October 14, 2026

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Sexual-assault allegations against seven Cornell students have reignited decades-old arguments that American universities are facing a rape epidemic. The data, however, suggest otherwise. The Bureau of Justice Statistics’ National Crime Victimization Survey, which includes unreported crimes, estimates that the rape and sexual-assault rate for people age 12 or older fell from 4.3 victimizations per 1,000 people in 1993 to 2.0 in 2024.

What has increased, Christina Buttons points out, is the range of experiences that individuals now describe as nonconsensual. This “concept creep” means that the definition of sexual nonconsent has expanded. Once thought of in terms of force and incapacity, nonconsent now includes insufficient enthusiasm, silence, and feelings of pressure and deceit.

“A sexual ethic based on a clear ‘no’ asks men to respect women’s choices,” Buttons writes. “The expanding definition of nonconsent imposes a newer standard, asking men to judge whether a woman is sober enough, enthusiastic enough, sufficiently free from pressure, and unlikely to feel differently about the encounter later.”

Read about some of the ramifications here.

Earlier this month, U.S. Representative Mary Miller introduced the Yaeli Martinez Child Protection Act, a direct response to a 2024 foster-care rule enacted under the Biden administration. The rule had asserted that parents who don’t affirm their children’s “gender identity” threaten their well-being and safety. “As this principle spread unchecked into trainings for social workers, lawyers, and judges, it undermined procedural fairness, parental rights, and the well-being of sex-distressed minors,” Joseph Figliolia explains.

Miller’s bill would undo all this, protecting parents who raise their children according to their sex from abuse allegations, and defunding trainings that teach otherwise. It would also amend the Parental Kidnapping Protection Act, prohibiting states from taking custody of minors to medically transition them. “The bill would not weaken a state’s ability to intervene in genuine cases of abuse,” Figliolia writes, “but it would protect parents who oppose transition for scientific, ethical, or religious reasons.”

Read more about the bill, and the trans-identified teenager for whom it was named, here.

Last week, New York Governor Kathy Hochul announced that the state would opt in to the Federal Scholarship Tax Credit program (FSTC). The program enables residents to make tax-deductible contributions to Scholarship Granting Organizations, which give scholarships to families to use for transferring their children to private schools or for other educational expenses.

“Hochul deserves credit for holding firm as New York’s teachers’ unions and their allies waged a fierce campaign to keep the state out of the FSTC program,” Danyela Egorov writes. “We should hope other blue-state governors will demonstrate the same courage.”

Read more about the program here.