Up First from NPR - Wages Vs Inflation, Tennessee Failed Execution, Cornell Rape Case Special Prosecutor

Episode Date: October 2, 2026

A new jobs report offers the latest look at a slowing labor market as workers deal with wages that are not keeping up with prices and higher borrowing costs.Tennessee has paused executions after Christa Pike survived two doses of a lethal injection drug, marking the state’s second failed execution this year.New York’s governor has appointed a special prosecutor in the Cornell sexual assault case after new questions emerged about what information campus police shared with the local district attorney.Want more analysis of the most important news of the day, plus a little fun? Subscribe to the Up First newsletter.Support public media with NPR+ and enjoy perks for over 25 podcasts like this one. This show’s perks include sponsor-free listening. Learn more at plus.npr.org.Today’s episode of Up First was edited by Rafael Nam, Susanna Capeluto, Gigi Douban, Mohamad ElBardicy and Alice Woelfle.It was produced by Ziad Buchh and Nia Dumas.Our director is Christopher Thomas.We get engineering support from Neisha Heinis and Patrick Murray.Our technical director is Carleigh Strange.And our Executive Producer is Jay Shaylor.(0:00) Introduction(02:29) Wages Vs Inflation(06:17) Tennessee Failed Execution(09:54) Cornell Rape Case Special ProsecutorSee pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.NPR Privacy Policy

Okay, Michelle, you know this. I do. But we should remind other people that everything we do hear it up first at NPR is thanks to people who listen. Thanks to you. And yesterday marked one year without federal funding for public media. You know, but we're still able to do this work, though, Steve, because people, like the people listening to us now, continue to step up to support it. Up first doesn't happen without you. That's absolutely true.

I'm remembering hosting this program with you one year ago. And we're still here. You can join the community that makes this work possible and donate at npr.org. Thanks. Americans' wages are going up. Prices are also rising more quickly than people's pay. Some people borrow to fill the gap and interest rates are rising too. How long can consumers keep the economy going?

I'm Michelle Martin. That's Steve Inskeep and this is up first from NPR News. Tennessee is trying to save the woman it tried to kill. Krista Pike was on death row for a murder she committed as a teenie. She survived two lethal injections and is now in critical condition. What happens now? Also, New York's governor assigned a special prosecutor in the alleged rape case at Cornell University. Authorities in 2024 saw no evidence of a crime they could prosecute.

But how did they not know about the woman's statement that she was raped? Stay with us. We've got the news you need to start your day. American consumers are heading toward the holiday season with their budgets not quite adding up. Inflation is up, meaning people have to pay more for things they need or want to buy. Wages have grown less than inflation, meaning that many people who pay more also have to borrow more. And interest rates are up, meaning the borrowing costs more. Those are the trends as we receive the government's update on the job market today.

NPR Scott Horsley brings it all together for us. Scott, good morning. Good morning, Steve. Okay, the job market. Hiring was not so great in July. Stronger in August. What about September? Forecasters think it's going to be somewhere in the middle that employers added between 80 and 90,000 jobs in September.

That'd be a slow down from August, but not nearly as slow as we saw earlier in the summer. Sarah House is a senior economist at Wells Fargo. She thinks the job market is not stalling or accelerating. It's just kind of chugging along in a low gear. You're seeing some modest hiring. The good news is you're not seeing a lot of layoffs, but it's really hard if you are one of those workers who loses their job or, you're new to the labor force or maybe coming back, there's just not a lot of turnover, so it makes it harder to get your foot in the door right now.

One way to measure the strength of the job market is what's happening with wages. Average wages in August were up 3.1% from a year ago, and House expects a similar gain for September. That's not enough to keep pace with rising prices, so the typical worker is losing some buying power month after month. Okay. So what is happening with inflation? It's still high, although not quite as high as it had been.

This week, the Commerce Department released its inflation scorecard for August. That's the one the Federal Reserve pays most attention to. It showed prices in August were up 3.4% from a year ago. Of course, rising gasoline prices were a big part of that. A couple of weeks ago, the Federal Reserve raised its benchmark interest rate to try to tamp down inflation. And Rebecca Venter, who monitors interest rates at Vanguard, says investors are wondering how much higher borrowing costs are likely to go. The Fed has come on pretty strong, reaffirming its commitment. commitment to bring inflation back to its 2% target. Now the question is, if growth is strong,

if inflation is pretty sticky, where do rates need to go for that goal to actually be met? Of course, the Fed sets short-term interest rates. Long-term rates are set in the bond market, and they have been going up at a rapid clip. The yield on 10-year treasuries is up around 5. And that's pushing up borrowing costs for everybody else. You know, the average rate on a 30-year mortgage, for example, is now just under 7.5%. I can't stop thinking about this offer for a credit card that one of my kids got with a 29% interest rate, threw that right in the trash. But wow, what is pushing borrowing costs up so much? It's a variety of factors. Part of it's that stubborn inflation, which makes lenders demand a bigger return.

Lenders are also worried about the size of the federal debt, which has ballooned to $40 trillion, double what it was nine years ago. And there's more competition for credit now because tech companies are borrowing a ton of money to bankroll their artificial intelligence boom. And finally, you've got consumers who are stretched thin. Mike Reed is head of U.S. economics at RBC Capital Markets. He notes personal spending jumped to almost a full percentage point last month, but personal income is not keeping pace. When you become relying on credit to fuel your spending,

there's an increasing risk that the Fed hikes are going to start to bite sooner rather than later. So far, consumer spending has been resilient. But as we've said, the job market's not generating enough wage growth to keep pace with rising prices. Some people are having to borrow money to close that gap, and that borrowed money is getting more expensive. And B.R. Scott Horsley, thanks as always. You're welcome.

The woman, the state of Tennessee, tried to execute on Wednesday, is still alive and in critical condition. Krista Pike was convicted of the 1995 murder of Colleen Slimmer when they were both teenagers. She had received a death sentence. Pike was given two full doses of the lethal injection drug, pentobarbital, and is now getting, quote, unquote, life-saving care at a hospital, according to her lawyers.

From WPLN in Nashville, Mariana Bucayahu is covering this story. Good morning. Good morning. What went wrong on Wednesday? There's still a lot we don't know, but Krista Pike was given two rounds of pentobarbital. Usually just one is considered a lethal dose. Her lawyer, Steve Kissinger, says that she has problems with blood draws, and that's something they had brought up ahead of time in court. Her blood draws were difficult. She has a blood disorder that contributes to that, and we knew this was coming. So back in January, we asked that this problem be addressed in a way that would not lead to the torture that happened last night. Her attorneys are now calling on Tennessee Governor Bill Lee to commute her death sentence because they call it cruel and unusual punishment.

All the governor has done so far is pause executions and call for an independent review of the state's lethal. injection protocols. I wonder why he would call for that now, given that this is not the first time it's happened. The state had another failed execution earlier this year. Right. Reporters directly asked Lee that question, and he did not directly answer that question. He mainly just talked about how important it was to do a review now. He does acknowledge the state has a death penalty and that it's his responsibility to carry it out. But about Pike's failed execution, he said this. It's tragedy. and it's deeply disturbing to me that that has happened in this state. The people deserve better than that.

In that other failed execution back in May, medical staff could not access the veins of a man named Tony Carruthers. And the governor halted that execution. So there's a sense that one is a fluke, but two is a pattern. And speaking of patterns, this is also the second time Governor Lee has paused executions to do an extensive review of the process. He did so from 2022 to 2025.

They found that the drugs used in the state's executions had not been properly inspected. The current process is the result of that review. Lee says the Department of Corrections followed this new process and they don't know what went wrong. This has all happened during election season and there's a governor's race in Tennessee.

I understand this has become a topic in the governor's race. Right. So Lee is term limited. His moratorium is really only good for the next few months he's in office, and it will be up to the state's next governor to determine what to do with the review's findings. U.S. Senator Marsha Blackburn, the frontrunner to replace him, says she supports the review, but she's also calling for the state to bring back the electric chair. It's still an option here for those who were sentenced before the year 2000, like Krista Pike.

Her Democratic opponent, Jerry Green, says she would extend the moratorium and just have death row inmates serve out a life sentence. Governor Lee says, even if he won't be governor, the review should take as long as it needs to take to make sure something like what happened to Christopike doesn't happen again. Mariana Bacayahu with WPLN in Nashville. Thanks so much. Thank you. We'll warn that this next story includes descriptions of sexual violence.

Kathy Hokel, the governor of New York State, has appointed the state's attorney general, Letitia James, as a... special prosecutor to take over the alleged rape case at Cornell University. Hoko says she does not have faith that the local prosecutor, who decided not to investigate her press charges two years ago, can manage the case now. NPR has confirmed that the woman who alleged she was raped at a Cornell frat gave campus police a detailed account, but those details never made it to that local prosecutor. And this comes as Cornell students gathered last night to express their grief and fury of the university's handling of the case.

How did all this happen? NPR's Brian Mann has the best information we have up to now. Brian, good morning. Good morning, Steve. Okay, first, what is the governor saying? Well, she says yesterday's really big revelations about this case raised serious questions about how it was handled by the local DA, Matthew Van Houghton. The young woman at the center of this case deserves to know that every fact will be examined and justice pursued. That's what Hokel wrote. NPR reached out to Van Houghton for comment, but we haven't heard back, but it appears he's off the case. When you say yesterday's big revelations, what do you mean? So we know now that the woman offered lengthy, detailed, and graphic descriptions of her alleged assault during that initial investigation in 2024 as part of that interview, Steve.

She told police at the time, and I'm quoting here, I can say with 100% confidence that I was raped. Meanwhile, Van Houghton has been describing her involvement in drug use and sexual activity at that frat party as consensual. It now appears many of these key details. that she provided to campus police were never given to him before he shut down his investigation. Van Houten says he only learned about the woman's full claim that she was drugged and gang raped by seven male students after she filed her civil lawsuit last month. I've been talking to students about this and they say these disclosures, Steve, have shattered their trust in Cornell and its campus police to properly investigate cases like this. Anna asked that we only identify her

by her first name because she fears retribution from the school. I think people are afraid. She's not someone I know, but she could have been any one of my friends or a classmate. I am so sorry that the university has failed her. And Anna, like a lot of students, wants Cornell's leaders to come forward now and give a much clearer account of what went wrong here. Brian, I want to make sure that I understand what happened here. She gave a statement, a long-transcribed statement to campus police.

But then they summarized it in this shorter document, and the prosecutor says he only saw that. a shorter, less detailed document? Is that right? It appears to be the case. That's right, Steve. And people are trying to understand why that happened. And there was a student gathering last night. What did you hear there? Yeah, hundreds of students gathered. They were devastated, heartbroken. Some sobbed as they spoke. Savita Sastri is one of the women who testified. There was rage. It was really, really nice to see people be emotional about this.

We are her. We experienced that. And this entire week, we had to think about the fact that we were raped. I heard this from a lot of women, Steve. They want big changes to the campus culture. What are Cornell University officials saying? Well, not much. We've asked repeatedly for an interview. They say no. One important detail is that earlier in the week, Cornell claimed on its website that the campus police did share all investigatory information with the prosecutor's office about this case. Then Cornell quietly removed that claim. We've asked Cornell about the change and asked if campus police failed to share key information, they've declined to answer. Well, we'll continue looking for answers. Brian, thanks so much.

Thank you, Steve. That's NPR's Brian Mann in Ithaca, New York. And that's up first for this Friday, October 2nd. I'm Steve Inskeep. And I'm Michelle Martin. Today's episode of Up First was edited by Raphael Nomm, Susanna Capiluto, Gigi, Duban, Muhammad El Vardisi, and Alice Wolfley. It was produced by Zia Gutsch and Nia Dumas.

Our director is Christopher Thomas. We get engineering support from Misha Highness and Patrick Murray. Our technical director is Carly Strange, and our executive producer is Jay Shaler. We hope you'll join us again on Monday.