Source: The Conversation – USA – By Siwei Lyu, Professor of Computer Science and Engineering; Director, UB Media Forensic Lab, University at Buffalo
AI image and video generators now produce fully lifelike content.AI-generated image by Siwei Lyu using Google Gemini 3
Over the course of 2025, deepfakes improved dramatically. AI-generated faces, voices and full-body performances that mimic real people increased in quality far beyond what even many experts expected would be the case just a few years ago. They were also increasingly used to deceive people.
For many everyday scenarios — especially low-resolution video calls and media shared on social media platforms — their realism is now high enough to reliably fool nonexpert viewers. In practical terms, synthetic media have become indistinguishable from authentic recordings for ordinary people and, in some cases, even for institutions.
And this surge is not limited to quality. The volume of deepfakes has grown explosively: Cybersecurity firm DeepStrike estimates an increase from roughly 500,000 online deepfakes in 2023 to about 8 million in 2025, with annual growth nearing 900%.
I’m a computer scientist who researches deepfakes and other synthetic media. From my vantage point, I see that the situation is likely to get worse in 2026 as deepfakes become synthetic performers capable of reacting to people in real time.
Just about anyone can now make a deepfake video.
Dramatic improvements
Several technical shifts underlie this dramatic escalation. First, video realism made a significant leap thanks to video generation models designed specifically to maintain temporal consistency. These models produce videos that have coherent motion, consistent identities of the people portrayed, and content that makes sense from one frame to the next. The models disentangle the information related to representing a person’s identity from the information about motion so that the same motion can be mapped to different identities, or the same identity can have multiple types of motions.
These models produce stable, coherent faces without the flicker, warping or structural distortions around the eyes and jawline that once served as reliable forensic evidence of deepfakes.
Second, voice cloning has crossed what I would call the “indistinguishable threshold.” A few seconds of audio now suffice to generate a convincing clone – complete with natural intonation, rhythm, emphasis, emotion, pauses and breathing noise. This capability is already fueling large-scale fraud. Some major retailers report receiving over 1,000 AI-generated scam calls per day. The perceptual tells that once gave away synthetic voices have largely disappeared.
Third, consumer tools have pushed the technical barrier almost to zero. Upgrades from OpenAI’s Sora 2 and Google’s Veo 3 and a wave of startups mean that anyone can describe an idea, let a large language model such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT or Google’s Gemini draft a script, and generate polished audio-visual media in minutes. AI agents can automate the entire process. The capacity to generate coherent, storyline-driven deepfakes at a large scale has effectively been democratized.
This combination of surging quantity and personas that are nearly indistinguishable from real humans creates serious challenges for detecting deepfakes, especially in a media environment where people’s attention is fragmented and content moves faster than it can be verified. There has already been real-world harm – from misinformation to targeted harassment and financial scams – enabled by deepfakes that spread before people have a chance to realize what’s happening.
AI researcher Hany Farid explains how deepfakes work and how good they’re getting.
The future is real time
Looking forward, the trajectory for next year is clear: Deepfakes are moving toward real-time synthesis that can produce videos that closely resemble the nuances of a human’s appearance, making it easier for them to evade detection systems. The frontier is shifting from static visual realism to temporal and behavioral coherence: models that generate live or near-live content rather than pre-rendered clips.
Identity modeling is converging into unified systems that capture not just how a person looks, but how they move, sound and speak across contexts. The result goes beyond “this resembles person X,” to “this behaves like person X over time.” I expect entire video-call participants to be synthesized in real time; interactive AI-driven actors whose faces, voices and mannerisms adapt instantly to a prompt; and scammers deploying responsive avatars rather than fixed videos.
As these capabilities mature, the perceptual gap between synthetic and authentic human media will continue to narrow. The meaningful line of defense will shift away from human judgment. Instead, it will depend on infrastructure-level protections. These include secure provenance such as media signed cryptographically, and AI content tools that use the Coalition for Content Provenance and Authenticity specifications. It will also depend on multimodal forensic tools such as my lab’s Deepfake-o-Meter.
Simply looking harder at pixels will no longer be adequate.
Siwei Lyu does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
As the weather grows cold this winter, you may be one of the many Americans pulling their winter jackets out of the closet. Not only can this extra layer keep you warm on a chilly day, but modern winter jackets are also a testament to centuries-old physics and cutting-edge materials science.
Winter jackets keep you warm by managing heat through the three classical modes of heat transfer – conduction, convection and radiation – all while remaining breathable so sweat can escape.
In a fireplace, heat transfer occurs by all three methods: conduction, convection and radiation. Radiation is responsible for most of the heat transferred into the room. Heat transfer also occurs through conduction into the room’s floor, but at a much slower rate. Heat transfer by convection also occurs through cold air entering the room around windows and hot air leaving the room by rising up the chimney. Douglas College Physics 1207, CC BY
The physics has been around for centuries, yet modern material innovations represent a leap forward that let those principles shine.
Old science with a new glow
Physicists like us who study heat transfer sometimes see thermal science as “settled.” Isaac Newton first described convective cooling, the heat loss driven by fluid motion that sweeps thermal energy away from a surface, in the early 18th century. Joseph Fourier’s 1822 analytical theory of heat then put conduction – the transfer of thermal energy through direct physical contact – on mathematical footing.
Late-19th-century work by Josef Stefan and Ludwig Boltzmann, followed by the work of Max Planck at the dawn of the 20th century, made thermal radiation – the transfer of heat through electromagnetic waves – a pillar of modern physics.
All these principles inform modern materials design. Yet what feels new today are not the equations but the textiles. Over the last two decades, engineers have developed extremely thin synthetic fibers that trap heat more efficiently and treatments that make natural down repel water instead of soaking it up. They’ve designed breathable membranes full of tiny pores that let sweat escape, thin reflective layers that bounce your body heat back toward you, coatings that store and release heat as the temperature changes, and ultralight materials.
Together, these innovations give designers far more control over warmth, breathability and comfort than ever before. That’s why jackets now feel warmer, lighter and drier than anything Newton or Fourier could have imagined.
Trap still air, slow the leak
Conduction is the direct flow of heat from your warm body into your colder surroundings. In winter, all that heat escaping your body makes you feel cold. Insulation fights conduction by trapping air in a web of tiny pockets, slowing the heat’s escape. It keeps the air still and lengthens the path heat must take to get out.
High-loft down makes up the expansive, fluffy clusters of feathers that create the volume inside a puffer jacket. Combined with modern synthetic fibers, the down immobilizes warm air and slows its escape. New types of fabrics infused with highly porous, ultralight materials called aerogels pack even more insulation into surprisingly slim layers.
Tame the wind, protect the boundary layer
A good winter jacket also needs to withstand wind, which can strip away the thin boundary layer of warm air that naturally forms around you. A jacket with a good outer shell blocks the wind’s pumping action with tightly woven fabric that keeps heat in. Some jackets also have an outer layer of lamination that keeps water and cold air out, and a woven pattern that seals any paths heat might leak through around the cuffs, hems, flaps and collars.
The outer membrane layer on many jacket shells is both waterproof and breathable. It stops rain and snow from getting in, and it also lets your sweat escape as water vapor. This feature is key because insulation, such as down, stops working if it gets wet. It loses its fluff and can’t trap air, meaning you cool quickly.
How modern jackets manage heat: Left, a typical insulated shell; right, layers that trap air, block wind, and reflect infrared heat without adding bulk. Wan Xiong and Longji Cui
These shells also block wind, which protects the bubble of warm air your body creates. By stopping wind and water, the shell creates a calm, dry space for the insulation to do its job and keep you warm.
New tricks to reflect infrared heat
Even in still air, your body sheds heat by emitting invisible waves of heat energy. Modern jackets address this by using new types of cloth and technology that make the jacket’s inner surface reflect your body’s heat back toward you. This type of surface has a subtle space blanket effect that adds noticeable warmth without adding any bulk.
However, how jacket manufacturers apply that reflective material matters. Coating the entire material in metallic film would reflect lots of heat, but it wouldn’t allow sweat to escape, and you might overheat.
Some liners use a micro-dot pattern: The reflective dots bounce heat back while the gaps between them keep the material breathable and allow sweat to escape.
Another approach moves this technology to the outside of the garment. Some designs add a pattern of reflective material to the outer shell to keep heat from radiating out into the cold air.
When those exterior dots are a dark color, they can also absorb a touch of warmth from the sun. This effect is similar to window coatings that keep heat inside while taking advantage of sunlight to add more heat.
Warmth only matters if you stay dry. Sweat that can’t escape wets a jacket’s layer of insulation and accelerates heat loss. That’s why the best winter systems combine moisture-wicking inner fabrics with venting options and membranes whose pores let water vapor escape while keeping liquid water out.
Describing where heat travels throughout textiles remains challenging because, unlike light or electricity, heat diffuses through nearly everything. But new types of unique materials and surfaces with ultra-fine patterns are allowing scientists to better control how heat travels throughout textiles.
Managing warmth in clothing is part of a broader heat-management challenge in engineering that spans microchips, data centers, spacecraft and life-support systems. There’s still no universal winter jacket for all conditions; most garments are passive, meaning they don’t adapt to their environment. We dress for the day we think we’ll face.
But some engineering researchers are working on environmentally adaptive textiles. Imagine fabrics that open microscopic vents as the humidity rises, then close them again in dry, bitter air. Picture linings that reflect more heat under blazing sun and less in the dark. Or loft that puffs up when you’re outside in the cold and relaxes when you step indoors. It’s like a science fiction costume made practical: Clothing that senses, decides and subtly reconfigures itself without you ever touching a zipper.
Today’s jackets don’t need a new law of thermodynamics to work – they couple basic physics with the use of precisely engineered materials and thermal fabrics specifically made to keep heat locked in. That marriage is why today’s winter wear feels like a leap forward.
The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
House Speaker Mike Johnson will have to defend a narrow majority in the 2026 elections. A near-record number of retiring Republicans won’t make that task easier.J. Scott Applewhite/AP
The midterm elections for Congress won’t take place until November, but already a record number of members have declared their intention not to run – a total of 43 in the House, plus 10 senators. Perhaps the most high-profile person to depart, Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, announced her intention in November not just to retire but to resign from Congress entirely on Jan. 5 – a full year before her term was set to expire.
Rather than get swept away by a prospective “blue wave” favoring Democrats – or possibly daunted by the monumental effort it would take to survive – many Republicans have decided to fold up the beach chair and head home before the wave crashes.
As of now, two dozen Republican House members have either resigned from the House or announced their intent to not run for reelection in 2026. With only two exceptions – Republicans in 2018 and 2020 – this is more departures from either party at this point in the election calendar than any other cycle over the past 20 years.
There is also growing concern within the House Republican caucus that Greene’s announcement is a canary in the coal mine and that multiple resignations will follow.
As a political scientist who studies Congress and politicians’ reelection strategies, I’m not surprised to see many House members leaving ahead of what’s shaping up to be a difficult midterm for the GOP. Still, the sheer numbers of people not running tells us something about broader dissatisfaction with Washington.
Why do members leave Congress?
Many planned departures are true retirements involving older and more experienced members.
For example, 78-year-old Democratic congressman Jerry Nadler is retiring after 34 years, following mounting pressure from upstart challengers and a growing consensus among Democrats that it’s time for older politicians to step aside. Nancy Pelosi, the former speaker who will turn 86 in March, is also retiring.
Sometimes, members of Congress depart for the same reasons other workers might leave any job. Like many Americans, members of Congress might find something more attractive elsewhere. Retiring members are attractive hires for lobbying firms and corporations, thanks to their insider knowledge and connections within the institution. These firms usually offer much higher salaries than members are used to in Congress, which may explain why more than half of all living former members are lobbyists of some kind.
Democrat Nancy Pelosi, who was first elected in 1986, will step down at the end of this Congress. Jose Luis Magana/AP
Other members remain ambitious for elective office and decide to use their position in Congress as a springboard for another position. Members of the House regularly retire to run for a Senate seat, such as, in this cycle, Democratic Rep. Haley Stevens of Michigan. Others run for executive offices, including governor, such as Republican Rep. Nancy Mace of South Carolina.
But some are leaving Congress due to growing frustration with the job and an inability to get things done. Specifically, many retiring members cite growing dysfunction within their own party, or in Congress as a whole, as the reason they’re moving on.
In a statement announcing his departure in June, Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., mused that “between spending another six years navigating the political theater and partisan gridlock in Washington or spending that time with my family,” it was “not a hard choice” to leave the Senate.
What’s unique about 2026?
In addition, there are a few other factors that can help explain why so many Republicans in particular are heading for the exits leading up to 2026.
The shifting of boundaries that has come with the mid-decade redistricting process in several states this year has scrambled members’ priorities. Unfamiliar districts can drive incumbents to early retirement by severing their connection with well-established constituencies.
In Texas, six Republicans and three Democrats – nearly a quarter of the state’s entire House delegation – are either retiring or running for other offices, due in part to that state’s new gerrymander for 2026.
All decisions about retirement and reelection are sifted through the filter of electoral and partisan considerations. A phenomenon called “thermostatic politics” predicts that parties currently in power, particularly in the White House, tend to face a backlash from voters in the following election. In other words, the president’s party nearly always loses seats in midterms.
In 2006 and 2018, for example, Republican members of Congress were weighed down by the reputations of unpopular Republican Presidents George W. Bush and Trump. Republicans had arguably even greater success in midterm elections during Barack Obama’s presidency.
Currently, 2026 looks like it will present a poor national environment for Republicans. Trump remains highly unpopular, according to polls, and Democrats are opening up a consistent lead in the “generic ballot” question, which asks respondents which party they intend to support in the 2026 midterms without reference to individual candidates.
Democrats have already been overperforming in special elections, as well as the general election in November in states such as New Jersey and Virginia, which held elections for governor. Democrats are on average running 13 points ahead of Kamala Harris’ performance in the 2024 election.
As a result, even Republicans in districts thought to be safe for their party may see themselves in enough potential danger to abandon the fight in advance.
Retirement vs. resignation
One final, unique aspect of this election cycle with major consequences is not an electoral but an institutional one.
House conservatives are quietly revolting against Speaker Mike Johnson’s leadership style. That members may be frustrated enough not just to retire but resign in advance, leaving their seats temporarily vacant, is a notable sign of dysfunction in the U.S. House.
This also could have a major impact on policy, given how slim the Republicans’ majority in the lower chamber is already. Whatever the outcome of the midterms in November, these departures clearly matter in Washington and offer important signals about the chaos in Congress.
Charlie Hunt does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
What do you do when an announcement about an “offsite” hits your work inbox? Chances are you might sigh and begrudgingly add the event to your calendar.
These events, also called retreats, bring colleagues together for a mix of structured activities and free time – freeing them from their regular work obligations. For one or two days, employees take a mandatory break from their normal routines at work and at home. Participants spend a lot of that time making small talk with colleagues, as well as engaging in structured interactions that may include awkward icebreakers.
Although networking is one of these events’ main purposes, some people find that networking for the purpose of meeting professional goals can feel transactional, uncomfortable or even dirty. Unsure about whether it will be worth the time and effort, you might ask: What’s in it for me?
And it might quietly reshape your working relationships in unexpected ways.
Taking time and costing money
While these gatherings have become relatively common, we were surprised to learn how little research there is on whether they work. In particular, few scholars have dug into their effectiveness in helping people forge new connections.
Offsites can help with strategic planning, team development and goal setting. They’re often held once or twice a year. The timing varies from one employer to the next. But the period from December through March is becoming more popular.
They tend to bring people together who rarely interact through their work – particularly at large employers with offices spread across the country or even the world, and in organizations with remote-first work arrangements.
Retreats help people get better acquainted in many informal ways, whether it’s sharing meals, exchanging ideas or chatting in hallways. Those interactions and the more structured ones, such as brainstorming exercises conducted in previously assigned groups, make it easier to connect with colleagues.
After years of remote work when people mainly gathered over Zoom, employers continue to look for ways to rebuild connections and to address a surge in disengagement.
These retreats for professionals have apparently become more popular following the COVID-19 pandemic, as part of the larger rebound in business-related travel. A survey of 2,000 full-time employees from a range of industries found that the percentage of companies hosting no offsites at all fell to 4% in 2024, from 16% in 2019.
Further, many companies are allocating larger budgets for offsites and budgeting more time during off-site retreats for social purposes, the same survey found.
Off-site retreats require planning to make sure there’s time for colleagues to make new connections.
Mapping a law firm’s networking patterns
When we spoke with managers from several large firms about their off-site practices, we were surprised that they simply assumed collaboration was an inevitable outcome.
To test whether that was true, we studied the working relationships of more than 700 partners in a large U.S. law firm, which we agreed not to name to access its data. Over eight years, from 2005 to 2012, these partners attended – or skipped – the firm’s annual retreats.
We tracked the partners’ attendance and their collaborative work for the firm’s clients before and after the offsites. Because lawyers at this firm – and elsewhere – record their work in 6-minute increments, it was possible to analyze billing records for the partners’ collaboration on client projects.
The results of this mapping exercise surprised us. And they may change your feelings about whether retreats are worth your time and energy.
Helping partners get noticed
We found that after participating in an offsite, partners were more likely to reach out to other partners whom they had not worked with previously.
To our surprise, we found that even workers who didn’t attend an offsite acted more collaboratively afterward. Having received the message that collaboration is important to the firm, they made up for missing out by finding other ways to start collaborating with more colleagues.
But building a successful career also depends on something harder to control than whether you reach out to new colleagues and clients: You need your colleagues to think of you when opportunities arise. And that likelihood can increase when you participate in offsites.
Getting 24% more requests to collaborate
We found an increase in newly formed connections across the law firm after these events. New collaborations on billable work increased, generating more revenue for the firm. And the targets of these new collaborations tended to be the people who took part in the offsite.
The partners who attended the offsite became more visible and had 24% more new requests to collaborate on work for a client in the two months following the retreat than those who did not. Importantly, these relationships were not superficial. Almost 17% of these new working relationships continued over the next two years.
While we analyzed only the relationships that formed shortly after the offsite, it is likely that colleagues remember those they meet at these events. The people who attend them continue to reap network-based benefits beyond what we found in the data.
We also found that offsites helped attorneys forge connections with lawyers in the firm’s other practice groups more than with those on their own team.
Overall, lawyers who went to an offsite made more new connections – about one per month – after an offsite than the ones who didn’t go.
This pattern seems to be even stronger in remote work. Offsites helped to break that pattern by giving professionals opportunities to engage with colleagues they don’t know. Sometimes, they end up eager to collaborate with people they meet this way.
These more distant connections can help people obtain diverse information, resources and perspectives and create opportunities to productively brainstorm.
When you work for a big employer, it can be hard to meet colleagues on other teams. Offsites may provide a significant opportunity to build networks and stand out among peers.
While offsites may never be your favorite way to spend a few days, our research shows that they can serve an important function for employers and employees alike.
Madeline Kneeland received funding for this research from The Strategic Management Society.
Adam M. Kleinbaum does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
You’re in your mid-40s, eating healthy and exercising regularly. It’s the same routine that has worked for years.
Yet lately, the number on the scale is creeping up. Clothes fit differently. A bit of belly fat appears, seemingly overnight. You remember your mother’s frustration with the endless dieting, the extra cardio, the talk about “menopause weight.” But you’re still getting your periods. Menopause should be at least half a decade away.
And while lifestyle choices still matter, the underlying cause isn’t willpower. It’s physiology.
Most women expect the weight struggle to begin after menopause. But research suggests the real metabolic shift happens years earlier. During the multiyear transition to menopause, women’s bodies begin processing sugar and carbs less efficiently, while their metabolism slows down at rest. That can drive weight gain – especially around the midsection – even if a person’s habits haven’t changed much.
There are physiological processes that begin long before menopause itself, but weight gain around the menopause transition isn’t necessarily inevitable. Recognizing this early window makes it possible to intervene while your body is still adaptable.
The silent shift before menopause
Menopause is officially defined as 12 months without a period. But the body’s hormonal transition, which comes from changes in signaling between the brain and ovaries, begins years earlier during a stage called perimenopause. This phase is when estrogen and progesterone start to fluctuate unpredictably.
Those hormonal shifts ripple through nearly every metabolic system. Estrogen helps regulate fat distribution, muscle repair and insulin sensitivity. When levels swing wildly, the body begins storing fat differently, moving it from the hips and thighs to the abdomen. Muscle protein synthesis also slows down.
Just as those physiological changes are revving up, intensive caregiving and other demands are often increasing too, leaving less time for exercise, sleep and other basic self-care.
What’s most striking isn’t the number on the scale, but rather the change in body composition. Even if weight stays the same, women often lose muscle and gain belly fat. This deeper fat surrounds vital organs and is linked to inflammation and a higher risk of type 2 diabetes, heart disease, liver disease and sleep disorders.
Once this accelerated redistribution plateaus during menopause, reversal becomes much harder, though not impossible.
That’s why perimenopause should be viewed as a window of metabolic opportunity. The body is still adaptable; it’s responsive to strength training, high-quality nutrition and better sleep routines. With the right strategies, women can offset these hormonal effects and set themselves up for a healthier transition through menopause and beyond.
Unfortunately, most health care approaches to the menopause transition are reactive. Symptoms like hot flashes or sleep issues are addressed only after they appear. Rarely are women told that metabolic risk reduction starts years earlier, during this hidden but critical phase of life.
What most women haven’t been told
The usual advice of “eat less, move more” misses the point for women in their 40s. It oversimplifies biology and ignores hormonal context.
For example, for exercise, cardio alone is insufficient for weight management and optimal metabolic health. Strength training, which is too often overlooked, becomes essential to preserve lean muscle and maintain insulin sensitivity. Adequate protein intake supports these changes as well.
Sleep and stress regulation are equally vital. Estrogen fluctuations can disrupt cortisol rhythms, leading to cravings, fatigue and nighttime awakenings. Prioritizing sleep-hygiene practices such as limiting screen time before bed, getting morning sunlight, avoiding late-night eating and exercising earlier in the day helps regulate these hormonal rhythms.
Understanding why these habits matter gives important context for strategizing sustainable modifications that fit each person’s lifestyle.
How women can take action early
The decades of one’s 30s and 40s don’t need to be a countdown to decline, but instead, an opportunity to build metabolic resilience. With awareness, evidence-based strategies and proactive care, women can navigate perimenopause and the menopause transition with confidence and strength. Here are a few strategies to start with:
Lift weights. Aim for two to three sessions of resistance or strength training per week to preserve muscle and boost metabolism. Work on progressive overload, which refers to the gradual increase in stress placed on your muscles.
Prioritize protein. Include adequate protein in every meal to support muscle, increase satiety and stabilize blood sugar. There is a growing body of evidence indicating a need for a higher protein requirement than the current Recommended Dietary Allowance guidelines. Aim for 0.55 to 0.73 grams of protein per pound (1.2 to 1.6 grams of protein per kilogram) of body weight daily to reduce the risk of age-related muscle loss.
Sleep smarter.Sleep hygiene and stress management help regulate cortisol and appetite hormones. Aim for between seven and eight hours of quality sleep each night.
Ask different questions. During annual checkups, talk to your clinician about body composition and metabolic health, not just weight. And preemptively discuss the risks and benefits of menopause hormone therapy.
Your metabolism isn’t broken; it’s adapting to a new stage of your life. And once you understand that, you can work with your body, not against it.
The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
The ice that now covers West Antarctica was not there 3.6 million years ago, after a massive collapse of the ice sheet during a warming period.Anna Ruth Halberstadt, CC BY-NC-ND
Due to its thick, vast ice sheet, Antarctica appears to be a single, continuous landmass centered over the South Pole and spanning both hemispheres of the globe. The Western Hemisphere sector of the ice sheet is shaped like a hitchhiker’s thumb – an apt metaphor, because the West Antarctic ice sheet is on the go. Affected by Earth’s warming oceans and atmosphere, the ice sheet that sits atop West Antarctica is melting, flowing outward and diminishing in size, all at an astonishing pace.
Much of the discussion about the melting of massive ice sheets during a time of climate change addresses its effects on people. That makes sense: Millions will see their homes damaged or destroyed by rising sea levels and storm surges.
But what will happen to Antarctica itself as the ice sheets melt?
In layers of sediment accumulated on the sea floor over millions of years, researcherslikeus are finding evidence that when West Antarctica melted, there was a rapid uptick in onshore geological activity in the area. The evidence foretells what’s in store for the future.
A voyage of discovery
As far back as 30 million years ago, an ice sheet covered much of what we now call Antarctica. But during the Pliocene Epoch, which lasted from 5.3 million to 2.6 million years ago, the ice sheet on West Antarctica drastically retreated. Rather than a continuous ice sheet, all that remained were high ice caps and glaciers on or near mountaintops.
About 5 million years ago, conditions around Antarctica began to warm, and West Antarctic ice diminished. About 3 million years ago, all of Earth entered a warm climate phase, similar to what is happening today.
Glaciers are not stationary. These large masses of ice form on land and flow toward the sea, moving over bedrock and scraping off material from the landscape they cover, and carrying that debris along as the ice moves, almost like a conveyor belt. This process speeds up when the climate warms, as does calving into the sea, which forms icebergs. Debris-laden icebergs can then carry that continental rock material out to sea, dropping it to the sea floor as the icebergs melt.
The drillship JOIDES Resolution is in position for deep-water drilling in the outer Amundsen Sea during International Ocean Discovery Program Expedition 379. Modern icebergs are visible near the ship. Phil Christie, CC BY-NC-ND
In early 2019, we joined a major scientific trip – International Ocean Discovery Program Expedition 379 – to the Amundsen Sea, south of the Pacific Ocean. Our expedition aimed to recover material from the seabed to learn what had happened in West Antarctica during its melting period all that time ago.
Aboard the drillship JOIDES Resolution, workers lowered a drill nearly 13,000 feet (3,962 meters) to the sea floor and then drilled 2,605 feet (794 meters) into the ocean floor, directly offshore from the most vulnerable part of the West Antarctic ice sheet.
The drill brought up long tubes called “cores,” containing layers of sediments deposited between 6 million years ago and the present. Our research focused on sections of sediment from the time of the Pliocene Epoch, when Antarctica was not entirely ice-covered.
Aboard the JOIDES Resolution drillship, Keiji Horikawa examines a core containing iceberg-carried pebbly clays capped by finely layered muds. Christine Siddoway, CC BY-ND
An unexpected finding
While onboard, one of us, Christine Siddoway, was surprised to discover an uncommon sandstone pebble in a disturbed section of the core. Sandstone fragments were rare in the core, so the pebble’s origin was of high interest. Tests showed that the pebble had come from mountains deep in the Antarctic interior, roughly 800 miles (1,300 kilometers) from the drill site.
For this to have happened, icebergs must have calved from glaciers flowing off interior mountains and then floated toward the Pacific Ocean. The pebble provided evidence that a deep-water ocean passage – rather than today’s thick ice sheet – existed across the interior of what is now Antarctica.
After the expedition, once the researchers returned to their home laboratories, this finding was confirmed by analyzing silt, mud, rock fragments, and microfossils that also came up in the sediment cores. The chemical and magnetic properties of the core material revealed a detailed timeline of the ice sheet’s retreats and advances over many years.
Drilling cores show important markers of events during the Pliocene age: At right, the red arrow marks a layer of volcanic ash erupted from a West Antarctic volcano roughly 3 million years ago. At left is a section illustrating thin layers of mud marking the onset of glacial conditions. It overlies a thick bed of pebbly material dropped from icebergs during interglacial conditions. The white box marks the narrow zone containing the unique isotopic signature. IODP Expedition 379, JOIDES Resolution Science Operator, CC BY
One key sign came from analyses led by Keiji Horikawa. He tried to match thin mud layers in the core with bedrock from the continent, to test the idea that icebergs had carried such materials very long distances. Each mud layer was deposited right after a deglaciation episode, when the ice sheet retreated, that created a bed of iceberg-carried pebbly clay. By measuring the amounts of various elements, including strontium, neodymium and lead, he was able to link specific thin layers of mud in the drill cores to chemical signatures in outcrops in the Ellsworth Mountains, 870 miles (1400 km) away.
Horikawa discovered not just one instance of this material but as many as five mud layers deposited between 4.7 million and 3.3 million years ago. That suggests the ice sheet melted and open ocean formed, then the ice sheet regrew, filling the interior, repeatedly, over short spans of thousands to tens of thousands of years.
This animation shows a numerical model simulation of Antarctic ice sheet fluctuations across millions of years. The model is driven by time-evolving ocean and atmosphere temperatures; the ice sheet expands in response to cooling and shrinks as temperatures warm. The IODP Expedition 379 sediment core location is denoted by the star with a dashed line. This model simulation provides one possible reconstruction of ice sheet behavior during a single retreat/advance event approximately 3.6 million years ago. The simulation was validated through comparison with a suite of geologic information.
Creating a fuller picture
Teammate Ruthie Halberstadt combined this chemical evidence and timing in computer models showing how an archipelago of ice-capped, rugged islands emerged as ocean replaced the thick ice sheets that now fill Antarctica’s interior basins.
The biggest changes happened along the coast. The model simulations show a rapid increase in iceberg production and a dramatic retreat of the edge of the ice sheet toward the Ellsworth Mountains. The Amundsen Sea became choked with icebergs produced from all directions. Rocks and pebbles embedded in the glaciers floated out to sea within the icebergs and dropped to the seabed as the icebergs melted.
Long-standing geological evidence from Antarctica and elsewhere around the world shows that as ice melts and flows off the land, the land itself rises because the ice no longer presses it down. That shift can cause earthquakes, especially in West Antarctica, which sits above particularly hot areas of the Earth’s mantle that can rebound at high rates when the ice above them melts.
The release of pressure on the land also increases volcanic activity – as is happening in Iceland in the present day. Evidence of this in Antarctica comes from a volcanic ash layer that Siddoway and Horikawa identified in the cores, formed 3 million years ago.
The long-ago loss of ice and upward motions in West Antarctica also triggered massive rock avalanches and landslides in fractured, damaged rock, forming glacial valley walls and coastal cliffs. Collapses beneath the sea displaced vast amounts of sediment from the marine shelf. No longer held in place by the weight of glacier ice and ocean water, huge masses of rock broke away and surged into the water, producing tsunamis that unleashed more coastal destruction.
The rapid onset of all these changes made deglaciated West Antarctica a showpiece for what has been called “catastrophic geology.”
The rapid upswell of activity resembles what has happened elsewhere on the planet in the past. For instance, at the end of the last Northern Hemisphere ice age, 15,000 to 18,000 years ago, the region between Utah and British Columbia was subjected to floods from bursting glacial meltwater lakes, land rebound, rock avalanches and increased volcanic activity. In coastal Canada and Alaska, such events continue to occur today.
Scientists investigate the connection between melting glaciers and volcanic eruptions.
Dynamic ice sheet retreat
Our team’s analysis of rocks’ chemical makeup makes clear that West Antarctica doesn’t necessarily undergo one gradual, massive shift from ice-covered to ice-free, but rather swings back and forth between vastly different states. Each time the ice sheet disappeared in the past, it led to geological mayhem.
The future implication for West Antarctica is that when its ice sheet next collapses, the catastrophic events will return. This will happen repeatedly, as the ice sheet retreats and advances, opening and closing the connections between different areas of the world’s oceans.
This dynamic future may bring about equally swift responses in the biosphere, such as algal blooms around icebergs in the ocean, leading to an influx of marine species into newly opened seaways. Vast tracts of land upon West Antarctic islands would then open up to growth of mossy ground cover and coastal vegetation that would turn Antarctica more green than its current icy white.
Our data about the Amundsen Sea’s past and the resulting forecast indicate that onshore changes in West Antarctica will not be slow, gradual or imperceptible from a human perspective. Rather, what happened in the past is likely to recur: geologically rapid shifts that are felt locally as apocalyptic events such as earthquakes, eruptions, landslides and tsunamis – with worldwide effects.
Christine Siddoway received funding from the U.S. Science Support Program for IODP, and the National Science Foundation (grants 1939146 and 1917176, OPP Antarctic Earth Sciences) to support this research.
Anna Ruth Halberstadt received funding from the U.S. Science Support Program to participate in IODP Expedition 379.
Keiji Horikawa receives funding from JSPS KAKENHI Grant (JP21H04924 and JP25H01181) to support this research.
Michele Singer Reiner and Rob Reiner pose with their children, Jake, Romy and Nick, far right, at a 2014 gala.Michael Loccisano/Getty Images
The fatal stabbings of filmmaker and actor Rob Reiner and his wife, the photographer and producer Michele Singer Reiner, have sparked widespread grieving. This tragedy, discovered on Dec. 14, 2025, is also increasing the public’s interest in what happens when killers could inherit wealth from their victims. That’s because Nick Reiner, their son, was charged with two counts of first-degree murder four days after the couple’s deaths at their Los Angeles home.
What’s the ‘slayer rule’?
All states have some form of a slayer rule that prevents killers from inheriting from their victims. While the rules differ slightly from state to state, they always bar murderers from profiting from their own crimes.
Simply put, if you’re found guilty of killing someone or plead guilty to their murder, you can’t inherit anything from your victim’s estate.
In some states, this might go beyond inheritance and apply to jointly held property, insurance policies and other kinds of accounts.
Most of these slayer rules, including California’s, apply only to “felonious and intentional” killings, meaning that they don’t apply if you accidentally kill someone. Although there doesn’t have to be a guilty verdict by a judge or a jury, or a guilty plea from the accused, there must be some finding by a criminal or civil court of an intentional and felonious killing.
These rules, known as slayer rules, have a long history in the United States. They became more prominent following an 1889 murder case in New York state, in which a 16-year-old boy poisoned his grandfather to get an inheritance that was written into his grandfather’s will.
How often are slayer rules invoked?
It’s hard to say for sure. As far as we know, nobody’s tried to keep track.
Slayer rules come into play whenever someone who would otherwise inherit assets from an estate is convicted of or found liable for murder, and the slayer is entitled to inherit from the victim.
These tragic cases almost always involve murders committed by relatives. Many of the high-profile ones have been tied to murders that occurred in California.
Famous disinherited murderers include Lyle and Erik Menendez, the Californians known as the Menendez brothers. In 1996, a jury found them guilty of the first-degree murder of their parents, José and Mary Louise “Kitty” Menendez. The Menendez brothers’ parents, who were killed in 1989, had a fortune that today would be worth more than $35 million.
The brothers, who became eligible for parole but were denied it in 2025, have been in prison ever since.
Once there has been a finding of an intentional and felonious killing, even if the slayer is later released on parole – or even if they serve no prison time at all – they would still not inherit anything.
In practical terms, that means if one or both of the Menendez brothers were to win parole in the future, they would still be ineligible to inherit any of their parents’ wealth upon their release from prison.
Erik Menendez, left, and Lyle Menendez, seen standing trial for their parents’ murders, in 1994. They were convicted in 1996. Ted Soqui/Sygma via Getty Images
What can block its application?
In the absence of a murder conviction, the slayer rule may not apply. For example, a conviction for a lesser criminal offense, such as manslaughter, might allow the accused – or their lawyers – to argue that the killing was unintentional.
This exception could be relevant to the prosecution of the Reiners’ murders if it were to turn out that Nick Reiner’s defense can show that substance abuseor schizophrenia rendered him insane when he allegedly killed his parents at their Los Angeles home.
On the other hand, under California law, even if there is no conviction the probate court administering the murder victim’s estate could still separately find that the killing was intentional and felonious. That civil finding would bar the slayer from inheriting without a criminal conviction.
Rob Reiner and his son Nick, seen in 2016 speaking about ‘Being Charlie,’ the movie about a young man’s struggle with substance use that they made together. Laura Cavanaugh/FilmMagic via Getty Images
Does this only apply to families with big fortunes?
Slayer rules apply to anyone who kills one or more of their relatives, whether their victims were rich, poor or in between.
When large amounts of money are at stake, cases tend to garner more attention due to media coverage during the criminal trial and subsequent inheritance litigation.
Who will inherit Rob Reiner’s and Michele Singer Reiner’s wealth?
It’s too soon for both the public and the family to know who will inherit ultimately from the Reiners.
Wills are typically public documents, although the Reiners may have also engaged in other types of estate planning, such as trusts, that do not typically become public records. And celebrities with valuable intellectual property rights, such as copyrights from the Reiners’ many film and television properties, tend to establish trusts.
Assuming that, like many parents, the Reiners left most of their fortune – which reportedly was worth some US$200 million – to their children, including Nick, then California’s slayer statute may come into play. The couple had two other children together, Romy and Jake.
Rob Reiner also had another daughter, Tracy Reiner, whom he adopted after his marriage to his first wife, the actor and filmmaker Penny Marshall.
It’s also likely that the Reiners included charitable bequests in their estate plans. They were strong supporters of many causes, including early childhood development.
Might the slayer rule apply to Nick Reiner?
It’s much too soon to know.
It is important to emphasize that the wills and other estate planning documents of Rob Reiner and Michele Singer Reiner have not yet been made public. That means what Nick Reiner might stand to inherit, if the slayer rule were to prove irrelevant in this case, is unknown.
Nor, with the investigation of the couple’s deaths still underway, can anyone make any assumptions about Nick’s innocence or guilt.
And, as of mid-December 2025, an unnamed source was telling entertainment reporters that Nick Reiner’s legal bills were being paid for by the Reiner family.
The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Source: The Conversation – USA (3) – By Christian Goodwillie, Director and Curator of Special Collections and Archives, Hamilton College
In the Shakers’ early years, dance was one of the most distinct aspects of the Christian group’s worship.Bettmann via Getty Images
Director Mona Fastvold’s new film, “The Testament of Ann Lee,” features actor Amanda Seyfried in the titular role: the English spiritual seeker who brought the Shaker movement to America. The trailer literally writhes with snakes intercut amid scenes of emotional turmoil, religious ecstasy, orderly and disorderly dancing – and sex. Intense and sometimes menacing music underpins it all: the sounds of the enraptured, singing their way to a fantastic and unimaginable ceremony.
The trailer is riveting and unsettling – just as the celibate Shakers were to the average observer during their American emergence in the 1780s.
I sit on the Board of Trustees of Hancock Shaker Village in Massachusetts, where some of the film was shot, though I have not seen the film, which is due to be released on Christmas Day. I was the curator at Hancock from 2001 to 2009 and have studied the Shakers for more than 25 years, publishing numerous booksand articles on the sect.
Mona Fastvold’s film depicts the group’s early years in North America.
Many characteristics of Shaker life and belief set them apart from other Protestant Christians, but their name derives from one of the most obvious. Early Shakers manifested the holy spirit that they believed dwelled within them by shaking violently in worship. While they called themselves “Believers,” observers dubbed them “Shakers.” Members eventually adopted the name, although officially they are the United Society of Believers in Christ’s Second Appearing.
The Shakers developed unique worship practices in both music and dance that expressed their faith. Until the 1870s, Shaker music was monophonic, with a single melodic line sung in unison and without instrumental accompaniment. Many of their melodies, Shakers said, were given to them by spirits. Some of these charmed and haunting strains have permeated through broader American musical culture.
New form of family
The Shakers first began to organize in Manchester, England, in 1747. By 1770, they came to believe that the spirit of Christ had returned through their leader, “Mother” Ann Lee. However, “Mother Ann was not Christ, nor did she claim to be,” the Shakers state. “She was simply the first of many Believers wholly embued by His spirit, wholly consumed by His love.”
In 1774, Lee led eight followers to North America, settling near what is now Albany, New York. As is still true today, Shakers held their property in common, following the model of the earliest Christians that is recorded in the Bible’s Book of Acts. At its height, the movement had 19 major communities.
Shakers work out their salvation each day by physical and spiritual labor. They do not subscribe to the common Christian doctrine that Jesus’ death atoned for the sins of mankind. And Shakers are celibate – one of the practices that most startled their neighbors in 18th- and 19th-century America. Lee taught that humanity could not follow Christ in the work of spiritual regeneration, or salvation, “while living in the works of natural generation, and wallowing in their lusts.” For Shakers, celibacy is one way people can reunite their spirits with God, who they believe is dually male and female.
Almost every Shaker, therefore, joined the faith as a convert, or the child of converts. Families who joined their communities were effectively dissolved: Husbands and wives became brothers and sisters; parents and children the same. Early accounts report that, in extreme instances, children publicly denounced their parents and pummeled their genitals in an effort to subdue the flesh and its earthly ties.
Shaking with the spirit
The Shakers of Lee’s day – now seen as American as apple pie – were regarded as a fundamental threat to society. In part, that stemmed from their perceived dissolution of families. But many outsiders were also alarmed by their ritual dances, whose intensity and emotion demonstrated a physicality seemingly incongruous with their celibacy.
In the early years, Shaker worship was an unbridled individual expression of spiritual enthusiasm. Eventually, it transformed into highly choreographed dances. At first, these were agonizingly slow and laborious series of movements designed to mortify the flesh – to help the spiritual overcome the physical – and instill discipline and union among the members.
Historians and reenactors have recreated some Shaker dances.
What kind of music accompanied such striking movements? The earliest Shaker songs, including ones attributed to Lee, have no intelligible language. Rather, they were sung using vocalized syllables or “vocables,” such as lo-de-lo or la-la-la or vi-vo-vum. Shakers invented a new form of notation to record their songs, using letters adorned with a variety of hashmarks to denote pitch and rhythm.
They begin by sitting down and shaking their heads in a violent manner, … one will begin to sing some odd tune, without words or rule; after a while another will strike in; … after a while they all fall in and make a strange charm … The mother, so called, minds to strike such notes as makes a concord, and so form the charm.
The Shakers were meticulous recordkeepers regarding every aspect of community life. Music was no exception. More than 1,000 volumes of Shaker music survive in manuscript: tens of thousands of songs dating from Lee’s day to the mid-20th century.
Scholars, musicians and researchers have extracted treasures from this repertoire. Most notably, composer Aaron Copland adapted Elder Joseph Brackett’s famous 1848 tune “Simple Gifts” for “Appalachian Spring”: the ballet that won Copland a Pulitzer in 1945. Hidden gems must still abound in the remaining unplumbed depths of Shaker manuscript songbooks.
In contrast, the Shakers left few detailed instructions for their dance. But eyewitness accounts abound, and scholars have made careful and respectful reconstructions.
Living faith
Fastvold’s film evokes the chaotic, violent world of the first Shakers in America, who converted farm families along the New York-Massachusetts border during the Revolutionary War. Some outsiders regarded the sect as an English plot to neutralize the populace with religious fervor, opening the way for a British reconquest of New England.
The director’s vision, incarnated by Seyfried’s bewitching presence and voice, invokes the uncanny atmosphere of early Shakerism. However, Shakerism is a living, ever-changing faith, whose presence in America is older than the country itself. The fact is, Shakers have not regularly danced in worship since the 1880s – or less than half of the total time the sect has endured.
Outsiders judged and named the Shakers in reaction to their external qualities in worship. The movement’s endurance and core, however, lies in its spiritual teachings. As the Believers asserted in their 1813 hymn “The Shakers,” “Shaking is no foolish play.”
Christian Goodwillie is the Director and Curator of Special Collections and Archives at Hamilton College in Clinton, NY. He was Curator of Collections at Hancock Shaker Village from 2001-2009, where he now sits on the Board of Trustees and is a paid consultant. Three songs from his 2002 book Shaker Songs, co-authored with Joel Cohen, were used as sources for music in the The Testament of Ann Lee. Portions of the Testament of Ann Lee were filmed at Hancock Shaker Village.
Both scenarios were unusual – and they were largely directed by the polar jet stream.
What is a jet stream?
Jet streams are narrow bands of high-speed winds in the upper troposphere, around four to eight miles (seven to 13 kilometers) above the surface of the Earth, flowing west to east around the entire planet. They form where strong temperature contrasts exist.
Each hemisphere hosts two primary jet streams:
The polar and subtropical jet streams in positions similar to much of summer 2025. NOAA
The polar jet stream is typically found near 50 to 60 degrees latitude, across Canada in the Northern Hemisphere, where cold polar air meets warmer midlatitude air. It plays a major role in modulating weather systems in the midlatitudes, including the continental U.S. With winds up to 200 mph, it’s also the usual steering force that brings those bitter cold storms down from Canada.
The subtropical jet stream is typically closer to 30 degrees latitude, which in the Northern Hemisphere crosses Florida. It follows the boundary between tropical air masses and subtropical air masses. It’s generally the weaker and steadier of the two jet streams.
A cross section of atmospheric circulations shows where the jet streams exist between large cells of rising and falling air, movements largely driven by solar heating in the tropics. NOAA
Stronger (faster) jet streams can intensify storm systems, whereas weaker (slower) jet streams can stall storm systems, leading to prolonged rainfall and flooding.
2025’s intense summer of flooding
Most summers, the polar jet stream retreats northward into Canada and weakens considerably, leaving the continental U.S. with calmer weather. When rainstorms pop up, they’re typically caused by localized convection due to uneven heating of the land – picture afternoon pop-up thunderstorms.
During the summer of 2025, however, the polar jet stream shifted unusually far south and steered larger storm systems into the midlatitudes of the U.S. At the same time, the jet stream weakened, with two critical consequences.
First, instead of moving storms quickly eastward, the sluggish jet stream stalled storm systems in place, causing prolonged downpours and flash flooding.
Second, a weak jet stream tends to meander more dramatically. Its broad north-south swings in summer 2025 funneled humid air from the Gulf of Mexico deep into the interior, supplying storm systems with abundant moisture and intensifying rainfall.
Search-and-rescue crews look for survivors in Texas Hill Country after a devastating July 4, 2025, flash flood on the Guadalupe River swept through a girls’ camp, tearing walls off buildings. Ronaldo Schemidt/AFP via Getty Images
This moisture surge was amplified by unusually warm conditions over the Atlantic and Gulf regions. A warmer ocean evaporates more water, and warmer air holds a greater amount of moisture. As a result, extraordinary levels of atmospheric moisture were directed into storm systems, fueling stronger convection and heavier precipitation.
Finally, the wavy jet stream became locked in place by persistent high-pressure systems, anchoring storm tracks over the same regions. This led to repeated episodes of heavy rainfall and catastrophic flooding across much of the continental U.S. The same behavior can leave other regions facing days of unrelenting heat waves.
The jet stream buffered US in hurricane season
The jet stream also played a role in the 2025 hurricane season.
Given its west-to-east wind direction, the southward dip of the jet stream – along with a weak high pressure system over the Atlantic – helped steer all five hurricanes away from the U.S. mainland.
The 2025 Atlantic hurricane season’s storm tracks show how most of the storms steered clear of the U.S. mainland and veered off into the Atlantic. Sandy14156/Wikimedia Commons
Most of the year’s 13 tropical storms and hurricanes veered off into the Atlantic before even reaching the Caribbean.
A higher temperature contrast leads to stronger jet streams. As the planet warms, the Arctic is heating up at more than twice the global average rate, and that is reducing the equator-to-pole temperature difference. As that temperature gradient weakens, jet streams lose their strength and become more prone to stalling.
This increases the risk of persistent extreme rainfall events.
Weaker jet streams also meander more, producing larger waves and more erratic behavior. This increases the likelihood of unusual shifts, such as the southward swing of the jet stream in the summer of 2025.
A recent study found that amplified planetary waves in the jet streams, which can cause weather systems to stay in place for days or weeks, are occurring three times more frequently than in the 1950s.
What’s ahead?
As the global climate continues to warm, extreme weather events driven by erratic behavior of jet streams are expected to become more common. Combined with additional moisture that warmer oceans and air masses supply, these events will intensify, producing storms that are more frequent and more destructive to societies and ecosystems.
In the short term, the polar jet stream will be shaping the winter ahead. It is most powerful in winter, when it dips southward into the central and even southern U.S., driving frequent storm systems, blizzards and cold air outbreaks.
Shuang-Ye Wu does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Source: The Conversation – USA – By Stephanie A. (Sam) Martin, Frank and Bethine Church Endowed Chair of Public Affairs, Boise State University
Passage of the Epstein Files Transparency Act, backed by many of Epstein’s alleged victims and family members, led the DOJ to begin releasing some of the Epstein files.AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite
The U.S. Department of Justice has made a partial release of documents from what’s become known collectively as the “Jeffrey Epstein files,” with more to follow at an unspecified time. On a special part of its website that the department titled “Epstein Library,” it lists documents such as court records and records released in response to Freedom of Information Act requests to the government.
Their release was ordered by Congress in bipartisan legislation passed in November 2025. The deadline imposed by Congress was Dec. 19, 2025, and the Department of Justice met it with the partial release of documents in its possession with eight hours to spare.
Those files will be read, dissected and discussed by politicians and the public and reported on by the news media. It will be the latest eruption in a story that has slipped in and out of the headlines for years, but in a very particular way. Most news articles ask a specific question – which powerful men might be on “the list”? Journalists and the public are watching to see what those documents will reveal beyond names we already know, and whether a long-rumored client list will finally materialize.
Headlines in the past have focused on unidentified elites and who may be exposed or embarrassed, rather than on the people whose suffering made the case newsworthy in the first place: the girls and young women Epstein abused and trafficked.
Alongside that, there has been a stream of survivor-centered reporting. Some outlets, including CNN, have regularly featured Epstein survivors and their attorneys reacting to new developments. Those segments are a reminder that another story is available, one that treats the women at the center of the case as sources of understanding, not just as evidence of someone else’s fall from grace.
These coexisting storylines reveal a deeper problem. After the #MeToo movement peaked, the public conversation about sexual violence and the news has clearly shifted. More survivors now speak publicly under their own names, and some outlets have adapted.
Yet long-standing conventions about what counts as news – conflict, scandal, elite people and dramatic turns in a case – still shape which aspects of sexual violence make it into headlines and which stay on the margins.
That tension raises a question: In a case where the law largely permits naming victims of sexual violence, and where some survivors are explicitly asking to be seen, why do journalistic practices so often withhold names or treat victims as secondary to the story?
A “CBS Evening News” story from Dec. 12, 2025, teases the photos revealed by House Democrats of famous men with Jeffrey Epstein.
What the law allows – and why newsrooms rarely do it
The U.S. Supreme Court has repeatedly held that government generally may not punish news organizations for publishing truthful information drawn from public records, even when that information is a rape victim’s name.
When states tried in the 1970s and 1980s to penalize outlets that identified victims using names that had already appeared in court documents or police reports, the court said those punishments violated the First Amendment.
Newsrooms responded by tightening restraint, not loosening it. Under pressure from feminist activists, victim advocates and their own staff, many organizations adopted policies against identifying victims of sexual assault, especially without consent.
In other words, U.S. law permits what newsroom ethics codes discourage.
How anonymity became the norm and #MeToo complicated it
The anti-rape movement in the U.S. forced newsrooms to revisit assumptions about whose voices should lead a story. Cory Clark/NurPhoto via Getty Images
For much of the 20th century, rape victims were routinely named in U.S. news coverage – a reflection of unequal gender norms. Victims’ reputations were treated as public property, while men accused of sexual violence were portrayed sympathetically and in detail.
By the 1970s and 1980s, feminist movements drew attention to underreporting and intense stigma. Activists built rape crisis centers and hotlines, documented how rarely sexual assault cases led to prosecution, and argued that if a woman feared seeing her name in the paper, she might never report at all.
Lawmakers passed “rape shield laws” that limited the use of a victim’s sexual history in court. Some states went further by barring publication of victims’ names.
More recently, the #MeToo movement added a turn. Survivors in workplaces, politics and entertainment chose to speak publicly, often under their own names, about serial abuse and institutional cover-ups. Their accounts forced newsrooms to revisit assumptions about whose voices should lead a story.
Yet #MeToo also unfolded within existing journalistic conventions. Investigations tended to focus on high-profile men, spectacular falls from power and moments of reckoning, leaving less space for the quieter, ongoing realities of recovery, legal limbo and community response.
The unintended effects of keeping survivors faceless
There are good reasons for policies against naming victims.
Survivors may face harassment, employment discrimination or danger from abusers if they are identified. For minors, there are additional concerns about long-term digital evidence. In communities where sexual violence carries intense social stigma, anonymity can be a lifeline.
But research on media framing suggests that naming patterns matter. When coverage focuses on the alleged perpetrator as a complex individual – someone with a name, a career and a backstory – while referring to “a victim” or “accusers” in the singular, audiences are more likely to empathize with the suspect and scrutinize the victim’s behavior.
In high-profile cases like Epstein’s, that dynamic intensifies. The powerful men connected to him are named, dissected and speculated about. The survivors, unless they work hard to step forward, remain a blurred mass in the background. Anonymity meant to protect actually flattens their experience. Different stories of grooming, coercion and survival get reduced to a single faceless category.
A window into what we think is ‘news’
That flattening is part of what makes the current moment in the Epstein story so revealing. The suspense is less about whether more victims will be heard and more about what being named will do to influential men. It becomes a story about whose names count as news.
Carefully anonymizing survivors while breathlessly chasing a client list of powerful men unintentionally sends a message about who matters most.
The Epstein scandal, in that framing, is not primarily about what was done to girls and young women over many years, but about who among the elite might be embarrassed, implicated or exposed.
A more survivor-centered journalistic approach would start from a different set of questions, including wondering which survivors have chosen to speak on the record and why, and how news outlets can protect anonymity, when it is asked for, but still convey a victim’s individuality.
Those questions are not only about ethics. They are about news judgment. They ask editors and reporters to consider whether the most important part of a story like Epstein’s is the next famous name to drop or the ongoing lives of the people whose abuse made that name newsworthy at all.
This is an update to a story originally published on Dec. 15, 2025, to reflect the release of documents by the U.S. Department of Justice on Dec. 19.
Stephanie A. (Sam) Martin does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
