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Page A4From§Eachthe early bird edition — 2 October 2026

Fox News explains New York's rape loophole; the governor vows to close it the same day.

By LouOne More Question

“Hochul backs changes to New York’s ‘voluntary intoxication’ loophole law”, 2 October 2026 (Photo via New York Post — the original report)

As it ran on the front

There's a parking garage two blocks from the county courthouse, the kind with a red arm that lifts when you pull a ticket. I use it on court days, mostly. Last spring somebody backed into my door in there, a clean dent above the wheel well, and when I went to the booth about it, the attendant turned my ticket stub over and pointed at print on the back I'd never once read: not responsible for damage to any vehicle while parked on these premises. I hadn't signed anything. I'd pulled a ticket and driven under the arm, and that, the stub said, was consent enough. I asked the manager where I'd agreed to that. He read the line back, word for word, like it answered the question. Where had I agreed to it? On the back of a stub I was never handed until after I'd already driven in.

I've been turning that stub over all week, on account of a case up at Cornell.…

…(cont) Here is the case, in the order it happened. A fraternity brother is accused, with others, of a gang rape at Cornell in 2024. An aide working the matter was caught telling someone not to say anything about it. On Friday, Governor Kathy Hochul pulled the case from the Tompkins County district attorney and handed it to the state attorney general, Letitia James, as an active criminal investigation (CBS News). James is the same attorney general whose report sent the previous governor, Andrew Cuomo, out of office in August of 2021, the same month Hochul, his lieutenant governor, moved up to replace him. Five years later, the woman who wrote that report is the special prosecutor on this one too. Does an attorney general with that record find out what a district attorney didn't?

A university-commissioned accounting of assault at Cornell had already put the pattern at thirty-five percent of undergraduate women. Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez stood up at a town hall in Ithaca and called it a culture that protects the accused and pushes the accuser out (Common Dreams, September 28). Then CBS News got hold of text messages from the days right after the alleged assault. In them, one of the accused is apologizing to the young woman (CBS News). If the instruction from above was stay quiet, why does the text from inside the house say sorry?

Here's where Friday gets crowded. In the identical news cycle, not days later, that same Friday, Hochul told reporters she'd work with the state legislature to close that exact loophole (New York Post). The loophole was already in the statute books before Friday morning. Four outlets carried some version of this story that day: the Post, CBS News, Fox News, and in Paris, Le Monde.

One more thing, before I let this go. My parking stub and that statute use the same word for the same trick. Mine says I consented to whatever happened to my car the moment I drove in under my own power. The loophole Fox described says a person consented to whatever happened to them the moment they took a drink. Voluntary to what, exactly — the drink, or everything after it?

“The loophole's been sitting in the statute books this whole time, and it took a leak, a town hall, and a reelection clock running down to get a sentence about it out of Albany. Hochul's on the ballot next month, the AG who ended the last governor's career is now running this investigation, and the fix is a promise, not a bill. Promises don't close loopholes; votes do.”
Sal
“Look, the governor is being proactive here — she spotted a gap in the law and she's moving to close it, that's just good governance. Did I say "gap"? It's a statute, been on the books for years, and somehow nobody at the Capitol noticed it until a cable network pointed a camera at it. That's not a scandal, that's just... timing.”
Chip

Earlier in this story

The receipts

Hochul backs changes to New York’s ‘voluntary intoxication’ loophole law Weeks before reelection, Hochul vows to close the assault loophole
New York Postright§

Hochul, who is up for reelection next month, says she will “work with the New York State legislature” to pass legislation to close the loophole, which can prevent predators who take advantage of someone who has voluntarily consumed drugs or alcohol to escape prosecution.

· Andrew Cuomo announces his resignation as Governor of New York following allegations of sexual harassment, as well as an investigatory report by New York Attorney General Letitia James which stated th from the morgue, 10 Aug 2021

· AOC Calls Out Cornell and 'Culture of Rape' as Prosecutors Reopen Campus Assault Case from the morgue, 28 Sep 2026

· New text messages from days after alleged gang rape at Cornell University from the morgue, 29 Sep 2026

This page is a back-issue: the story as it ran, receipts as they were. The current edition is at the front. The byline is a pen name for a column drafted by a machine and checked by the editor: how this is made.