was not writing more. She was very analog about it: She wrote on yellow legal pads and these iconic little notebooks that she always would write her ideas on. And sometimes she would send pictures of those pages—or sometimes I would even ask for them, because I wanted to get a sense of, Oh, what did you cross out? I received the manuscript right on time and at about 80,000 words [which is not very long]. I was like, "Hey, you've had a really long life. If you really wanted to go off and say more, you could.” And she said, "No, this is what I have to say." It was always one of her feminist superpowers to be clear, concise, compelling. What were your favorite parts of the book to work on? The first section of the book is called “Bad Things I'm Glad Happened to Me,” which was a core part of her thesis—in particular, two portions of that chapter called “We learn from difference, not sameness,” and “If it's all white, it isn't feminism.” There's a passage in that section that reads: "Black women have been seen as leading one another, but rarely as the leaders of white women and least of all as the leaders of white men. The truth is that they have been universal leaders of us all.” I was very moved to see her modeling that kind of evolution. That section was very important to me not only as an editor, but also as a Black feminist raised by a Black feminist scholar mom.  ONE MORE THING...Tomorrow’s season finale of UNDISTRACTED will feature an encouraging conversation with Vice President Kamala Harris and Brittany Packnett Cunningham. They touch on our political future, a persuasive theory about the current backlash against Black cultural institutions, and what 2028 may hold—and they settle the debate on which HU is the HU (iykyk). You can enjoy the full episode as soon as it drops on YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts.  FOLLOW THE METEOR Thank you for reading The Meteor! Got this from a friend? |
Is the Menopause Enlightenment here?
  September 22, 2026 Greetings, Meteor readers, Since last week, I have been in deep debate with a friend about which flavor profile is better: apples or pumpkins. We have been friends for 16 years, and I think this will be the thing that tears us apart forever.  ME TO MY FRIENDS ON A RANDOM THURSDAY In today’s newsletter, we dig into a crucial health gap that’s been harming older women. Plus, a Mississippi grand jury comes up short on the Nolan Wells case, and the school news story everyone is talking about right now. Apple hive, Shannon Melero  WHAT'S GOING ONA Menopause Enlightenment? Over the last few years, menopause has experienced a glow-up. It’s gone from a topic women whispered about, and doctors overlooked, to an experience screamed loudly and proudly by the likes of Halle Berry. With its overabundance of new creams, apps, beauty products, supplements, and Samantha Jones references, the rise of Big Menopause can sometimes seem like just another wellness marketing phenomenon. But it has also led to some long-overdue justice for older women, who have for generations been failed by the medical establishment. We’re inching closer to facing those failures. The attention around menopause has led to some necessary corrections to how this period of a woman’s physical life is studied, funded, and treated. You’ve probably heard the story: Back in 2002, the Women’s Health Initiative, a hormone therapy trial, was halted after researchers found that breast cancer rates among women in the trial had gone over the safety threshold. The conclusion drawn was that the risks of estrogen use outweighed the benefits; these results were later found to be profoundly overstated, but in the meantime, women were denied what we now understand to be vital care. For years, spooked by misinterpretations of the 2002 study, the FDA had placed a black box warning on all estrogen products, discouraging doctors from prescribing it to patients. As a result, many women suffered. Women like Roselin Shankland, a 78-year-old woman who died in 2023 after a urinary tract infection spread to her bloodstream. “She spent her life taking care of people,” Shankland’s daughter told USA Today, which just published an extensive investigation of menopause-related medical neglect. “And in the end, no one took care of her. My mother didn’t need to die.” Specifically, she could have been saved by a highly effective preventive treatment: A recent peer-reviewed study of almost 2 million women in Urology Journal found that vaginal estrogen cream, which strengthens vaginal tissue and makes it less prone to infection, reduces the chance of UTI hospitalization in menopausal women by half. And yet most women are never offered the option—including Shankland. “This one very simple medicine could have saved my mother,” Shankland’s daughter said. In fact, according to USA Today’s analysis of the data, vaginal estrogen could have saved the lives of 22,158 post-menopausal women with recurring UTIs between 2017 and 2025. Yet even after the FDA’s black box warnings were removed a year ago, this treatment is still not widely prescribed for UTIs. So where does that leave all of us who are approaching or currently in menopause, or with loved ones who are? One doctor tells USA Today, “Every woman in menopause needs vaginal estrogen.” Periodt! (Or lack of period, I guess.) It’s not a universal rule, of course—some groups, like people who have a history of blood clots or certain cancers, are still not advised to take estrogen—but the point is this: Life-threatening, treatable illness is not the price anyone born with a uterus should have to pay for aging. AND:
 HASHIMI, LEFT, ALONG WITH GOLD MEDALIST GUO LI C OF CHINA AND BRONZE MEDALIST LEUNG WING YEE OF HONG KONG AT THE PODIUM AFTER THE WOMEN'S ROAD RACE EVENT AT THE 2026 ASIAN GAMES (VIA GETTY IMAGES)
 EVERYONE IS TALKING ABOUT...…journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones’s reflective piece about school choice and segregation in The New York Times Magazine this weekend. If you haven’t read it already: Hannah-Jones writes beautifully about what happened when her daughter Najya realized that she’d intentionally been sent to an under-resourced school as part of her parents’ wider mission to improve a racist school system. In short, Najya had some questions. The story itself is incredibly well-written, and the reactions have been plentiful, with some of the brightest women we know discussing what it takes to both live your values and give your child what they need. Many are echoing a sentiment so many parents seem to share: How exactly do I do what’s best for my child? How do we even define “best” in a system so unjust? Back in 2016, when Hannah-Jones first wrote about her decision, she and The Meteor’s Rebecca Carroll sat down for a conversation about it and their shared worries over making the best decision for their children, which you can watch here. If you’re a parent navigating the school system for your child, we’d love to know what you thought of the piece, and how you’re making your own decisions about what’s best. Reply to this email and let us know.  FOLLOW THE METEOR     Thank you for reading The Meteor! Got this from a friend? |
A Lightning Round on the Word "No"
Anna Holmes' new book celebrates putting your foot down
By Nona Willis Aronowitz
Do you have trouble saying “no”? Writer and Jezebel founder Anna Holmes gets it—but she’s not letting you off the hook. The Power of No: A Celebration is her new book, or “subtle manifesto” as she calls it, that makes the case for shaking your head and setting boundaries, even in a world that discourages it. Set up as a series of vignettes and quotes, The Power of No is so persuasive that, mid-reading, I finally sent a firm rejection to a dating-app match who had been annoying me for days. The relief was startling.
Here are some nuggets from Holmes about that potent little word.
On the OG masters of “no”:
Kids really know how to say “no.” In some cases, they need to be encouraged not to say it because you can't just say “no” to everything and you have to do things you don't want to do. But I envy the freedom that young kids have to say “nope,” before they start to question the consequences at around nine or ten years old. They know the word before they even start talking; babies know how to push things away and reject them.
On why knowing yourself helps you say “no”:
We are socialized as women to be accommodating and not say “no,” and because of that, we don't always know how to assert what it is we do want. The more I understand about what I want, the easier it is for me to know how to say “no.” I hope the book inspires people to take a beat and say, "Before I say ‘yes’ or ‘no’ to something, I have to ask myself what I really want as opposed to trying to fill up dead air or assuage my anxiety about how to respond.”
On Gen Z, the “no” generation:
Listen, if I had had access in my twenties to a bunch of women talking on TikTok about the red flags to look out for with guys, or how they were not going to have sex for a year, it might have felt really revolutionary. Perhaps the younger generation is too cautious, but maybe the flip side is that they're more empowered to say “no.” Often when I see younger people on social media talking about things like relationships and sex and how they navigate the workplace, I'm like, “I fucking wish I knew that when I was 24.”
Favorite form of “no”:
Maya Angelou’s “We’re not going to have that opportunity today.” I like it because it’s polite, it’s firm, it can’t be argued with and she uses “we,” which implicates the question-asker and is very clever.
Bravest personal “no”:
My “no” to bad treatment from a boss from many years ago who was an underminer and a gaslighter.
Ghosting: Yes or no?
I am all for ghosting if it is directed towards someone who 1) won’t take “no” for an answer or won’t hear your “no” or 2) towards someone to whom saying “no” might create emotional and physical danger for the recipient. Oh also, I am for ghosting if the person doing the asking has treated you badly.
Which AI Movie Are We in Now?
 September 15, 2026 Greetings, Meteor readers, This morning I sent my kid to school in a cardigan. You know what that means…  In today’s newsletter, we spotlight the women guiding us through a very noisy AI doomcycle. Plus, the EPA is doing anti-abortionists’ dirty work, and Nona Willis Aronowitz gets a whole lot of “no”s from Jezebel founder and author Anna Holmes. Moving into suéter weather, Shannon Melero  WHAT'S GOING ONThree tech bros of the apocalypse: In the seminal 2006 film, “Mission: Impossible 3,” Simon Pegg’s character describes a computer program powerful enough to destroy the world; they call it an “anti-god.” Five movies later, the program is a reality and a real nightmare for Tom Cruise. Right now, we’re living in MI:3, and women in tech are trying to save us before we hit MI:8. Over the weekend, prominent men in AI have hit the airwaves to warn everyone that their creation has the potential to “kill all humans” by the end of this decade. Spurred by Anthropic researcher Jacob Coxon, who resigned to sound an alarm about AI’s existential threats, they called for a global slowdown of the technology. While these warnings are not entirely new, they are being treated as groundbreaking in part because they are coming from the very men working at the killing-humans factory. But some of the smartest and most balanced analyses of what’s happening right now are coming from women in tech, like computer scientist Timnit Gebru, who, in an interview with WIRED this week, pointed out one of the flaws in the current framing of “superintelligence,” which assumes that powerful AI forces will act of their own volition, independent of their human masters. “When a bridge collapses, you don’t analyse whether the bridge was ethical or sentient or why it decided to collapse,” Gebru pointed out. “You ask, who is the person who built this bridge to be so flimsy? There are permits you have to acquire. There are supposed to be tests. When you ask about the bridge collapsing itself, you’ve lost the thread.”  GEBRU SPEAKING ON A SXSW PANEL EARLIER THIS YEAR TITLED RECLAIMING OUR HUMANITY IN THE AGE OF AI. (VIA GETTY IMAGES) Of course, the truth is that AI does move in unexpected ways (most famously in the Hugging Face incident this summer, in which an OpenAI model attacked another system without specific prompting). But in an extremely thorough breakdown of recent “rogue” activities, tech expert Abi Awomosu, author of the How Not to Use AI Substack, writes, “[AI agents] were given a goal and left alone…That isn’t going rogue. That’s being left unsupervised. The humans wanted the capability measured without the guardrails, so they removed the guardrails, and then stood back and marveled at what an unguarded thing does. You don’t get to call that the machine’s character. That’s your bad parenting.” To be fair, regular AI and superintelligence are not the same thing; the latter can cause an agent to end up far afield from its original task. Which is why the government absolutely does need to step in with regulations, especially on the development of superintelligence. But the people closest to the matter also have to regulate themselves, if only to preserve their own hide. Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei wrote an essay proposing a “pace the frontier” approach, which is all fine and well, but babe, y’all own the frontier—you can slow the pace right now if you wanted to. And you should want to, considering the whole human extinction thing. Should we be worried about the future of AI? Yes. And we should also be worried about the present of AI because, as the many, many headlines prove, our destruction is not a singular event a few years down the line. It’s happening right now in slow drips and drabs: “What about floods and fires? What about a major disruption to the global food supply chain? There are real threats coming to us, like people being able to create and use chemical weapons,” Gebru said in her WIRED interview. But part of the willingness to overlook those but snap to attention at the thought of an “anti-god” comes from privilege and a sense that “you can’t imagine other things harming you,” she says. “Like if you’re not worried about police brutality, or floods, or warfare – things that can actually kill you – then you can obsess over the machine-god.” So, if we are in the middle of the “Mission Impossible” franchise, we still have time to get regulations passed and frontiers paced before we reach the stage where Tom Cruise realizes that his poor decision-making has brought humanity to the brink of imminent death. The actual experts are telling us—shouting from the rooftops, in fact—that this particular mission is possible. AND:
 SIRI, PLAY ALL WE DO IS WIN. (VIA GETTY IMAGES)
 A Lightning Round on…the Word “No”Anna Holmes’ new book celebrates putting your foot down.BY NONA WILLIS ARONOWITZ  COURTESY OF PENGUIN RANDOM HOUSE Do you have trouble saying “no”? Writer and Jezebel founder Anna Holmes gets it—but she’s not letting you off the hook. The Power of No: A Celebration is her new book, or “subtle manifesto” as she calls it, that makes the case for shaking your head and setting boundaries, even in a world that discourages it. Set up as a series of vignettes and quotes, The Power of No is so persuasive that, mid-reading, I finally sent a firm rejection to a dating-app match who had been annoying me for days. The relief was startling. Here are some nuggets from Holmes about that potent little word. On the OG masters of “no”: Kids really know how to say “no.” In some cases, they need to be encouraged not to say it because you can't just say “no” to everything and you have to do things you don't want to do. But I envy the freedom that young kids have to say “nope,” before they start to question the consequences at around nine or ten years old. They know the word before they even start talking; babies know how to push things away and reject them. On why knowing yourself helps you say “no”: We are socialized as women to be accommodating and not say “no,” and because of that, we don't always know how to assert what it is we do want. The more I understand about what I want, the easier it is for me to know how to say “no.” I hope the book inspires people to take a beat and say, "Before I say ‘yes’ or ‘no’ to something, I have to ask myself what I really want as opposed to trying to fill up dead air or assuage my anxiety about how to respond.” On Gen Z, the “no” generation: Listen, if I had had access in my twenties to a bunch of women talking on TikTok about the red flags to look out for with guys, or how they were not going to have sex for a year, it might have felt really revolutionary. Perhaps the younger generation is too cautious, but maybe the flip side is that they're more empowered to say “no.” Often when I see younger people on social media talking about things like relationships and sex and how they navigate the workplace, I'm like, “I fucking wish I knew that when I was 24.” Favorite form of “no”: Maya Angelou’s “We’re not going to have that opportunity today.” I like it because it’s polite, it’s firm, it can’t be argued with and she uses “we,” which implicates the question-asker and is very clever. Bravest personal “no”: My “no” to bad treatment from a boss from many years ago who was an underminer and a gaslighter. Ghosting: Yes or no? I am all for ghosting if it is directed towards someone who 1) won’t take “no” for an answer or won’t hear your “no” or 2) towards someone to whom saying “no” might create emotional and physical danger for the recipient. Oh also, I am for ghosting if the person doing the asking has treated you badly.  FOLLOW THE METEOR Thank you for reading The Meteor! Got this from a friend? |
A "Never Event" Is Killing Women
 September 10, 2026 Greetings, Meteor readers, Y’all. My favorite time of the year is coming, and I just hope all of you are ready to hear me talk about Fat Bear Week all month. I actually have a countdown to make sure I am up bright and early for Fat Bear bracket reveal day. I’m rooting for the return of two-time champion Grazer.  MY HOME GIRL GRAZER, WILL SHE TAKE THE CROWN THIS YEAR? (SCREENSHOT VIA EXPLORE.ORG) In today’s newsletter, Dr. Dara Kass helps explain a concerning rise in ectopic pregnancy deaths. Plus, another great doctor helps us understand the UN climate report. Bears rule, Shannon Melero  WHAT'S GOING ON“Legally protected in every single state”: Yesterday, ProPublica released an analysis of CDC data finding that ectopic pregnancy-related deaths have doubled in the United States. Between 2020 and 2025, roughly 200 women died, compared to around 100 deaths in the previous six years. But Dr. Dara Kass, an emergency medicine physician, was not surprised. “We knew this was gonna happen,” she says. Three years ago, Kass had been an author on a research paper examining the then-early impact of Dobbs on the treatment of ectopic pregnancies. The paper saw the beginnings of what the ProPublica analysis confirms: Abortion bans are creating delays in care across the country, even in states that don’t have bans. Firstly, with appropriate diagnosis and care, "it should be a never event to die from an ectopic pregnancy,” Kass says. While ectopic pregnancies can become fatal, they are extremely treatable when diagnosed early. The only treatment is termination, as ectopic pregnancies are not viable and can, says Kass, “kill you quickly” if left unattended. People who don't know that they're pregnant or don’t seek care can die from a ruptured ectopic pregnancy. “But if somebody is presented to the healthcare system, pregnant with abdominal pain, vaginal bleeding, suspicion of ectopic pregnancy, there is no world in which they should be lost to the system before treatment,” she says Technically, even the strictest abortion bans allow doctors to administer lifesaving treatments, which is what terminating an ectopic pregnancy is. So why did 200 women die preventable deaths in the last five years? Because despite what the laws say, doctors still fear criminal prosecution. “Doctors feel the need to be able to defend [the diagnosis of ectopic pregnancy] in court, even though nobody's ever made them go to court” over an abortion that was part of emergency care, says Dr. Kass. She adds that doctors’ fear is stoked by a lack of reassurance from state legislatures that doctors won’t need to go above and beyond to defend a diagnosis, as well as a gap in education on state-based laws for emergency room doctors. So that is almost certainly why the death rate has spiked up in states with abortion bans. But it has also done so in abortion-friendly states—and there, the reasons are more complex. The ProPublica analysis identifies a number of factors, including the Trump administration’s cuts to maternal health staff at HHS and the elimination of CDC funding for programs that offer guidance to emergency physicians dealing with obstetrics cases. Another major factor, according to Kass? Catholic hospitals. “That doesn’t usually cross anyone’s mind,” Kass tells me, “but there are stories of people who have been denied care for ectopic pregnancies because they sought that care in a Catholic hospital.” The decision-making process around care at religious health institutions is “more aligned with what happens in a state with restrictions,” even if that hospital is in, say, Connecticut or California. And the number of Catholic hospitals has grown; as of 2020, nearly two in five women of reproductive age lived in a place where the only available care was from a religious-based institution. Today, Kass is researching the “penetration of Catholic hospital systems” across the country, particularly those facilities that are “presenting themselves as critical-access hospitals” in rural areas. In order to prevent this problem from getting any worse, the entire medical community needs to, as Kass says, “get on the same page” and remain steady in the knowledge that termination is the only way to save lives during an ectopic pregnancy. And regardless of their location, remember that abortion for “ectopic pregnancy is legally protected care in every single state. AND:
 APOLOGIES TO MY COLLEAGUE TARA BUT I MUST FOLLOW MY HEART. I LOVE THEM BOTH, THOUGH! (VIA GETTY IMAGES)
 ONE MORE THINGTomorrow marks 25 years since the September 11 attacks on the Twin Towers and the Pentagon. It’s always been a complex anniversary, one full of grief for lives lost that day, but also the wars and Islamophobia of the years that followed. (As Susan Sontag memorably wrote in The New Yorker not long after 9/11: “Let’s by all means grieve together. But let’s not be stupid together. A few shreds of historical awareness might help us understand what has just happened, and what may continue to happen.”) Today, we’re learning more about these daycare teachers who became heroes that day, and honoring those who have tirelessly fought for justice for first responders and other survivors. And, heeding Sontag, still trying to understand.  FOLLOW THE METEOR Thank you for reading The Meteor! Got this from a friend? |
JD Vance's beautiful dark twisted fantasy
  September 8, 2026 Dearest Meteor readers, Today my older kid finally went to Official, Legit, Free School, also known as universal pre-k (and yes, my obsessive ass snagged a spot at aftercare). What should I do with the extra thousand dollars in my bank account each month?! Wrong answers only.  Speaking of government-funded childcare, today we’re examining a JD Vance-backed plan that could be good but…isn’t. Plus, a Lindsay Clancy reading list, and another reason to love Dolly Parton. Lunch is free, too!!! Nona Willis Aronowitz  WHAT'S GOING ONLabor of love: Over the weekend, The New York Times reported that the White House was preparing a rule that’d give parents money to stay at home with their kids. For families under a certain income level, a stay-at-home parent could receive about $9,000 per child per year. Sounds great, right? Anyone who’s cared for a kid fulltime knows it’s no joke; the six weeks I was the sole caregiver for my older daughter were eye-opening. That sweet and satisfying but also isolating and exhausting period made it crystal-clear that the vaunted concept of “parental love” obscures the fact that the labor of raising a kid is, well, still labor. But the proposed draft, which may not need the approval of Congress, is decidedly not in this spirit. For one thing, the subsidy would only be available for married couples. And the Trump administration—specifically J.D. Vance, who has long denigrated daycare as “crap” and “a disaster” and praised stay-at-home parents (read: moms)—isn’t providing additional funding for this program. Rather, the plan is to steal from an existing, already underfunded federal program called the Child Care and Development Fund, which subsidizes childcare for low-income parents so they can work or go to school. Right now, four out of five families receiving these subsidies are helmed by single working parents, most of them mothers. If this proposal is enacted, many of those families would lose benefits to the ones that Vance openly favors: married, 1950s-style families (unlike the Times, I will not be saying “traditional” because, well, they’re not!). The change could deepen the poverty of individual families and worsen the ongoing childcare crisis by depriving centers of money they depend on. The tragedy of this proposal is that it’s a twisted and extremely dark interpretation of a concept that feminists have been demanding for decades. The Wages for Housework movement—launched by Silvia Federici, Selma James, and Mariarosa Dalla Costa in 1972—argued that wives’ domestic work, including caring for children, was an unconscionable system of mass exploitation. “They say it is love,” Federici famously declared. “We say it is unwaged work.”  I FEEL THE ROBE-TUGS OF THOSE CHILDREN SO VISCERALLY. (VIA WIKIMEDIA COMMONS) Despite its name, the movement was not necessarily about calling for literal pay as much as demanding an awareness of how profoundly capitalism depends on the unpaid work of women. But WFH intersected with another movement in the ‘70s and ‘80s that was very much about dollars and cents: the welfare rights movement. Activists like Johnnie Tillmon, a Black single mother on welfare and a founder of the National Welfare Rights Organization (NWRO), spoke out against the invasive, “super-sexist” welfare system and reframed government support for caregivers as a guaranteed right—no strings attached. Notably, neither of these movements pitted stay-at-home moms against women who wanted to or had to work. Instead, they were about expanding all women’s ability to shape their own destinies; Tillmon called the women of the NWRO “the frontline troops of women’s freedom.” These women understood that mothers who worked inside and outside the home have a lot in common. And as for Vance’s policy: There are plenty of ways to support stay-at-home parents without screwing over working ones. By creating a government incentive for women to stay home with their children while penalizing working mothers at the same time, the Trump administration is trying to make us into enemies. One of the goals of Wages for Housework was precisely to undercut this artificial rivalry. They were “reconstructing a real solidarity among women,” Mariarosa Dalla Costa wrote in 1971. “A common solidarity against a common form of labor.” Or, if you prefer, Silvia Federici’s pithier rallying cry from 1974: “We are all housewives.” P.S. Dr. Federici spoke with Reshma Saujani for The Meteor back in 2021 about the care crisis and women’s “labor of love.” Check out the conversation here. AND:
ONE MORE THINGThe Lindsay Clancy case ended in a mistrial, but I can’t stop thinking about these devastating deaths and the mushroom cloud of cultural commentary around them. Here are some reads that have helped put this case in perspective for me:
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The magic of Gloria’s living room
  September 3, 2026 Dearest Meteor readers, I’ve spent all day thinking about feminist icon and beloved Meteor fairy godmother Gloria Steinem, who died yesterday at the age of 92. I must admit that unlike my colleagues here, I was slow to get acquainted with her brilliance: As the daughter of a radical feminist who wrote a scathing resignation letter to Ms. in 1975, I never felt a natural connection. And I figured Steinem had gotten enough shine for a lifetime. But I later realized that her larger-than-life status had prevented me from appreciating the far more complex—and radical—woman she actually was, a journalist who changed with the times and genuinely made space for the next generation (as evidenced by my social media feed today, which is filled with sweet pictures of her with my feminist contemporaries). I’ll always regret not meeting her. Today, Cindi Leive remembers her friend, whose living room was the site of The Meteor’s first editorial meeting. And we point you toward Gloria’s own writing—worth reading, because it’s never too late. Basking in Gloria’s shine, Nona Willis Aronowitz  THE ROOM WHERE IT HAPPENS (FOR SIX DECADES): A GATHERING WITH THE METEOR AND FRIENDS IN GLORIA’S LIVING ROOM, AUGUST 2024. GLORIA’S FOUNDATION WILL CONTINUE THE WORK.  G-L-O-R-I-AShe was a rockstar and a backup singerBY CINDI LEIVE The first time I met Gloria Steinem was in her living room—yes, that living room, the same one you’ve seen all over Instagram, with its wild pillows and Indian artwork and marigold walls; the living room that Gloria for six decades has invited “talking circles” of women into, convinced that the best ideas happen when people are in a room together. This was the mid-1990s. I’d been a fan of Ms., the legendary magazine Gloria co-founded, as a kid—my mom had a subscription which I regularly stole, and, fun fact, I ordered my first fake ID from its back pages. Then, as a baby editor at Glamour, I read Gloria’s “Sex, Lies and Advertising” essay in Ms. and began to understand why there were so many pages in most women’s titles about makeup and so few about the kinds of things my friends and I talked about over dinner: money, and birth control, and the books we were reading. My fandom grew. So my friend Amy Richards, who worked with Gloria, invited me to a dinner party at her boss’s house. I brought a notebook, ready to scribble down the feminist nuggets of wisdom I was sure Gloria would spend the evening dispensing as we, her disciples, gathered round. But my main memory of the night is that she did not hold court—instead, she went around the room and asked us to. As she later put it, “I don’t learn while I’m talking. I learn while I’m listening.” And that was always true: As the years passed and I got to know her, she always, unfailingly, listened. It made her an excellent journalist and an even better human. During my time as editor-in-chief of Glamour, we honored her as a Woman of the Year—and she wanted most to meet the young activists in the audience and hear what they were working on. She also listened differently: Once she was speaking on a panel I was organizing and a baby was wailing in the audience. I was growing frantic and uncharitable at the noise. Then Gloria took the mic. “Is there any better sound than a baby crying?” she asked. “That’s hope.” There are so many things to say about her today: That before anything, she was a gifted writer; for every zinger of hers you may know (“The truth will set you free, but first it will piss you off”) there is also a beautifully crafted essay (see below). That she believed firmly that humans are social animals (I remember her once rolling her eyes when I used the common phrase “We have to have hard conversations”—“No!” she exclaimed. “We learn from joy.”). That she was a prolific reader and could make connections between foreign policy, Greek mythology and Native culture. That she was funny, with a knack for grand gestures (when The New York Times finally and very belatedly adopted “Ms.” as a term for women, replacing “Miss” and “Mrs.”, she delivered flowers to the publisher in the newsroom). That she could swear: “fanfuckingtastic” was a high compliment. And that she was brilliant: When the group of us who would become The Meteor had our first editorial ideas meeting in her living room just before the pandemic—her idea, because “I love an editorial meeting”—she brought up the fact that Bill Cosby and Jeffrey Epstein lived on the same block in her neighborhood. “We should go protest!” she said. (I still regret that we didn’t do this.)  LIFELONG FRIENDS GLORIA STEINEM AND DOROTHY PITMAN HUGHES. YOU MAY KNOW THE EARLIER VERSION OF THIS PHOTOGRAPH, BUT THE 2013 RECREATION IS *CHEF’S KISS*. CREDIT: DANIEL BAGAN, VIA CITY OF THE MUSEUM OF NEW YORK In August 2024, just as Kamala Harris began her race for president, The Meteor gathered a group of women journalists, media types and advocates in Gloria’s living room. There was an cautiously exuberant vibe, especially as Gloria remembered Shirley Chisholm’s epic 1972 run for president. Our next gathering was three months later, in late November, but it felt like a century. Guests hugged Gloria tentatively, as if she might be fragile or despondent, the rights she worked so hard and so long crumbling around us. But she was determined: furious, but determined. “The role of the older generation is to be hopeful,” she said, “because we know how bad things used to be,” and that change is possible, if not linear. Her mood was contagious. This morning, Katie Couric asked Amy Richards—who remained Gloria’s close collaborator for decades—how women would react to Gloria’s death at a time when it feels like we need her more than ever. Actually, “people were too dependent on Gloria” as a singular figure, Amy said. “People would say, Tell us, What would Gloria do? And she would say: Well, what would you do?” So: What will you do? What will we do? We’ll gather, like the social animals we are, and we’ll listen, and we’ll keep going. It’ll be fanfuckingtastic. —Cindi Leive, co-founder, The Meteor, and executive producer, Dear Ms. (HBO)  STEINEM BECAME A FEMINIST AFTER COVERING AN ABORTION SPEAKOUT. “HOW MUCH POWER COULD WE EVER HAVE IF WE HAD NO POWER OVER OUR OWN BODIES?" SHE WONDERED AFTERWARD. (VIA GETTY)  GLORIA STEINEM, THE WRITER: OUR SELECTED LIST
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Following the Parton Playbook
  August 20, 2026 Greetings, Meteor readers, It’s been a long, sad week with the deaths of actor Tim Curry, queen of everything Dolly Parton, and, heartbreakingly, the voice of Eeyore. But, as always, we’re grateful to be working through all of it with you. In today’s newsletter, we’ve got Dolly’s legacy, Meta’s settlement, and injustice on a Navy vessel.  WHAT'S GOING ONWWDD (what would Dolly do): The death of Dolly Parton this week has left a gaping hole in the hearts of millions, but it’s also ensured that the breadth of her philanthropic work is understood, which is no small thing. Parton’s Imagination Library donated three hundred million books; she helped fund a COVID-19 vaccine; and she once gave $12.5 million over just a few months to families who lost their homes after a fire. The New York Times notes that Parton was so good at giving her own money away that other rich people, including Jeff Bezos, asked her to give away some of theirs. Dolly Parton was, in so many ways, the blueprint. “Dolly was not kind and generous despite growing up somewhere that was ransacked and impoverished,” writes author Mandy Len Catron, who, like Parton, was raised in an Appalachian community. “She was kind and generous because she grew up in a place where people knew how to care for one another because there wasn’t much to go around.” Community care was at the center of Dolly’s work. So: How well will the next generation of stars follow the Parton Playbook of humanitarian commitment? That’s an open question—but this weekend holds a hopeful preview.  MOTHER PARTON PERFORMING DURING THE LAUNCH OF IMAGINATION LIBRARY. (VIA GETTY IMAGES) In Irvine, California, singer Olivia Rodrigo is hosting the Daisy Chain Fields Festival, a show that will benefit organizations serving women and girls, among them Black Mamas Matter Alliance, FreeFrom, and the Center for Reproductive Rights. This is not Rodrigo’s first rodeo when it comes to supporting reproductive freedom. In 2024, when she was touring for her album “Guts,” Rodrigo partnered with local groups to distribute condoms and emergency contraception at her shows; a portion of her tour’s proceeds went to the National Network of Abortion Funds. The backlash (“promiscuous!”) was brutal, and eventually the distribution had to stop. Against that backdrop—and the general rightward swing of Trump 2—many artists might have backed away from embracing issues at all. But in aligning herself with 13 other acts, Rodrigo is not just showing up; she’s helping create safety in numbers and a model that other young artists can point to when their publicists tell them their words are too controversial, risky, or otherwise dangerous to the bottom line.  Against a backdrop of global funding for women’s rights organizations dropping catastrophically this year, the festival's exposure feels meaningful. “We live in a world where most people just accept gender-based violence as normal and to be expected,” Sonya Passi, the founder of FreeFrom, tells The Meteor. “Daisy Chain Fields is giving a global stage to our message - we can end gender-based violence if we invest in survivors and…we each have a part in making it happen.” And as a wise woman once said, “If you don’t like the road you’re walking on, start paving another.” AND:
 Love The Meteor? Think independent media that unapologetically centers women, girls and nonbinary people is more important now than ever? Us too! That’s why we hope you’ll consider supporting The Meteor Fund, The Meteor’s nonprofit initiative that backs our journalism and community-building work. Your tax-deductible donation (little or large—your wallet, your choice) to our summer impact campaign will help The Meteor Fund expand our work this fall, with educational briefings, live events on gender justice and human rights, and more. If you’re inclined to give, please do so! We love doing this, and we love you.  FOLLOW THE METEOR Thank you for reading The Meteor! Got this from a friend? |
